The Barbary Pirates (37 page)

I looked behind us through the glass. A haze of smoke hung over Tripoli and several xebecs and feluccas had caught fire. The quay and walls were boiling with men, but the gunfire had stopped. We were either too far away or they’d lost sight of our shadow passing underwater. Fulton’s submarine had promise after all.

So, could we see the
Enterprise
? I turned around to look toward open sea. And almost yelped! A Barbary ship was bearing down on us, sails bellied, spray dancing at the bow, and Hamidou Dragut balanced on the bowsprit, face bloody, pointing frantically at our form.

Pointing precisely at me! He was directing his ship to ram us.

A bow cannon was being run out to say hello with another cannon ball, and sailors were aiming muskets as well. “Down, down, down!” I cried. “It’s Dragut, heading straight for us and trying to ride over the top of us!”

Fulton and Cuvier slammed levers and spun cranks and our tanks began to fill. The windows filmed with water as we dove, but now the brighter light of the surface was agony, suggesting we weren’t descending fast enough. A shadow loomed, the Barbary pirate ship casting darkness like a thundercloud, and then we could hear the hiss as it sailed over us. There was a screech as it briefly scraped our conning tower with its keel, pushing us down. Then we kept sinking on our own, gaining acceleration as the light dimmed, and with a bump struck the harbor bottom, forty feet deep.

Harry woke up. “Where, Mama?”

“Safe.” Her voice trembled.

A hiss of thin water streamed from one of the bolt holes.

“Wet!”

“Yes,” she said coolly. “It is.” Her eyes were wide.

“Can we wait Hamidou out?” Cuvier asked, looking upward.

“He’ll luff and drift over us,” I predicted.

“We’re running out of air,” Smith warned.

“Not if we uncork the container I brought,” said Fulton. “I told you we should wait for a real emergency. Now it should buy us an hour, at least.” He worked the stopper partly free and a new hiss joined that of the leaks. Fulton worked a pump a few times to keep the water streaming into the hull from deepening too quickly. Then he lit another candle. “We could use some cheer.”

“Our rendezvous was to have been at dawn,” I said. “Sterett will see the smoke and know we’ve done something, but how long dare he wait?”

“Let’s use the screw to try to finish our journey out of the harbor. How far did we have to go, Gage?”

“I didn’t have time to judge the reef.”

“So we’ll have to try it blind.”

We pumped, and lifted off the bottom. Then there was a splash overhead, a few seconds silence, and then a clunk.

“Is Dragut anchoring?”

“Maybe he’s dropping cannon balls on us.”

“Blind?”

There was a boom and the
Nautilus
lurched, as if kicked from behind. We were all thrown forward and our candles went out, and then water began gushing through the packing around the propeller shaft as well, a cold jet that soaked us all. Harry began whimpering, climbing up his mother’s bosom.

“The pirates dropped a fused keg of powder on the bottom,” Fulton guessed. “Man all the pumps! We’ve got to surface before we sink!”

“I knew I should have stuck to a canoe,” Pierre muttered. “Did God make us fish, to go about underwater? No, he said, ‘Stay where you can breathe, Adam.’”

“Georges and William, do we still have that last mine?” Fulton asked.

“Aye, but it’s not rigged.”

“Can we turn the propeller?” I asked.

“It’s bent, but it turns a little,” the inventor reported.

Water was swirling around our ankles.

“I think we’re going to have to swim for it,” Fulton said. He glanced around his little cylinder, looking stricken. “I don’t think
Nautilus
will make it back to
Enterprise
.”

“The pirates will simply pick us off if we leave this boat,” Smith said. “Or pick us up for prison.”

“Not if we destroy them first,” I said. “We’ve got that mine at the bow, even if it’s not ready. How do you set it off?”

“The usual plan is to screw the charge into the ship’s wooden bottom, back off with a long line, and trigger the torpedo with a lanyard,” Fulton reminded.

“What if we just nuzzle up and blow?”

“It will sink both ships, and whoever is in them.”

“Then that’s what I’m going to do, after your companions are off the
Nautilus
and swimming for safety. I’m tired of this son of a bitch Dragut.”

“Ethan!” Astiza cried. “You can’t kill yourself now!”

“Quite right,” Smith put in. “You’re a father, man.”

“With a boy I’m not putting back into slavery. Look, I got us into this mess. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t been caught up with the Egyptian Rite, Aurora Somerset, and Napoleon Bonaparte. I’ve escorted all of you into Hades, because you’ve had the pluck and ill fortune to come with me. Now I’d like to buy you some time.”

“By committing suicide?” the Englishman protested.

“Robert,” I asked Fulton, “if I tied a line to the mine’s lanyard and led it through the hatch, could I set it off in here where I’d have your metal hull between me and the bomb?”

“Well, yes, but the nose of the
Nautilus
is going to be crushed like a snuff tin. My plunging boat is going to sink like a rock.”

“Maybe I can hold my breath and then swim free.”

“Ethan, no!” Astiza pleaded. “Horus needs a father!”

“He needs to live first, which requires the sinking of Dragut’s ship. This is what I get for not finishing that pirate off in the harem. Every time I fail to kill people, I regret it. Now”—I addressed them all like a lieutenant briefing a sortie—“when we get to the surface you have to get out before the pirates have time to see us and start shooting. Swim and scatter. Dive when you can, to make it harder for them to hit you. Meanwhile, I’ll drive the submarine under their hull, trigger the mine, and swim away after the explosion. Make for the reefs, and maybe you can stand on the shallowest ledges and signal Sterett for rescue.”

“That’s no chance at all,” Cuvier said.

“Which is just how the donkey likes it,” said Pierre. “You forgot one thing, Monsieur Lunatic—how are you going to both drive the submarine and ready your bomb? I, Pierre Radisson, can crank harder and swim better and jump higher than any man, and so I will help in your scheme. I am, after all, in the habit of aiding you in all things ridiculous.”

I bowed. “I take that as a compliment, voyageur.”

“It’s getting light!” Fulton warned. “We’re nearing the surface!”

“Astiza and Harry first! Then the savants, for world knowledge! Men might read about your work someday!”

Not the most bloodthirsty of cries, but it was honest sentiment. If we had to choose between a geologist and a gambler, or a zoologist and a fur paddler, the ranking seemed obvious to me. I didn’t think they’d get far, but by then I’d be dead and not have to worry about it.

“Ethan, not when we’re finally together again,” Astiza moaned.

“I’ll catch up,” I said with absolutely no conviction.

“And I don’t like to swim,” Smith groaned.

“Consider the alternative.”

“Surface!” Fulton banged back the hatch, sprang out on a deck awash, and reached down to haul up Harry, the child mute again from all the adult anxiety around him. Astiza scrambled out, took her boy, and jumped into the water, sidestroking away as best she could.

“Go, go, so I have a chance!” I shouted to the other men. “Help Astiza!”

Cuvier and Smith hauled themselves out, too, the Englishman shaking.

“I’ll help you, William,” Cuvier encouraged, pulling him by the hand.

As they left Pierre began cranking the half-jammed mechanism to get the submarine moving. “It’s hard, donkey! But the loss of weight makes us less sluggish!”

Fulton dropped back inside. “I’m going to help.”

“No! The whole secret of this will go down if you do!”

“I’m not leaving my ship. Come on, Gage, tie on your lanyard! We’re the Americans, at war with Yussef Karamanli!”

The inventor certainly had grit, which meant I had to muster it, too. I pulled myself up on deck. “Hard right so we come under her stern,” I hissed. “She’s stopped to hunt for us and just drifting. No one’s looking behind.” As we ponderously turned and gathered headway I untied one of the sailing lines and used a simple square knot to tie it onto the final mine’s lanyard. The explosive was stored in a basket at the bow. Slowly we crept toward Dragut’s ship, the morning sun making its planking glow as if lacquered. I could read the name of this vessel we’d used to escape Venice,
Mykonos
. Quietly, our deck awash…

Now pirates spotted our low form and began shouting. Men ran to the stern. Muskets went off, and I heard the rumble of cannon wheels as they tried to swing one around and depress its barrel enough to hit us. A bullet pinged off the hatch.

“All right, straight!” I shouted down. “Crank, crank, crank!” Now a swivel gun was aimed my way and I hastily backed away and fell back down the hatch. Water was knee-deep in the submarine. The swivel gun went off with a bang and there was a rattle of grapeshot topside, one fragment singing through the hatch and bouncing inside.

“Ow!
Merde
, donkey, close the hatch!”

“I can’t and pull the rope! Besides, we’re going to need a way out!”

“We’ll most likely be blown to jelly,” Fulton said mildly, “but if by some miracle we survive the bow will be gone in any event, so we won’t need the hatch. But yes, don’t jam the lanyard rope, Ethan.” He seemed resigned, as calm as if pondering blueprints.

I looked up. Our hatch was drifting under the xebec’s overhanging stern. There were bangs and thuds as the pirates dropped uncomfortably heavy things on us, making big splashes. Then there was a softer bump as we nosed to nest against the rudder and hull. I could hear cries of alarm in Arabic.

I said good-bye to my little family, yanked the rope and lanyard, and tensed.

A roar and concussion knocked all three of us hard into the stern of the submarine. There was a flash as the bow of our vessel cracked and gave way, and then a wall of cool seawater gushed in like the bursting of a dam to ram us even harder into the stern and shut off all light. Our air snuffed out. And then we were plummeting, my ears pained, all the way to the harbor bottom again.

The stern of the
Nautilus
hit hard on the gray sand, the bow completely gone. It was the jolt that made me realize that I was in fact still alive enough to feel, and that because of it I and my companions might possibly be saved.

Something floated past and I grabbed it. Fulton’s kettle of air! It was now lighter than the water and floating like a buoy, bubbles streaming out. I seized the Arab robe of somebody with the other hand and kicked out from the destroyed front half of the submarine, aiming for the silver surface so far above. We shot upward and burst like porpoises, shrieking and coughing.

I had hold of Pierre, I realized, and he’d dragged up Fulton in his own grasp. Both men appeared at least half alive, dazed and spitting water as we drifted in a line with the kettle.

I looked wildly about. Dragut’s xebec was nowhere to be seen. There was a fan of shattered timbers, broken pirate bodies, and floating spars with scraps of canvas.

We must have set off the ship’s magazine.

I let loose of the air kettle and struck out for one of the spars, pulling Pierre and Fulton with me. We reached what I realized was the bowsprit of the
Mykonos
and saw there was another man clinging at the opposite end, a pirate survivor as dazed as we were. We floated, blinking, and I peered blearily at the villain we were sharing with.

It was Dragut, his face bruised and bloody where I’d slammed him with my rifle stock. His clothes were half gone from the explosion of his boat that kicked him off the bow, and his arms and shoulders were peppered with splinters and little burns. He returned my look with baleful eyes, making a calculation.

I groaned. Did I have to fight him again? I was as spent as a pauper’s purse, weaponless, frantic to find my wife—yes, I’d thought of her again as that—and child.

But instead of attacking, he finally gave me a limp salute. “So you have won after all, American. Blown me off my own ship.” He shook his head. “What kind of devil craft have you Christians made now? I couldn’t understand Aurora Somerset’s fascination with you, but it’s clearer now. You are indeed a sorcerer.”

“I told you not to go to war with the United States.” I looked for something I could club him with.

“Here.” He threw me something and I caught it: one of Cuvier’s dueling pistols. He’d been tossed from his ship with the pair in his sash and now he drew the other and pointed. We aimed at each other the length of the bowsprit.

The hammers clicked on wet powder, the pistols harmless, and he gave a wry smile.

“You haven’t beaten us yet.” He dropped his gun in the Mediterranean, and I let mine go, too. All the weapons we’d acquired in Venice were gone. “I will avenge my ship. But not today, it seems.” He pointed. “Your navy is closer than my cowardly own.”

I looked and there to my joy was the
Enterprise
, luffed just outside Tripoli’s reefs and banging away toward the harbor with her light guns. The flag was rippling sprightly in the morning breeze. A spray of splinters went up from a felucca that had put out to join the fight. It and others were turning back.

“Turn and fight, you cretins!” Dragut shouted to his own comrades. But they couldn’t hear him, and wouldn’t listen if they could.

“For just a morning, it seems we do have an American blockade,” I said.

Dragut shook his head. “Good-bye, Ethan Gage. I don’t think I will offer you passage on my ships again.” And with that he let go of the spar and began wearily swimming, the last of his crew, for Tripoli and its retreating boats.

I was happy enough to let him go. He may have been Aurora’s tool, but he was not Aurora.

“Well, Robert, it seems I have sunk your submarine, just as Pierre predicted,” I said.

“I should have warned you at the beginning,” the Frenchman explained to Fulton. “Ethan Gage is a walking calamity. I had to watch donkey so he didn’t put his clumsy foot through my birch canoes. Or add green wood to a fire, or wet rocks to a fire ring, or flub a gutting job, or poison himself with berries.”