The Shores of Tripoli

by James L. Haley

  From the quarterdeck of the Nautilus, Perry had been watching the fort intently. He had ceased his fire once he was certain that he had put all its guns out of action, and had heard the rattle of musketry, punctuated by the deep booms of Argus’s twenty-fours; now it was a waiting game. He noted the time as four twenty-five in the afternoon when he saw the red and yellow stripes of Tripoli come jerking down the fort’s flagpole, replaced seconds later by O’Bannon’s large American flag.

  Perry could not help himself, he doubled over and shrieked in triumph, followed by every man of the Nautilus’s gun crews, and almost simultaneously similar cheers erupted from Argus and Hornet.

  Eaton could hear them plainly on the quay by the fort. Exhausted, he sat heavily on a large crate of he knew not what, and savored the sound of it, and the sight of the Stars and Stripes over the fort. Distantly they could hear the rattle of musketry rage in the unseen warren of streets—gunshots, occasionally a scream, and knew that the waterfront’s defenders must have run into Hamet Pasha’s advancing horsemen.

  O’Bannon and his two uninjured marines emerged onto the quay, bearing first one, and then returned bearing the second bodies of their fallen comrades. Three others who had been wounded plopped themselves on the pavement, resting. Only distantly could they hear the Greeks and Levantines celebrating, as they gathered on the quay, ready to receive their pay, seeming heedless of their dead, who lay where they fell. Distantly in the city could they hear the pillaging. Well, thought Eaton, at least it was Mustifa’s head and not his own.

  General Eaton rose and approached his somber marines, sensing an imperative to comfort them, to tell them of the gravity of the moment. His bandaged wrist showed a growing red stain of blood. “Gentlemen,” he said quietly, “this is a somber moment. Two of our comrades have fallen. They died bravely, displaying the gallantry that we know we can expect of American marines. They shall never be forgotten. Neither shall this moment ever be forgotten. This is an important moment. You marines, in planting the American flag on the shores of Tripoli, have raised our banner in triumph, on a foreign shore, for the first time in our history. Our nation does not aspire to be a feared tyrant in the world, but let the world take note of this, that neither will we be trod upon, and when our rights and honor are violated, we will have justice.”

  The marines did not cheer; they nodded sadly. They heard a horse cantering, drawing closer within the tangle of streets, until Hamet Pasha emerged on his Arabian charger. He drew to a halt ten feet from Eaton. “The city is ours. Allah be praised.” He saw the bloodied sheets covering the two bodies. “You have suffered losses. The memory of these men shall be imperishable. The world will remember American bravery, and how happy we are, that we are allies.”

  He walked his horse to stand near General Eaton. “You are injured. We have a physician in the city.”

  “Thank you, Your Highness. The surgeons on our ships will tend to me shortly. You are very kind.”

  “You are not dangerously hurt?”

  “No, I think not. But—his head or mine—what of Mustifa Bey?”

  Hamet Pasha relaxed his reins and smirked, making a disgusted, dismissive sound as though he were sucking something from between his teeth. “He has taken sanctuary in the bashaw’s palace.”

  “Wait.” Eaton was working through some confusion. “Your brother has a residence here in Derna?”

  “Of course.”

  Eaton thought for a moment longer. “But the palace is now yours.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why do you not go in and get him?”

  Hamet Pasha began making emphatic gestures. “Because the steward has extended him hospitality and the safety of the harem. He cannot be touched there.”

  “Well, by God,” roared Eaton, “we will go get him!”

  “No! It is the most sacred law we have. If he comes out, he will lose his head. If the steward betrays him, or if I seize him—we will become the detested of God.” Hamet leaned far forward in his saddle toward Eaton. “No one of us will do such a thing!”

  Hamet Pasha’s charger spun a spirited circle before he regained control. “Besides, the palace is in a quarter of the city which is still in his power.”

  Eaton threw up his hands. “You just told me the city is ours!”

  “Well, most of the city is ours. Where he is, he can do nothing, his people can do nothing. Only they must be watched for a while, until we decide what to do.”

  Eaton held his throbbing hand. Now one of the ships must be left behind to cow a dissident element, and he must find additional naval cover for his attack on Tripoli. And how could he feel secure with Derna in his rear with no American force left in it?

  “Be not downcast, my friend,” puffed Hamet. “We have won a great victory. And what now are our plans?”

  “We will rest,” said Eaton, “then one way or another we will march on Tripoli.”

  “Excellent. It is well. One thing more.”

  Eaton looked up. “Yes?”

  “I wish for Lieutenant Putnam to accompany me a short while.”

  Eaton thought for a second. “We will have need of him here. How long?”

  Hamet shrugged. “You may have him back on the day after tomorrow.”

  It might not be the best thing, Eaton considered, to deny an accommodation to the next ruler of Tripoli, when his friendship would be of such advantage to the United States, and the more so when that friendship was attested to by the blood, not yet wiped off, on the scimitars of his retainers.

  “Very well.” Eaton looked over his shoulder. “Mr. Putnam?”

  Bliven stood. “Sir?”

  “Would you be so good as to accompany Hamet Pasha and attend to whatever it is he requires of you?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Hamet barked in Arabic to his retainers, one of whom produced a saddled horse, holding the reins out to Bliven. “Ride to your camp and take up your bedding. Take no thought for food; we have food. Return quickly, it is a long ride.”

  16.

  THE DEFENDER

  May 1805

  Bliven galloped first to the motte of woods where his guns were concealed and found his Greeks celebrating the sight of the American flag fluttering over the fortress, hoisting cups of a dark red, oily Greek wine. He had them hitch their teams and ordered them to haul them through the meadows into the city and down to the waterfront to turn the guns back over to the Nautilus.

  There was only a sparse guard in the camp, where he stripped off his shirt and washed quickly, putting on a fresh shirt before his waistcoat and coat again. He quickly wrapped his kit and cantered back down to the city, where he found things exactly as he left them. “Ride by me,” said Hamet Pasha. “Let us go.”

  With ten heavily armed men just behind them, they clattered noisily westward through Derna’s torturous narrow streets, which made Bliven think of Algiers, except they were not ascending a height. They were halted as they entered a small square in the western reaches of the city. A crowd was gathered about two men whose hands were bound, and who each stood on a large swath of white canvas or sailcloth. As Hamet Pasha reined in, one man who seemed to be in charge approached him with a bow and, with many gestures at the bound men and at the people and in different directions, blurted such a staccato of Arabic that even had Bliven acquired any facility with the language he could not have followed it.

  What Bliven could see was a change in Hamet’s countenance from the thoughtful man who could engage him in solicitous conversation to something else, a much harder man, a Berber prince called on for judgment. And that judgment came swiftly, as he snapped a very few syllables, gave half a wave of his hand, and turned his horse to continue their ride westward.

  Bliven’s gaze was torn between following Hamet, and the eruption from the mob as, in less time that it took before he could avert his eyes, the two bound men wer
e forced to their knees. Each suffered one man to pull by his hair as another flashed downward with a thick-bladed scimitar, striking their heads from their bodies, which fell as limp as grain sacks.

  What took him was the surprise of it; the violence and the gore—to his own shock—did not revolt him. He had seen worse when taking the Tripoli. Almost in a continuous motion the severed heads were cast upon the bodies, and men took up the corners of their canvas shrouds and bore them off before the ghastly effusion of blood could soak through the canvas.

  When next he came abreast of Hamet Pasha he found his jaw set and his eyes hard. “Young effendi,” Hamet said, “mercy is a virtuous thing, and beloved of God, for those who deserve it. These men did not deserve it. They were the servants of my brother who oppressed my people.”

  “Your Highness”—Bliven searched out some kind of phrase that Eaton or Lear would have found acceptable—“my country has every faith in your justice. Who am I to judge otherwise?”

  At this Hamet Pasha searched him with a penetrating look, and the hardness began to pass from his countenance. “It is well, then. Forget what you have seen. Come!”

  They left the city behind as the road west split into two, one that followed the edge of the sea and one that rose into the upland. Bliven judged it near the limit of the horses’ capacity, alternately walking and cantering them until nearly sunset. Bliven used the long silences to judge the day’s events. It had been more than three years since he first went to sea, but he had aged much more than that. He beheld himself harder, and sharper—tempered was the word he settled on. Yet the time passed was so brief that he could remember something like innocence, or callowness, and he was not so changed that he did not look back on that time with warmth.

  They dismounted in a meadow of tuftgrass, and each of the Berbers produced a small carpet, which he spread upon the ground, and in unison they prostrated themselves to the east, praying. During this time Bliven made no move to eat or make himself comfortable, not knowing what might give offense. He pondered for a moment the incongruity that such a devout people could also be so cruel, but a quick wave of feeling superior was just as quickly defeated by the burden of the Crusades and the Reformation. They were not so different.

  That night the tuftgrass beneath his blanket proved so soft he felt almost as though he were on a mattress; the morning mist was cool but not uncomfortable. They breakfasted on wonderfully strong, aromatic coffee and unleavened bread, and after the Berbers had prayed again they took up the westward ride.

  As the sun reached well above the horizon the dirt of the track they were following grew thinner, and then their horses’ hooves began clopping on bare rock. Bliven recognized in an instant that it was a white stone road, and in another mile it was edged with curbstones. The road began to rise, and Hamet Pasha suddenly galloped ahead to its high point. When Bliven joined him, Hamet pointed ahead and said, “Look.”

  What lay ahead of and below them was a sea of ruins—columns, curtain walls, streets, courtyards, small buildings almost intact. Bliven’s jaw dropped before he recovered himself. “Why, it’s a city!” He looked agape at Hamet Pasha and back. The road they were on splayed out into a grand avenue that passed the marble semicircle of an amphitheater and the roofless thick walls of what must have been rich houses. “It is a whole ancient city!”

  Hamet Pasha was not smiling, but Bliven saw the satisfaction in his eyes. “Siwa,” he said, “it was not possible to take you there. But al Iskandar was here also. Greeks, and then Romans, and then Jews and Christians, and then the faithful.”

  Bliven breathed so deep, he thought he must faint. “Please, may we go down?”

  “Come.” They eased their reins and the horses walked slowly, Hamet’s retainers following well behind.

  “What place is this?”

  “It is called Cyrene.”

  “When was it abandoned?”

  “I do not know.”

  The completeness of some of the buildings was unsettling, as though the inhabitants might appear at any second, but the silence of it was crushing; when they stopped their horses there was no sound but the wind. They passed on their right a marble wall twenty feet high, unbroken for at least a hundred yards, except in the very center there loomed a columned portal the whole height of the wall. Hamet turned his horse beneath the portal and said, “Come.”

  “What caused such a big city to be here?”

  Hamet harrumphed and smiled. “There was an herb that grew here. Most excellent for lovemaking, but no babies would ever come. They sold it all over—Egypt, Palestine, Greece, Rome. The Romans paid its weight in silver.”

  “I should imagine. What was it?”

  Hamet shrugged. “It no longer exists. They picked it all.”

  They dismounted and walked their horses across a vast courtyard. Just inside the tall curtain wall and several feet from it a ring of columns, many standing and as many fallen, surrounded the entire enclosure. Bliven estimated that it made at least six or eight of the town square in Litchfield. In the center, they approached the foundation of a rectangular building, and they sat on a step. “What happened in here?” asked Bliven.

  “This is where they worshipped the emperors. The emperors said they were gods, and you see what it came to. Al Iskandar said he was a god, yet he ended also. There is only God, men should not reach so high.” Hamet shook his head suddenly. “Why do you care about this?”

  “I don’t know. There is just so much to learn. General Eaton laughs at me.”

  “When I am bashaw again, in Tripoli, I will send scholars and learned men here, to dig and study, like at Pompeii you speak of. Come back,” he said with sudden ebullience, “and I will tell you what they learned.”

  “Maybe they will find some more of that herb.”

  They mounted again. “Ha. I doubt it. People have been searching for centuries. Let us see a bit more, and then I must return you to your general.”

  • • •

  WITH THE CITY CARRIED, Perry had anchored the Nautilus close in—closer in than he would have dared, lacking a trustworthy chart, making Bliven think that Hazard Perry was living true to his name and reputation. It was late in the evening when Bliven boarded and discovered his little field guns back on the ship. He found Perry on the quarterdeck and they traded smart salutes.

  “Mr. Putnam,” said Perry heartily, “I understand you have been taking an excursion with the new bashaw.”

  “Yes, sir. He took me to the ruins of an ancient city, a little west of here.”

  “Ah. Well, at last I have a chance to congratulate you on your part in taking the city. Not all the opposition has been quelled, of course, but the situation is quite under control.”

  “Thank you, sir. Your little field pieces actually did work some execution on the city walls and allowed General Eaton through.”

  “Excellent,” said Perry. “How did your supplies last? Did you run out of ammunition?”

  “No, we had plenty. I brought back the remainder.”

  “Really? I thought surely you must have fired all your shot. I heard that you were reduced to”—Perry could contain himself no longer and howled in laughter—“to firing your ramrods!” He doubled over and gasped for breath.

  Well, fine, thought Bliven. Now he would be a laughingstock of the entire fleet, thanks to his damned Greeks, who had the gall to call themselves gunners. “Did you not hear?” he answered evenly, “that ramrod skewered the governor, right up the ass.” There was nothing to do but join Perry in the laughter.

  Perry cleared his throat and resumed a serious manner. “I do have orders to relay to you, in event of the successful capture of Derna.”

  “Indeed? I pray you, tell me.”

  “Prepare yourself,” said Perry, “this may come as a shock. The war is over. A treaty was signed in Tripoli three weeks ago.”

  A slap in the
face would have been less of a shock. “What! How?”

  “I’m damned if I know. But now the war is over, someone has to go to Algiers and pick up that consul who has been held there, and his daughter, and any prisoners still held in the bagnios. The old dey has agreed to release them. You have been selected.”

  Only dimly did it register that Bliven was being given his first command, but that did not seem like the most important matter at the moment. “Does General Eaton know that we are done?”

  “No. He is in the cockpit below, having his bandage changed. The news was just handed me.”

  “God.” Bliven shook his head. “I pity the man who tells him.”

  “Pity yourself, then.” Perry extracted folded papers from his coat and handed them over. “These are his new orders. He may leave Derna in the hands of Hamet Karamanlis, but he and you and all other Americans are to stand down. He is to abandon the march to Tripoli, join the commodore at the base in Naples, and await further instructions. You will join them there also, after you tend your errand in Algiers.”

  Bliven surveyed the shattered waterfront and up at the battered fortress, and thought of their two dead marines and the wounds borne by many others. “So all this was for nothing?”

  Perry considered it. “Indeed, this action was fought after a peace was concluded, but I would not say it was for nothing. I can’t imagine we would have agreed to a peace now unless it was on advantageous terms, and Eaton’s army here created those conditions.”

  “But promises were made!” Bliven protested. “Promises were made that cannot now be abandoned.”

  “Well.” Perry shrugged. “I am just a lieutenant in command of a two-hundred-ton schooner. Those questions are too large for me.”