Swords From the Sea

by Harold Lamb

  While the corvos-the guards-carried Spanish muskets and American-made pistols, the townspeople were not allowed arms. They went about their tasks lashed like animals, and as callous of hurt as animals. They stepped out of the way when corvos marched down the street which seemed to be the great street of the town leading back to the gardens and the white walls of the governor's palace.

  From the wall above Paul's niche, giant hooks projected. His guards pointed these out, explaining that offenders were pushed from the summit of the wall, to fall upon the hooks and die there, sometimes very slowly. "Like fish strung up."

  And like fishhooks, the points of heavy steel were barbed and clotted with remnants of flesh. They were old and evil as the resplendent castle.

  "Douceur," the corvos begged of Paul. A sweetening, a gift. In Spanish silver, or Venetian gold-they knew the value of all the coins, and they tried to get him to pay for wine, or a water pipe. But he had left only the francs and carubs in Marie's purse, and he did not want to give those away.

  His inflamed body craved water.

  Lying on his blanket under the eyes of the crowds, turning to ease the throbbing ache in his side, he realized that fever was burning away his strength. When he closed his eyes against the swarming flies, the street around him had the sounds of his own street.

  In his home at this hour he had walked out so often, careless of anything except the scent of the lilacs and the salt breath of the river where vessels passed carrying people on casual errands or long journeys, wherever they willed to go ... Whatever might come of it, he would find his way out to a boat-to go home ...

  That morning, when he had given away the rice he could not eat to one of the beggars that haunted the guard post, he found that the gate itself was being cleared. A detachment of infantry wearing fezzes aslant arrived at the double, and formed up with bayonets fixed. Mounted spahis drove the huddles of peasants aside into alley mouths.

  After them trotted grandees from the palace, splendidly horsed. Officers of the Bey, Paul guessed. Hadjali accompanied a foreigner in black with the glint of a gold chain at his throat, who held a lace handkerchief to his nose against the stench of the alleys. They drew rein just outside the great gate, and after a moment Hadjali called back at Paul.

  "Yankee-what vessel is that?"

  In his wall niche Paul could see nothing except the masts of polaccas drawn up on the shore a quarter-mile out. "Which vessel?" he asked.

  Impatiently the renegade swung down from his saddle, coming over to haul the prisoner to his feet and hurry him limping out to the cavalcade. There Hadjali pointed to the east.

  A mile away, off the headland that topped the valley, lay the Nautilus. Under the glare of the early morning sun, Paul made out a boat pulling away to shore, with the measured stroke of naval oarsmen. The boat seemed to be heavily loaded.

  "Goelette," he said briefly.

  Hadjali snarled. "A schooner! We know it is an armed schooner. But which one, and what is its mission near Derna?"

  Paul was silent. Around one of the islands he observed square tops'ls heading into the bay, and a tiny wisp of a sail escorting them. That would be the Argus following a sloop in.

  The next moment the riders had sighted the other vessels. The foreigner spoke sharply in Spanish. Deferentially Hadjali answered. Paul caught the word "Excellency" and wondered if the stranger were an envoy from Madrid. Then he winced at the sting of a whiplash across his mouth.

  "You have a tongue," Hadjali gibed. "Use it, Yankee. What armament have these vessels? And why are they so interested in entering our port? Do they wish, then, to pay a ransom for you?"

  The officers, who had understood him, looked curiously at the prisoner, who merely wiped uncertainly at his mouth. Paul was blessing his stars that they did not realize they held the brother of Captain Bainbridge, who was in Tripoli.

  "Our frigates," he said, "carry forty-four guns."

  The renegade's dark eyes gleamed. "That also we know, my friend. We counted those we took from your flagship in Tripoli. These are no frigates-"

  The cavalcade started into the street, and Hadjali hastened to mount to follow them. Passing his prisoner, he called down: "Your price is two thousand dollars, Yankee, and I have no wish to lose it. Back to your cubby with you."

  Something in Paul's face amused him. "Since you understand so lit tle, I will inform you. Your general who marched from Alexandria so secretly has at last arrived. That schooner has been trying to land guns, and failing to hoist them up the cliff to him. If he will have the kindness to wait until tonight, he will surely join you with his command, after Hassan Agha arrives from Tripoli to greet him."

  With a word to the nearest guard, Hadjali cantered off after his superiors. The soldier jerked his head toward Paul's niche. Stepping back, the prisoner limped and caught the corsair's arm, as if in pain. While he rested, he slipped the silk purse from his pocket into the man's fingers, which closed on it swiftly, feeling the coins within it. An eye glanced down inquiringly.

  "Hassan Agha," said Paul. "Who is he?"

  Fortunately the man understood a little French. He answered in monosyllables, while he slid the purse into his girdle. "Commandant. Army of Tripoli. Officers of the advance." He nodded at the dust stirred up by the horsemen.

  "How great is the army of Tripoli?"

  But the guard, his money safely stowed, only shook his shaven head topped by the smart fez.

  Sitting down on a stone by the water fountain, Paul cupped some water in his hand and washed his lacerated mouth. From his seat he could watch carts hurrying out to the shore battery with powder cartridges. Beyond the battery gleamed the blue surface of the bay, empty now of all the corsair shipping which had crowded into the river mouth and the line of wharfs.

  Eaton must be on the height to the east. Between that and the city lay a hollow sprinkled with fruit orchards and houses. The houses nearest the town were being occupied by troops, who deployed among the ditches and brush heaps, where fire from the wall would cover them.

  From all around him the inhabitants were being herded back into the streets or across the river. Paul did not like the looks of such a methodical defense. If heavy guns were brought down the eastern slope, they might do damage. But he thought of the single nine-pounder the Marines had hauled across the desert ...

  The sun was almost overhead when he heard the bark of the gun and sighted a wreath of smoke in one of the orchards halfway down the slope. Except for the drifting smoke, the dark gardens seemed deserted and at peace. The sound of the gun was like a faint handclap, followed by a spatter of musketry.

  The single gun kept on popping stubbornly, aimed ridiculously at the side of the city.

  Paul had been watching every motion of the ships. They followed a strange course-the dainty sloop, the Hornet, heading in to the eastward, and then coming about. The little craft drew closer to shore, as if intending to try a landing.

  She came on toward the shore battery, closing in. Behind her the schooner and brig came to anchor.

  The sloop kept on. The eight guns of the battery flashed, and smoke drifted back, eddying over Paul.

  When he could see her again through the smoke, the Hornet was closing within two hundred yards of the battery. Her sail rose over the rampart where the guns flashed and slid back. At a hundred yards she let go the anchor, and her four guns went into action. The whirr of grapeshot came into the air.

  At the gate the infantry scattered to take cover, and the prisoner slid to the ground. He began to crawl toward the battery as soon as he was left to himself. Small particles of shot lashed against the old walls above him.

  Then he heard the guns of the Nautilus and the deeper note of the carronades on the Argus. The ships had closed in to the shore itself. Their fire was sweeping the stone bulk of the battery, the gardens, and the walls of Derna. Moving a little at a time and listening, he could interpret the reverberation of sound.

  The sun slanted from the west when he caught the firs
t change in the sounds. The battery was silenced. Its garrison was streaming back into the hollow, away from the Hornet.

  Almost within reach of the platform of the battery, he edged himself to the right, to see across the hollow. There was nothing to see. No smoke puffed from the orchard where Eaton's cannon had taken position.

  Beyond the wash of the surf the Nautilus lay at anchor, her sails reefed down, her guns searching the buildings wherever musketry sounded. Blue figures moved about her afterdeck, and once a telescope flashed in the sun.

  Paul had a strange impression that only the three small vessels were alive in the sweep of the bay.

  Up along the summits behind the city bodies of horsemen moved, com ing toward the city. He could not make out what they were. He crawled up into the battery, finding the guns secure on their carriages, the powder intact in the pits, and not a man visible. The garrison had carried off their injured.

  From one gun to the other he went, trying their elevator screws and touchholes. Then the sounds altered ominously. Along the west of the city the musketry fire quickened. He did not hear the broadsides of the ships. Something like a low cheer came from the sea.

  Raising himself to an embrasure, he stared out at the black sloop, lying out from him like a crippled bird, her sail flapping in shreds.

  Her men were clustering aft and cheering. Across the hollow other men were visible coming down from the orchard, keeping a rude line. They disappeared among the trees, under the lash of bullets from the houses.

  Then they emerged in the bottom of the hollow, running down to the beach. Their dusty gray changed into the blue of the Marines and the drab coats of the Greeks. The stocky figure of Eaton, and lanky awkward O'Bannon. They ran slowly, stumbling among the rocks.

  They were circling the buildings, heading for the silent battery on the shore, and Paul counted forty of them before they began to fall to the ground.

  Two of them climbed to the rear of the battery, their muskets poised, the breath rasping in their bodies. Behind them panted a boy in midshipman's garb. They stared down the emplacement, and sighted Paul.

  "The first and the fifth and sixth piece are charged and primed," he said. "All of them are serviceable."

  The Marine let out a yip. "Jerusalem! Eight guns." With his sleeve he wiped the blood from his cheek. "Shot away the rammer out of our'n," he explained, and gripped Paul's arm. "Them cannoneers did," he insisted. "Them flummydiddlin' cannoneers shot away the rammer-"

  "Easy," Paul told him. The other was a boy named Dave, from Tarrytown. "Bear a hand, Dave," Paul directed. "This trail-"

  He was pulling futilely at the heavy trail, and Dave laid aside his musket to heave at the trail, swinging it. Others bent in to help, and the gun came around. Dave never stopped talking. "Hit was too hot up there. So we-uns took an' come down here."

  Paul groped in the pail for a burning match, feeling the priming on the gun's breech. It pointed at the wide gate where he had sat that morning, where garrison troops moved in disorder, throwing together a barri cade or gathering for a counter-attack. One part of his mind assured him of this, while he kept on counting the men who climbed into the battery from the beach. Twenty-four-and O'Bannon's hoarse voice. "Stand back there-"

  Beside him a gun of the battery exploded. Paul stepped aside and laid his match on the priming of his gun. The hot smoke swirled up at him.

  The blast of his gun was almost drowned by a half-dozen heavier reports behind him, and the hiss of solid shot passing near his head. Dave ducked and said "Jerusalem! "

  The Hornet, lying so close in, had not fired that broadside. The smoke eddied up from the Nautilus. The schooner was warping in abaft the battered sloop.

  "Those sailors," called O'Bannon, "will shuck us out of here next. Mr. Mann, will you break out that ensign you are carrying."

  The flushed midshipman gaped and tugged at the small flag he had stowed under his jacket. Then, remembering, he called back, "Aye-aye, sir," and ran to lay the ensign on the stone parapet, spreading it carefully so it could be seen clearly from the ships. Then he climbed up beside it and waved his cap.

  But the Nautilus and Argus were firing over the battery into the town.

  Into the battery Percy Farquhar climbed, laughing. "Five bob you owe me, Eugene." He was only a step ahead of the Tyrolese, who puffed under the weight of a musket. "Won by two paces. You'll bear me out, Paul?"

  In the stress of the moment the Englishman had not thought that Paul had not been with them, in the race. After them pushed Selim the janizary and his men, noisy with excitement. Their familiar voices and the pressure of their bodies around him as they all worked to turn the battery on the entrance of the street made Paul feel as if he had never been away from them. Eaton gripped his shoulder, exclaiming like Dave: "Bainbridge! Thank God! I thought I sent you to Bomba, and here you are safe in Derna."

  When Eaton moved his left arm, blood spattered from it. "This morning I prayed God that I would not be the failure that all my life I have been."

  The man called Drub-Devil, who had thought himself a failure! ... Something stirred in Paul's memory. At the gate the news Hadjali had let out and-the soldier had confirmed-that a relief force might be approaching from Tripoli.

  Before he could speak of it, O'Bannon strode up, his coat flapping open. "The Hornet's boats are coming in at last, sir."

  It seemed to them as if they had been in the battery an hour, whereas only a few moments had passed. The two boats from the sloop were grounding on the beach below the battery, men climbing out of them.

  "I think we can go into the town," added the lieutenant thoughtfully. "If you will give the order, sir."

  Wiping the sweat from his eyes, Eaton called: "Come on, you fellows."

  O'Bannon called down at the boats: "What say, sailors? Rise and shine upon the battery. We are going to take the town."

  Thirty of them ran on with Eaton over the ground where Paul had crawled that morning. His mind kept counting them as he tried to follow, walking slowly, weakly, into the empty gate, past the recess from which the guard had disappeared.

  All the inhabitants had disappeared from the street. Paul walked on, finding himself alone, toward the sound of scattered firing. He felt the surge of an old fear.

  Thirty men could not advance against the hundreds of disciplined soldiery he had seen staring at him when he was penned up. The firing seemed to be going away into the side streets.

  When he made his way into the open square, he found a crowd clustered around the door of the mosque, and horsemen coming and going like hounds questing after game. They were Hamet's Arabs. He learned afterward that they had broken in from the hills when Eaton's force had taken the battery and turned it on the town.

  The enemy had disappeared from sight. Paul climbed after the Americans up the street through palm gardens to the castle enclosure. When he saw Eaton and Hamet standing talking on the terrace above him, he went to the pool where water lilies floated, in bloom. Kneeling, he drank from his hand, and washed his aching burning head. In the shade beside him a fine carpet stretched empty. He crawled over to it and sat down.

  Chapter Ten

  The old Moslems who stood before him with their hands crossed and their heads bowed had come up from the sanctuary of the mosque. Some of them had offered him water when he was held in the niche. Their plea he could not understand, except that they called him Pasha and Akinpasha. When he took them up to Eaton, he learned that the old men were sheiks of the town who offered themselves as hostages for the payment to be exacted from the people by the conquerors who had come in from the sea. They asked only that the victorious soldiery should not take their girl children and animals in the looting. And they wanted to know how much tribute would content the Yankee pashas.

  "The poor devils have had to deal with Spanish and Tripolitan masters," Eaton muttered. "They can't realize we're any different. God, I'm glad my children are growing up at home-"

  By showing the old men a gold piece
from his pocket, the New Englander tried to demonstrate that the Americans would not loot; instead they would pay for food and materials. The committee of hostages murmured assent, but looked forlorn as before.

  "Tarnation take 'em!" complained Eaton. "They think we're after Italian gold, like this. Here!" He flung words at the despairing men. "Yah rafik-"

  Their eyes quickened and the nearest of them tried to catch Paul's hand. Their voices babbled excitedly. Eaton, pallid, his injured arm slung by a neckcloth, explained, "I've named you as our surety against looting, Lieutenant Bainbridge. The poor beggars seem to understand you're not like the corvos." He winced with pain. "I must get this wrist dressed-the bones are shattered, I think. While I'm on the brig, you will assume command by seniority. O'Bannon's asleep, and I don't trust Leitensdorfer with these rich villas deserted. Keep Selim out of mischief if you can. I'll send Mademoiselle to you to interpret-and get Hull to put patrols ashore. We must maintain a show of force-God knows it will have to be a show. Hamet thinks the Tripolitans have drawn back to the heights. I've put the three Marines at the doors here-"

  "Where are the others, sir?"

  Eaton's eyes shifted. Too many men had been hit during the charge on the battery. "One is only slightly hurt." The ebullition of the action was draining out of him. "You are in bad case yourself, my boy. Hull's surgeon should have a look at you."

  "Turn about, sir, I've had two days' rest."

  When Eaton went down the garden steps, the old men crowded after him, shouting to the housetops. From the mosque door women edged cautiously to listen, and human heads appeared along the parapets of the flat roofs. The shouting went out into the streets-something about peace and mercy.

  At sunset, making the rounds of the disordered rooms of the palace, Paul found servants emerging from dark corners to stand submissively with hands crossed. They seemed frightened. Lanky Dave put down a gilt incense burner he had been inspecting. "Seems like the harem should be somewhere about," he murmured.