Swords From the Sea (54 page)

He limped to the wheel where a man stood motionless, leaning on the spokes. Pierre looked around.

They were still aground. The mist, like a gray curtain, shut them in. The deck was stained and slippery, and the men who labored on it stumbled over the wreckage of gear and the bodies of their mates. At first Pierre thought that the prisoners had been wiped out by the Moslem fire. Then he saw that they had been set to work in the foredeck, where the glow of flames showed through the companion.

Another burst of the heavy guns of the battery swept over the galley, too high to do much damage. The red flashes seemed to Pierre to come from almost over the bow.

Jones came aft and halted by the men at the wheel. He was hatless and in the dim light his face showed, lined and haggard; his eyes, probing into the mist, were steady.

In the walk of the man, in the poise of the head was the indomitable courage of ten years ago. It was part of his nature, this stubbornness.

To cease firing and call for quarter would mean the slaughter of all his men except the officers by the Moslems, who were half mad with rage, in any case, after the burning of the ships the day before.

Of this, however, Pierre did not think. He spoke to the admiral, shyly, looking up from bandaging his thigh.

"Tout va bien, monsieur. All goes well-eh?"

The American glanced around with a quick smile and responded in French.

"What is your name, my lad? Pierre? Well, Pierre, so you don't want to strike our colors?"

"But no-no!" Pierre mustered up his courage, and quivering with delight, said the words that had been on the tip of his tongue for days. "Ali, monsieur, it was warmer than this on the old Richard, was it not? Sacre nom d'un Chien, but it was an affair, that. Me, I was there."

Jones walked to the rail and came back, glancing from the sails to the dark patch that was the battery.

"I was in the marine guard on the poop, monsieur," went on Pierre anxiously, "and you-you said, 'All goes well, Pierre.' You remember, perhaps?"

"Aye," said Paul Jones, smiling again at the eagerness of the sailor. "I think you handed me a musket-"

"Ti ens! It was so. You remember everything." The big Provencal grinned and looked around to see if others had heard what the admiral said, forgetting that they could not understand. It occurred to him to tell the Ameri can what they had found in the cabin, but he thought that it did not matter, when they might be blown out of their skins in another moment.

So he waited, nerves strained, for the next discharge from the battery. No doubt the Turks were lowering the muzzles of the cannon.

The firing grew heavier all around them, and he heard the rattle of musketry. A confused shouting arose on shore. Edwards came up and remarked that the fort on the hill was firing.

The two officers stared into the thinning mist with growing curiosity. In the direction of the battery the tumult increased and they could hear shouted commands and the tramp of marching battalions.

After a while Edwards looked at his watch. It was nearly five o'clock and somewhere the sun was rising. No feluccas were within sight and the men at the galley's remaining guns had ceased firing for want of a target. All Otchakof seemed to be in motion around the battery, but only stray bullets whined around the galley. Unable to make out what was on foot, they went forward to the bow, where the flames were now under control.

"Here they come, sir," called out Edwards suddenly, "to board the galley."

Out of the mist a horseman splashed through the rushes, turning toward the stranded vessel as soon as he saw it. When the water was up to his knees he stood up in the stirrups and howled like a wolf. A dozen Cossacks who had been looking on with interest gave tongue immediately.

Straining his eyes, Pierre made out that the rider wore a black sheepskin hat and a red sash. Unless he was mad this must be a Cossack sotnik, riding out of the Turkish fortifications. Doubtless a trick.

"I have it, sir," chuckled Edwards. "Faith, we're all dead, and this is Charon's blood brother, come to usher us across the Styx."

But Jones motioned impatiently for silence and Ivak came running up. He hailed the rider, who roared back a response.

"That is a sotnik of the Don regiment, your honor," Ivak informed Edwards. "He presents Little Father Suvarof's compliments to his excellency, Admiral Jones, with the request that his excellency cease firing on the bastions, which are now in the hands of the Russians."

It was long afterward that Pierre understood what had happened. Suvarof had crossed the Boug when the fleet engagement was at its hottest. He had attacked the advanced posts of the Turks with the regiment of cavalry that had crossed with him, and had driven them back into the trenches before Otchakof by evening: by then his full division was on the peninsula, tak ing position in front of the trenches. A firm believer in opportunity, Suvarof had attacked the trenches at dawn when Jones's raid had drawn the attention of Hassan and his men to the flotilla. Suvarof himself had led the bayonet charge that took the water batteries in flank and drove the garrison up into the Otchakof wall and the fort on the hill.

It was the Moslems in retreat that Jones had heard when he was rowing down the Liman, and the campfires he had noticed were those of Suvarof's division.

The courier in the mist shouted again, and Ivak began to chew his mustache and swear under his breath.

"That dog brother says, sir," he explained to the officers, "that the cavalry is in the field now, and the navy can go home and sleep-if we can sail that far without running aground."

Jones and Edwards glanced at each other with understanding. Ivak was from a cavalry regiment.

"Tell him," instructed the American gravely, "that we will land men to show them how to turn the guns in the batteries to bear on the town."

Ivak brightened perceptibly and the Cossack splashed away with a wave of the hand. Tired as he was, Paul Jones called for volunteers to go with him into the bastions, and, wearied beyond belief, all those who heard tumbled into the shallop when he took the tiller again.

Chapter X

Matched pearls for a woman's throat-gold dinars for the fingers of the aged men-a robe of honor, of samite and silk for the councilor. When the city was taken many were found to plunder the bazaar. Yet, one there was who rode on to another place saying, "What is profit without honor? "

It was many days before Pierre Pillon saw Paul Jones again. And it was more than a few hours before the least wounded of those on the galley could sleep. Jones had left Edwards in command of the prize, and when the Turkish flotilla withdrew to the protection of the fort and the open sea, the Russian lieutenant was sent to the Vladimir for a spare anchor, cable, food, and a surgeon.

Edwards had been told by the American to let no other officer take over the galley, and under no circumstances to permit it to be burned as Nassau had burned the frigates. After the decks had been cleared, and the se riously wounded attended to, and the rest had had a meal of sorts, Edwards worked the galley off the mud and made sail as best he could to the anchorage of the Russian fleet.

When the wounded had been sent ashore, and the prisoners with a guard, only a half-dozen Cossacks were left on the galley.

All available anchorages around the jetties and the warehouses being taken, Edwards sailed up the river Dnieper. The slender galley that had been the delight of Hassan of Algiers now lay at anchor beside the barren steppe.

Ivak and Pierre did not let the Englishman sleep until they had admitted him into the secret. Unlocking the door and leaving Pierre there to keep watch, Ivak displayed the weapons and the chests with the pride of a discoverer.

"It is all for the admiral," he explained. "We have kept it hidden."

Edwards inspected the plate curiously and lingered over the jewels with a soft whistle of amazement. Reluctantly he put them back in their places, for he was human and under his fingers lay surety of a life of ease.

"By right," he observed, "the half of this should go to Admiral Jones and his men, and half to the Crown. But Potemkin will get his paws on it, and then-" He shrugged. "He may take it on the plea that he is sending it to Tsarkoe-seloe, but her Majesty will never see these trinkets."

The Cossack glanced at him thoughtfully, and when he locked the door of the cabin he put the key back into his pocket. He and Pierre had expected that Edwards might suggest some way of hiding the treasure, which was beginning to loom large now that the fighting was at an end.

When the Englishman and Pierre had made themselves beds in the adjoining cabins and had fallen into the utter oblivion of their first sleep in forty-four hours, Ivak sat down in the passageway to smoke and rub his saber clean with a cloth that he always carried in his girdle. In spite of the heat, the strain of the fighting, and a day of hard labor that he did not relish, the big Cossack was alert and to all appearances untired.

Certainly he polished the saber until it shone, and then put a new edge on it with a small whetstone. When he was satisfied with it, he laid it aside and after sitting for a long time, listening to the measured breathing of his companions, he rose and unlocked the teak door, making little noise for all his bulk.

When he came out again darkness had fallen. Pierre found him a little after dawn, sitting by the kasha pot of the Cossacks, who had built a fire and were breakfasting off a pair of rabbits and a cask of vodka which they had managed to forage for themselves.

"Pietr," announced Ivak, "I am going to find Paul. I will take the shallop and two men, and go and see that he does not get himself killed. You and the Englishman watch that." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the poop. "Here is the key."

He had been gone for hours before Edwards was aroused. A courier boat came up from the flagship with an order from Jones for the interpreter to join him, if Edwards's wound permitted.

The Englishman's arm pained him a good deal, but he waited only long enough to bolt some rabbit and vodka.

"Where is Ivak?" he asked in French, and when Pierre explained he swore doubtfully.

There was no wind, and they lacked men to handle the heavy sails; he could not take the galley, and the order did not admit of delay. There was no alternative but to leave the Frenchman in charge of Hassan's ship and treasure until he could find the admiral.

He took the key and glanced inside the door, satisfying himself that the chests were all in their places. Calling for a candle, he smeared wax over the crack of the door after he had closed it, and pressed his watch fob into service for a seal.

"Ivak says you are to be trusted," he remarked. "Consider that you are now rated acting sergeant of marines. Can you make these four chaps understand you? Good! Take charge of the galley and remember that the order is to give it up to no one except the admiral himself."

"Monsieur," said Pierre, "I will not let any pig of a Muscovite set foot on this deck."

"Hum!" Edwards took snuff with a wry grin. "I see that you have not been long on the Black Sea. It maybe some time before you are relieved. I'll offer odds that the admiral is bombarding Otchakof, or outfitting the squadron for a raid on Constantinople."

Edwards's surmise was close to the truth. At intervals during the three days that he waited on the galley, Pierre heard the far-off booming guns, and noticed that couriers came and went along the Kherson trail that was within sight of their anchorage. After he had found the place where the Cossacks had stowed the odds and ends that they had looted from the decks, and had picked out a brace of serviceable pistols, he was more than a little content with his berth.

His men never lacked for rations-trading melons and grapes with the native skiffs that passed up and down the river, and catching small sturgeon on lines of their own making. He was stiff from the healing of his wounds, and enjoyed to the full the luxury of the poop cabins. But he did not disturb the wax seal, telling himself that before long he would sail the galley down to the fleet and disclose to Paul Jones what a valuable prize they had taken. He was indulging in such pleasant speculation when one of the Cossacks came to the quarterdeck and called to him to look up the river.

Approaching the galley he saw Nassau's great barge, rowed by twenty pairs of sweeps. The barge, instead of continuing on toward the fleet, turned and headed for the galley.

"St. Anne of Auray!" he muttered. "This high-well-born is coming to burn this vessel, like the others."

He ran to the ladder-head as the rowers on one side of the barge lifted their oars and the boat drifted down to the galley's side. Two men with boat-hooks held fast while an aide stepped from the stern to the ropes, and halted when his head came above the deck.

"Pardon, monsieur," observed Pierre, "but the orders of his excellency the admiral are that no one is to be allowed on this galley." As he had come out of the fighting clad only in a tattered pair of breeches, Pierre had borrowed some garments from the gleanings of the Cossacks and now stood arrayed in a loose white shirt, a green sash, and a pair of pantaloons that rivaled those of the dead Dmitri. In fact Pierre had a suspicion that they were Dmitri's; but then the man was dead. Over his head, to keep off the midges, the Provencal had bound the turban cloth of a slain Moslem.

So he looked like a blood-stained giant, bearded and smiling, with the butts of two long pistols sticking out of his sash.

"What -'s leavings are you?" demanded the aide in bad French.

"Sergeant Pierre Pillon, your nobility, at present in command of this vessel."

"In command-" The officer spluttered, and realized that he was being kept waiting. "Out of the way, dog!"

"The order was the admiral's," objected Pierre. "This galley is one prize you will not burn."

A burst of laughter from below showed that he had been overheard, and the officer grew red. Presently his head disappeared, and when it came up again he waved a sheet of paper like a flag of truce. Pierre could not read his own name, fairly printed, but he knew a document signed by a general officer when he saw one. This had a scrawl, and under it a broad seal hung by a silk ribbon.