William Napier - The Great Siege

‘If this ship is to be judged on its keeping of the third commandment,’ murmured Stanley, working away, ‘then we are surely doomed.’

Nicholas too saw the hull, and a moment later heard across the smooth waters the sound of a drum begin to beat out a dreadful, ominous rhythm, and a first muffled crack. The prow nudged forward, and then the black galley eased out from behind the rocks, as lean and lethal as a stiletto dagger. The prow was decorated with an evil eye talisman, and some Arabic lettering.

His blood felt thick and cold.

‘Turks!’

‘Not Turks, boy,’ said Smith. ‘Moors. Berbers. The coast of Algiers is but fifty miles south. But they are Mohammedans and unchristened infidels all.’

The sails slapped above them. There wasn’t enough wind for flight. The rowing galley, immune to such vagaries, was now turning on its shallow keel and heading straight for them. Half a mile, less. A minute or two and they would be …

‘Bring ’em in!’ Smith cried out to the master. ‘Our appetites are up!’

‘Bring ’em in!’ retorted the master angrily. ‘What do you mean bring ’em in, they’re coming in anyway! There’s twenty or thirty Mohammedan cuthroats on that damned galley!’

Smith said, ‘Look as if you’re fleeing-’

‘We are fleeing!’

‘-but keep your mariners on the end of the rope. The instant they close to, reef up for a fighting sail.’

The master looked as black as a strangled Moor. ‘I am the king of this ship, and you, Sir Knight, or the King of all the Russias, are nothing here but damned peasants! You understand?’

Smith only smiled, a somewhat dark and unnerving smile. ‘Do as I say. Those corsairs are ours, and their treasure may be yours.’

‘Report, boy,’ said Stanley. ‘How many men?’

Nicholas and Hodge both squinted. The sea sparkled in their eyes. There were many heads, many dark shapes. ‘Twenty? Thirty?’

No reply.

‘Do we put on our swords?’

‘How else were you planning to fight? By slapping them?’

Nicholas and Hodge buckled on their swords, trying to keep their hands from shaking. They had survived a couple of tavern brawls, it was true, the last one a true skirmish. But this was the real thing. Men would die.

‘Draw ’em tighter!’ cried the master, looking up at the listless sails in desperation. ‘Swing her in from the wind! We can get in behind them and make for the islands!’

‘No — we — can’t,’ murmured Stanley in a happy, sing-song voice, busily priming another arquebus.

Nicholas glanced down at him. He was loving this.

Then the two knights were on their feet, swords and daggers about their waists, and six muskets fully served and loaded, laid out on the oilcoth. There was also the biggest pistol Nicholas had ever seen. A petronel: a horse pistol, for putting old nags out of their misery. He wondered what on earth it would do to a man.

‘You need a certain strength in your arm to fire the creature,’ said Smith with a nod. ‘But if you do it right, the effect is considerable. Now: if they’ve got a cannon, we might get a splash as they close in. You will see that not a drop of water touches the guns. Understand?’

Nicholas nodded.

‘And if they fire up a cannon, and you see the sparks fly at the breech, then look where it’s pointing and make sure you’re not in the way. Remember you can move faster than a cannon on its carriage. But once the ball has left the cannon’s mouth, and is coming straight at you — well then, it is too late to move. You will never see it, nor anything else before you see the gates of heaven.’

‘But I can’t see any cannon.’

The knights scanned the fast-approaching galley. The sea was calm, the sky clear, the sun warm. Good conditions for a shot. And no: no cannon visible. The corsairs would expect to come swiftly alongside this full-bellied, lumbering merchantman, and simply clamber aboard, scimitars whirling. Their usual technique. Some of the Christian dogs would be killed, the rest enslaved, and the cargo of broadcloth their reward in the markets of Algiers.

The master was still swearing furiously at his mariners, urging them to draw on every inch of sail.

‘You cannot outrun, them, sir!’ called Smith. ‘There is not enough wind.’

‘We cannot fight the villains either! Have you seen their numbers?’

Smith shrugged. ‘We have no choice in the matter. Unless you wish to cry for mercy? I’d save your voice.’

‘A good thing it looks like we are struggling to flee,’ said Stanley softly. ‘They suspect nothing.’

The master stared out over the water.

Now twenty or more corsairs could be clearly seen, eagerly lining the galley’s narrow central gangway above the heads of the oar-slaves. They were stripped to the waist, skins every shade from coffee to Ethiop black. Most went shaven-headed — always easier at sea — except for topknots on their crowns, for the angels to pull them up to Paradise on Judgement Day.

Gold torcs and earrings gleamed. So too did scimitars, cutlasses, daggers and pistols. Smith and Stanley had taken up their guns and were crouching down below the bulwarks of the Swan . The high-sided little ship with its sterncastle and forecastle was something of a floating fortress, and evened the odds. But damn it, they should have instructed the boys in how to reload an arquebus by now. They never expected to meet corsairs this far out. Hunting so confidently, so close to the coast of Spain, the most powerful of all the Christian kingdoms. A sign of the times.

‘When we pass you back our guns,’ said Smith, ‘you take them swiftly, lay them down there, and pass the next. With the muzzle pointing skywards.’

The boys nodded.

‘You keep your heads down, and you keep those slow-matches burning. If you catch one of the swine climbing aboard, prick him while he’s still coming up and over. Once he’s on deck and it comes to hand-to-hand fighting — then God be with you.’

Nicholas felt cold to the marrow.

In the prow of the corsair galley, arrogant as a young god, stood the captain. A handsome, shaven-headed and moustachioed Moor, with flashing eyes and a ready smile. He wore an incongruous mix of grubby loincloth and startling red satin doublet, unbuttoned, showing his lean chest and hard stomach, twice scarred with deep swordcuts. He’d taken the doublet from a Genoese ship not a week before, the Christian’s blood still staining the gold piping. A wealth of gold hung around his neck and arms and dangled from his ears. Corsairs tended not to trust their treasure to banks. Two fine ruby rings gleamed on his little fingers. He’d cut them from the delicate hand of a young Spanish bride, sailing off Valencia last summer. The rings were not all they had taken from her, he and his men. He grinned. Life was sweet.

Though the merchantman had shown no white flag, yet look how she wallowed and struggled on the windless sea. She was as good as finished, a goat in a net, with the lion approaching. He spat and then sucked in the clean sea air, his chest swelling, his heart pounding to the drum, his galley surging along through the small waves, face into the sun. Soon they would have the joy of killing again, the joy of victory, the joy of standing on their enemies’ necks. Then the cargo, the cheers of his men, the triumphant return to Algiers. The dirty little whores in the waterfront brothels, and the white clay opium pipe. O, life was sweet.

John Smith and Edward Stanley carefully laid the muzzles of their guns on the top of the bulwarks of the forecastle, moving very slowly so as not to catch a corsair’s eye. The galley was two hundred paces off now. One hundred and eighty. One hundred and sixty. Smith squinted down the barrel of his jezail, finger lightly on the trigger.