The Barbary Pirates (31 page)

“I’ve no doubt your invention will sink as planned, Robert,” I said. “The question is whether it will rise back again, as prayed for.”

“It worked splendidly on the Channel coast. We might have torpedoed a British frigate or two, if they hadn’t slunk away.” He glanced at Smith. “Sorry, William.”

“No offense taken,” the Englishman replied cheerfully. “Our nations are at peace now, and here we are united against infamy and extortion. And the day a British ship waits around to be sunk by a contraption like
this
is the day we might as well start speaking French.”

Our quartet had been reunited when Sterett, not waiting for orders from his unaggressive commodore, rushed us to Toulon to pick up Fulton’s secret weapon. Cuvier and Smith began as suspicious of me as Fulton, but eventually I persuaded them that I’d been faced with an impossible choice. Now we were cautious allies again.

“It was destiny, perhaps, which left Fulton unsuccessful at Brest so he had the chance to prove himself at Tripoli,” Cuvier said optimistically. “And perhaps Bonaparte had the foresight to predict we four would make an effective fellowship?”

I thought it more likely Napoleon had been happy to get rid of four eccentrics on a mission with slim chance of success, but opportunity has a way of turning into inevitability. “Your vessel does look a little worse for wear,” I judged. “Are you sure it’s going to be ready?”

“I’ve got a clever little fellow working on it,” said Fulton. “Said he was something of an expert on all things nautical. He even mentioned that he knew
you
, Gage.”

“Me?” I knew no submarine mechanics and tend to stay away from people capable of honest work, lest they make me feel inferior. “He probably heard you say I’d gone over to the pirate side and figured he could claim anything he liked, since you’d never see me again. Let’s catch the look on his face when he pops up and spies me in the flesh!”

Cuvier stepped over and banged on the hull. “Foreman! Your old friend has shown up after all!”

The hammering stopped and there was a long silence. Then a shuffling inside, and finally a head with dark, wiry hair raised above the lip of the little tower like a mole.

“Donkey?” He inspected me critically. “They told me you’d turned pirate, or were dead.”

It was I who was thunderstruck, not this “mechanic.” In fact, I was so shocked that I took a step backward as if seeing a ghost. “Pierre?” First Astiza, then a son I hadn’t known I had, and now this?

“But why am I surprised?” the little Frenchman said. “Here I am readying a cylindrical death trap, a perfectly absurd excuse for a boat, and I have been asking myself, who would be crazy enough to set out in an anchor like this? And I thought, well, Americans, because I have met Americans on my journeys to the wilderness and not encountered a snuff of sense in any of them. And which American do I know who is the craziest of all beyond Fulton there, who is already the laughingstock of Paris? And of course such an imbecile would be my old companion Ethan Gage, who conjures calamity wherever he goes. Yes, a metal boat designed to sink? It sounds absolutely like something donkey would be involved in.”

“This is no mechanic,” I sputtered.

“More of one than you!”

“This is a French voyageur from Montreal’s North West Company! I last saw him in St. Louis, on the Mississippi River. He’s a canoe man! He doesn’t know any technology more complicated than birch bark and beaver tail!”

“And what do
you
know, besides thunderbolts you can’t control and sorcery you can’t perform? Plus the worst taste in women imaginable?”

So we held each other’s stare, and then began to grin, and finally at last we laughed, and he sprang from the submarine so that the two of us could lock arms in the kind of dance the North West Company’s Scots do over crossed claymore swords, chortling over our mutual resurrection. We’d survived, and were together!

This was a good omen.

Cuvier cleared his throat. “This confirms, then, that you have met before?”

“On the American frontier. Pierre was my companion when I searched for Norse artifacts and explored the West. He’s the only man I know impervious to bullets.”

“Well, one bullet.” A ball from Aurora Somerset’s gun had been stopped by an Egyptian Rite medallion that Pierre Radisson had stolen from her sadistic brother, Cecil. He’d seemed to have risen from the dead then, but later disappeared from our room in St. Louis. I’d assumed he’d gone back to the wilderness but here he was, thousands of miles from where I’d left him. “I may have used up my luck,” he said.

“But I’ve not used mine, given that I meet you again. What are you doing in Toulon? By Poseidon’s spear, this is sweet chance beyond anything I expected!”

“You made me curious about the world, donkey. It was too late in the season to catch the fur brigades, so I decided to paddle home to Montreal. Then there was a ship that needed a hand, even though depending on sail is a woman’s way. So I found myself in Europe. Peace gave me the chance to get to France, and by the time I learned where you’d gone, you’d already gone there. Ah, I thought, but donkey has a way of drawing attention! I decided that if I got to the Mediterranean coast I’d hear of you soon enough. And indeed, a Barbary ship deposits three ex-slaves in the middle of Toulon, cursing a mixed-up American. And I think to myself, ‘This sounds like the donkey.’ So I go to work for that sorcerer there”—he pointed to Cuvier—“and suspect you’ll be along, too, by and by. And here you are.”

“Why does he call you donkey?” Cuvier asked.

“Because Gage can’t properly paddle, although the great Pierre was beginning to teach him. You’re a donkey, too. All men who can’t paddle a North canoe are donkeys! And this craft!
Mon dieu
, only sorcerer donkeys would come up with an idea as lunatic as going underwater!”

“And hire a French voyageur to reassemble it,” I said. “If this boat wasn’t a sarcophagus before, it certainly is now.”

“No, I’ve been plugging the holes that the rust has left, and using brass and copper instead of silly iron. Even better would be birch wood, if we had proper trees. Yes, Pierre and his donkeys, out to revolutionize warfare. It makes perfect sense.”

Fulton was walking around his craft. “Actually, his work is not entirely awful. We can finish making it seaworthy on the deck of your
Enterprise
, Sterett.”

“We’re in a hurry then?” asked Pierre.

“I have a woman in danger,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Of course.”

“And a son, not yet three years old.”

“I told you to think about what you were doing.”

“And we’ve got to stop an ancient machine that could give Aurora Somerset power over all the world’s navies.”

“Aurora Somerset! That harridan is here, too? Is this another Grand Portage rendezvous?”

“She followed me, like you. I am oddly popular.”

“And how long do we have to rescue this new woman and son of yours from that witch?”

“Once we draw close, only before the sun rises, I suspect. For when it does, they can set the
Enterprise
on fire.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

By the time we repaired and loaded the
Nautilus
on the American
schooner and approached Tripoli, it had been more than a month since Aurora had escaped Sterett in Sicily, taking little Harry with her. Time enough, in other words, for the mirror to have been erected and tested. Could something two thousand years old, possibly inspired by Atlantean designs thousands of years older yet, actually work? We didn’t want to be surprised by a beam sweeping out to sea.

Confirmation came a different way. As we approached the African coast we spied a wisp of smoke in the distance and cautiously closed, realizing that some ship had been burning. What we saw was a small brig low in the water, her rigging gone and her masts blackened like trees from a forest fire. The smoke drifted from a charred hull.

“Fire can start from a hundred reasons,” Cuvier said uneasily.

“And be put out in a hundred ways,” Sterett said, “unless the entire ship ignites at once.”

We lowered a boat and rowed across, confirming what we suspected. There was an awful smell of ash, putrefaction, and roasted flesh emanating from the vessel, with burned bodies on the deck. The name,
Blanca
, suggested Spanish origin, although jack and staff had been incinerated. On the starboard side was a circular hole, three feet in diameter, where the fire had eaten entirely through the wooden hull and caught the inner decks and timbers. Nothing stirred, inside or out.

“So it’s true then,” Cuvier finally said.

“By Lucifer, the mirror cuts like a cannon ball,” Fulton added.

“Rather than test their infernal machine on a derelict they aimed it at an innocent merchantman, crew still aboard,” I guessed. “It must have gone up like a torch and then drifted out to sea. Look at the helmsman there, welded to the wheel. He died where he stood.”

“This is utterly barbaric,” Smith said. “There’s nothing more painful than to die by fire.”

“So our timing will be critical,” Fulton said. “We must sail my submarine in under cover of darkness, dive, propel ourselves into the harbor, make the rescue, and then retreat underwater to Sterett’s schooner offshore. If the sun rises and we haven’t destroyed the mirror of Archimedes, the
Enterprise
will ignite like this ship and we’ll all burn, drown, or be enslaved again. Gentlemen, we must assault the most impregnable harbor in the Mediterranean, slip by a cabal of determined fanatics, disable their most closely guarded weapon, rescue a woman and child from the central harem of the ruler’s palace, and slip out like a fish.”

“Jolly good!” said Smith, infused with that mad English enthusiasm that has given them an empire. “I’m for paying that Dungeon Master back, I am.”

“Or we can just sneak about, doing our best,” I amended. I’m all for valor, but cautious about suicide. “My experience is it’s easier not to shake the nest when going for the honey. I’ve had the sailors help in making us some makeshift Muslim garb for disguise.”

“You’re a clever sort, aren’t you, Ethan? But a regular Lion of Acre if it comes down to a fight, correct?”

“Certainly.” I blinked, wishing I still had my longrifle.

“Our small numbers must be our advantage,” Smith went on. “The Barbary scum won’t be expecting an attack from a handful of men, emerging out of nowhere. Little Pierre here may be able to slip into places or unlock gates the rest of us couldn’t hope to.”

“Who are you calling
little
, Monsieur Beefeater?”

“It is the littlest men who have the greatest hearts. Look at David versus Goliath. Look at the Little Corporal, now first consul of France. We are each blessed in our own way, and must use our skills to advantage.”

“Well put,” Cuvier said. “Ethan, with his head for women, can head for the harem. His voyageur friend can help free helpless prisoners. Smith with his blasting expertise can make a sortie toward the mirror. Fulton will steer and I’ll crank to create chaos in the harbor. Surprise, confusion, and darkness will be our allies, and revenge and disruption our goal!”

He seemed quite the bloodthirsty buccaneer for a biologist, but then the French do have élan. “You agree we have a chance, then?” I clarified. If I was going to lead my friends on a rescue mission of my old paramour and illegitimate son, I wanted success to at least be possible.

“Oh no. But patriotism, love, and your own folly, Ethan, dictate that we must try.”

We hoisted
Nautilus
off the American schooner’s deck with block and
tackle and lowered it over the side. It rocked in the waves like an ungainly copper log, banging against the wooden hull. The vessel seemed about as seaworthy as the bearskin coracle we’d fashioned on the American frontier, and three times less buoyant. But it didn’t immediately sink, and Fulton was brisk as a bunny as he organized our war party.

“The voyageur will man the rudder because it’s tightest in the rear,” he said. “Then Gage to keep him company and crank the propeller when it’s time. Smith and Cuvier will counterbalance in the bow. I’ll stand in the tower to con the boat and shout directions to Pierre. We’ll sail to the harbor mouth, dive, and creep. Now: Do any of you have a problem with claustrophobia in a dark metal cylinder heaving up and down in a restless sea?”

We all raised our hands.

“Well, bring along some cards then, Gage. To a new way of warfare!” We all took a slug of grog, the only way to get up the courage to drop into the contraption, and then climbed down to the submarine’s flat, slippery deck. We pushed up the mast and fitted its boom, extended the bowsprit, and turned our metal coffin into a little sailboat. The mainsail was peculiar, a rigid fan-shape like the arm of a windmill. Its color, like that of the jib, was brown.

“The narrow shape is more easily lashed down when we dive,” Fulton explained.

“I’ll sail in close tomorrow morning to pick you up,” Sterett called as we cast off. “You must destroy their weapon! You saw what happened to the Spanish ship.”

“If you don’t find us,” said Fulton as he waved good-bye, “then save yourself.”

And off we went to Tripoli, sighting the gray coast of Africa just as the sun went down. I was pleasantly surprised that not only didn’t we founder, but that the submarine actually sailed on the surface like a smart little fishing smack, more buoyant than I expected. Its tube-like shape gave it a tendency to roll, but it had a fine bow for going into the seas and a rudder sufficient to set our direction. The problem was that we were confined to the stovepipe that made up the interior of the craft. While it had a flat floor, it was still like voyaging in a sewer pipe. The only daylight came from the open hatch and thick glass windows in the little tower where Fulton perched to navigate. The boat corkscrewed in the waves, and the motion soon had Smith vomiting, the smell of which added to our own nausea. For a Brit, he seemed to have an aversion to all things watery and nautical.