The Barbary Pirates (30 page)

I leaped over his toppling form with my bloody rapier and rushed Aurora. “Just give me my son!”

The cabin door burst open and Dragut was there with what I realized was Smith’s blunderbuss. I lurched backward and fell flat on the carpets as the big gun went off with a roar, kicking the pirate backward. A ball or more hit my blade and yanked the hilt from my hands, while more bullets shattered the stern windows, glass spraying out over the water. I was stunned by the wind of the shot blowing over me, the bloody heap of Osiris beneath. Now I was weaponless.

Aurora lifted a naval pistol and cocked.

She wanted me alive. She aimed for my head at first, and then shifted to my splayed middle, aiming at that tender spot men prefer to protect at all costs. Then, thinking better of it—well, the girl
had
experienced me in bed—shifted yet lower to blow off one of my knees and merely leave me shankless, her mouth a cruel curl.

And then she shrieked and danced.

Little Harry had stuck her foot with her own silver knife!

The pistol went off, its ball embedding itself in a bulkhead, and even as she snatched my son by the hair in howling rage, ready to do who knows what, I leaped up with Osiris’s cutlass in hand. I’d run the harridan through!

Then there was a black blur, a snarl and leap, and Sokar the dog from hell was crashing against me to bite, even while a cannon ball blasted through the sidelights and screamed between Aurora and me, crashing into the opposite wall in a spray of splinters. The dog was spun away from the wind of its passage, and I was kicked by the concussion out the shattered stern windows to fall, end over end. Before I understood what had happened, I plunged into the sea.

“Harry!” It was a thought, because I was underwater and couldn’t scream.

I came thrashing up, desperate to get back aboard to learn the fate of my son, but the
Zephyr
was already going, sails full, gathering momentum, the savage dog up there barking madly at me from the broken stern windows. The American bow chasers were throwing up spouts where the ship had just been. My son, if he was still alive, was sailing away from me. I’d lost the mirror, lost my family, and probably lost what little reputation I had by consorting with a witches’ brew of Barbary pirates and cultists.

And then there was a crunch I could hear from five hundred yards off. I turned, sickened, to watch the pursuing schooner lurch as it slammed into the reef where Dragut had led it. The collision was so hard that men pitched out of the rigging. The foremast snapped at the top and came down in a tangle. There were shouts, curses, and howls of frustration.

The Americans had grounded and Aurora and her acolytes were drawing off into the night, headed for Tripoli.

I hadn’t stopped them from getting the mirror, and I hadn’t saved my own son.

I treaded water, ashamed by my own impotence, and then with no other choice began slowly swimming for the grounded schooner. It took me a full hour to work my way there but it hardly mattered, since the ship wasn’t going anywhere until it worked off in the morning. The wind had died, and the flag that so excited me hung limply, as if in defeat.

I came close enough to shout. The ship had already lowered long-boats to sound the reef, so men hauled me aboard a cutter.

“You a pirate?”

“I escaped them.”

They let me clamber up the ship’s ladder to the deck.

There I came face-to-face with Lieutenant Andrew Sterett, whom I’d heard about on the Atlantic crossing. As commander of this ship
Enterprise
, he had scored the only unambiguous victory of the war the year before by capturing the corsair
Tripoli
, killing or wounding sixty of its crew. The
Enterprise
had returned to Baltimore last winter so the exploit could be trumpeted. Now here he was, back in the Mediterranean.

“Lieutenant Sterett,” I gasped. “I trust you remember me: we met in America and I sailed for Europe with Commodore Morris. Ethan Gage, the American envoy?”

He looked me up and down in amazement and distaste. I dripped water like a dunked cat and my skin was spotted with cuts and splinters. “Where the devil did you come from?”

“I was blown off the pirate ship. It’s imperative we catch them.”

“And how am I to do that, caught on a bloody rock?”

I looked over the side. “Wait for tide and wind, of which there is very little.”

Another voice suddenly came from the dark that I recognized with a start. “That’s the one!” it shouted. “He’s the one I told you about!”

And Robert Fulton, inventor and fellow adventurer, rushed up to see me.

“Robert, you’ve saved me!”

“He’s the one! Ethan Gage, the traitor who needs to hang!”

PART THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

My admiration for the military discipline of my nation’s small navy
was dampened by the crew’s efficiency in rigging a hemp noose. The sailors, frustrated by their grounding on the reef, seized with enthusiasm the idea of throttling at least one passenger of the escaping pirate ship. Sterett, I remembered, had become famous for running one of his own crewmen through with a saber as a response to cowardice, during a 1799 battle between the
Constellation
he served on and the frigate
L’Insurgente
. This was an episode in the undeclared naval war with France that I’d helped put a stop to. Republican newspapers had clamored for Sterett’s punishment, but he’d coolly replied, “We put men to death for even looking
pale
on this ship.” Of course the Navy liked that so much, they gave him a promotion. Now he was to be my nemesis as well.

“Fulton, explain to them who I am!”

“I already have. He’s a scoundrel American who threw in with the Barbary rogues like another Benedict Arnold. I don’t care how badly Omar tortured you, Ethan—how could you go back on your pledge to keep the mirror secret? Are you coward, or traitor?”

“Likely both,” Sterett said, sizing me up.

“Dammit, man, who do you think got you sprung free from that Tripoli hellhole?”

“By a devil’s bargain! Didn’t you just aid yonder pirates in stealing an infernal machine from Syracuse, when we expressly promised each other not to?”

“I did it to save your life!”

“Death before dishonor, Ethan. That was our pledge. It’s your bad luck I volunteered to help these brave Americans intercept your mission, and my bad luck we were a few hours late.” He turned to Sterett. “Hanging may be too good for him. He has very few principles at all.”

“Then the devil will finish the job for us.”

I struggled against the sailors holding me. “I’m stuffed full of principle! I just fall in with the wrong kind of women! And spend a little too much time looking for treasure, since I don’t have what you’d call a proper career. I drink, I gamble, I scheme, but I do know something of electricity and firearms. And I mean well.” It seemed a feeble defense even to me.

“Do you deny you’re a turncoat to the United States of America and every man on this ship?” Sterett had his sword out and looked like a farmer who has cornered vermin in a larder. Excitable people should never be armed.

“On the contrary, I’m trying to be a hero!”

“By throwing in with pirates?” cried Fulton. The rope cinched against my throat.

“By trying to save my son!”

That stopped them.

“My boy, who I didn’t even know I had until a few days ago, is still aboard that pirate ship and in the clutches of the weirdest bunch of cultists, fanatics, magicians, mesmerists, and megalomaniacs this side of the House of Representatives. His mother is captive in Yussef’s harem, and if I hadn’t played along they’d both be sold into the worst kind of slavery. And you, Cuvier, and Smith would already be dead! While you were running for the reef, I just killed one of the more annoying of the bunch, that Osiris I met in Marguerite’s Palais Royal brothel. I gave Aurora Somerset a bloody nose, and was plotting how to sink their whole scheme when one of your cannon balls knocked me overboard. You and I and the fiery lieutenant here are the only ones who can fix things now, but only if you stop pulling on this damned noose!” It was getting hard to talk.

“You and us how?”

“By using your genius and my pluck, Robert, to slip back into the heart of Tripoli and destroy that mirror once and for all!” I nodded eagerly, as if going back to that den of slavers and extortionists was the brightest idea I’d ever had.

The crew was grumpy about having no one to hang, but a length I
got Fulton and Sterett settled down enough to hear me out. By the time we kedged off the reef there was no chance of catching Aurora and Dragut anyway, and the ambitious lieutenant was interested in any proposition to erase the ignominy of running aground, which is a mortal sin for any captain. The navy reasons that with so much ocean, it shouldn’t be that hard to avoid the shallow parts.

“How are you going to get into Tripoli?” Sterett asked skeptically. “Commodore Morris won’t risk our squadron in those reef-strewn waters for the exact reason we’ve seen tonight.”

“It’s time we harnessed the ingenuity of our new nineteenth century,” I said, my clothes stiff with salt as they dried. “I’ve been thinking about how to defeat this peril for a long time, but it’s really Robert here who offers the solution.” Actually, I’d only been thinking since they put the noose around my neck, but the prospect of execution does focus concentration.

“What solution?” Fulton asked.

I addressed Sterett. “My scientific colleague here has invented a vessel so revolutionary that it threatens to make all other ships obsolete,” I began.

“You said that’s not the way to sell the thing!”

I ignored Fulton. “It’s called a submarine, or ‘plunging boat.’ It sinks deliberately, like Bushnell’s
Turtle
during our American Revolution, and could deliver a crew of intrepid saboteurs directly into Tripoli harbor.”

“The
Turtle
failed to sink any British vessels,” Sterett pointed out.

“But Fulton has advanced the technology a full generation. Why, he told me he stayed underwater off Brest a full three hours!”

“This submarine really exists?”

“It’s called the
Nautilus
, and is so remarkable that it may someday end war entirely.”

Sterett looked skeptical, and Fulton bewildered that I had stolen his sales pitch.

“Or make wars more terrible than ever,” I added.

Suddenly, Fulton saw his opportunity. “Ethan, this is the way to prove myself to Napoleon!”

“Yes. I remember you told me the French want to break the
Nautilus
up, but you couldn’t bear to and sent the pieces to Toulon to test in the quieter Mediterranean. Here’s your chance, thanks to me.” I could still feel the abrasion on my throat where the rope had cut, but I don’t hold grudges except against true villains. “We pack the
Nautilus
down to Tripoli, sneak into the harbor beneath Yussef’s palace, and rescue Astiza and little Harry.” I nodded. “All we have to find is a set of adventurers willing to risk their lives in a metal sausage and cut their way through an army a thousand times their number.”

Sterett was looking at me with new respect.

“That, at least, is no problem at all,” Fulton said.

“You have some volunteers in mind?”

“Cuvier and Smith, of course. They’re reconditioning my plunging boat. They decided to wait in Toulon in hopes of hearing news of your hanging, before daring to face Napoleon again.”

“Ah. It’s good to be remembered.”

“And me, gentlemen,” Sterett said. “You’re not going to romp among the pirates without my ship in support. My bully lads will say the same.”

“We may have to have a lottery,” I predicted. “Just how many can we squeeze into this craft of yours, Robert?”

“Three, if we want room aboard to get your wife and son out. Of course some of us will most likely be cut to ribbons when we venture ashore, so we might want four or five to start. But then we need room for explosives, too.”

“Explosives?” I massaged my throat.

“To blow up the mirror and the navy of Tripoli. Maybe that damned dungeon, too.”

“Five against the janissaries and cutthroats of the bashaw of Tripoli!” Sterett said. “Perfect odds! By God, gentlemen, I am heartily tired of lurking at Malta with Commodore Morris, and positively thirsting for action. Gage, I’d heard you were quite the hero, but didn’t quite believe it until now.”

“I have a hard time believing it myself.” My plan had been to sneak quietly about, but Sterett and Fulton apparently wanted a noisier demonstration of American might. Well, a battle tomorrow was better than hanging today. “If you don’t mind, I’ll get my family out of the line of fire first.”

“It is fire that will
save
your family, Mr. Gage,” the lieutenant said. “We’ll so light up Tripoli with hell and pandemonium that you’ll be able to rescue half a harem if you want to.”

That didn’t sound bad at all. But no, I had Astiza, hang it, and no more business with harems except to get her out of one. By the devil, it’s complicated to be a father and suddenly responsible! Oddest thing in the world, really.

But not entirely bad to have someone to rescue.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I’m not sure what I expected of Fulton’s beloved
Nautilus,
but the
copper coffin he unveiled in a Toulon warehouse did not inspire confidence. It looked like a patchwork of green plating, odd bits of dried seaweed, and conspicuous holes where the leakiest of the iron bolts had been removed for replacement. The contraption was twenty-one feet long, six wide, and in cross section was the shape of a “U” with a short keel. A propeller projected from the rear of the craft, and a folding mast with booms and odd, fanlike sails was lashed to the flat deck on top. A round turret three feet high, with thick glass windows, jutted from the top. Its roof was a hatch allowing entry. From inside the vessel came an unholy banging.