Swords From the Sea (52 page)

Nassau stood up to watch the firing.

"Is it to me you are speaking?" he shouted. "Did you think that quarter was to be given to the Moslems?"

"Aye-why not?"

"The orders of his Highness, Prince Potemkin, were that no quarter should be given and no prizes taken," responded Nassau at last.

"No such orders reached me. These vessels can be floated off, with a change of wind. They would be invaluable to the fleet."

"My dear Chevalier, I am no merchant to figure the profit of salvage."

Nassau smiled at his own quip-for it was generally believed among the Russians that Paul Jones had been a merchant.

Though he kept his voice under control, Jones was growing angrier. "Monsieur le Prince, this is a wanton waste of human life and property. If you will-"

"Death of my life! Once again I remind you that I have secret orders from his Highness himself. He does not wish this canaille-" Nassau waved his hand at the men peering from gun port and bulwarks on the flagship-"these mongrels to get the foolish notion of prize money into their heads."

He was speaking French, and only a handful of officers understood. But Jones instantly resented the slight to his men.

"The men and officers of my command have been under a hot fire for six hours and they have borne themselves well-a circumstance, Monsieur le Prince, that you have not been in a position to observe."

Nassau's full face turned a shade darker, and the Englishman, Edwards, nearly choked in the effort to suppress a chuckle.

But Jones was intent on the need for action while the daylight lasted.

"Nassau," he continued, "we are wasting time. Will you order a division of your gunboats to engage the remaining vessels of the Turks' flotilla?"

"It is too late, my dear Chevalier, to make good the mistake of the squad ron. Yon have let Hassan escape. He and his galley, which is moored under the Otchakof batteries by now, are worth half the Turkish fleet."

Jones listened in frank astonishment. The Vladimir had done everything possible under the circumstances to close with Hassan's ship. It was the first time that he had encountered the ignorance and undisguised insolence of those who were close to the throne of the empress.

"You, my Admiral," went on Nassau, as if weighing his words, "will be called to account for failure to act courageously."

For a full moment Paul Jones was silent, the muscles tightening on his jaw, his fingers fastened on the rail. Edwards glanced at him and laid a hand on his arm, whispering that the prince must be trying to trick the man who held the post he desired into a statement that could be turned to account later.

"It is not so," Jones said under his breath, and then clearly. "Monsieur le Prince, my men will cut out the galley of the pasha before dawn. It will then be for his Highness to judge if we have acted courageously."

Nassau shrugged. He knew as well as Edwards and the other listeners that the surviving vessels of the Turks were gathering at Otchakof, under the guns of the strong water batteries, and within range of the new fort on the hill. To his mind, to attempt to cut out the galley of Hassan would be simple madness. The Moslems would be swarming around it like angry bees.

"A promise-" he began.

"I have given you my word."

By degrees it became clear to the listeners that the American meant what he said. Nassau started to speak, thought better of it, and took snuff instead. The pause that followed was broken by a shattering roar.

The Vladimir quivered and rolled, and men who had been flung to the deck got to their feet and ducked a rain of debris. The Turkish flagship with all on board had blown up when one of the shells from the gunboats reached its magazine. Only its lower ribs blazed in a rolling cloud of smoke.

At once the barge bearing Nassau and his staff pulled away, dipping over the swells.

"Egad," murmured Edwards, "they go back faster than they came."

Moslem seamen were jumping from the rail into the water; others who could cram themselves into one of the boats were pulling away for Otchakof.

"Good!" barked Ivak when he heard of Jones's purpose. "Hassan's men will have their blood warmed up. They will fight like hemp eaters after this. But will Paul go with us?"

"He ought not to. No admiral has seen fit to lead a cutting- out party in person before. So-I'll lay you dollars against rubles that he goes."

It was midnight before Jones returned from the flotilla. He had rallied Korsakof's division of gunboats and dislodged the remainder of Hassan's small craft, driving them within range of the Moslem batteries. Scattered about the shoals the hulks of nine Turkish ships still smoldered and flickered, like the embers of gigantic watch fires.

Before he left, Jones had given instructions to the second in command to pick out a hundred and forty men and issue them small arms-cutlasses and boarding pikes, and pistols for every other man. The Russian, who had had no dinner that afternoon, was pleased when Ivak offered to select the detachment for him.

"But they must be volunteers. His excellency said so."

"Aye, they will be," Ivak assured him gravely.

Whereupon, after assuring himself that Lieutenant Edwards would supervise the selection, the Russian retired to the wardroom and dinner. Cossacks, he reflected, knew the business of boarding-they were half pirates anyway.

They began to pick out men, choosing first the veterans from the army, then the Don Cossacks, and sailors selected by Dmitri.

To Edwards it seemed as if they picked out the greatest rogues of the lot, but Ivak was satisfied and so was Pierre. Those who were chosen began to make fun of the rest until Ivak ordered them below for gruel and vodka and a little sleep, naming Pierre and Dmitri to watch for the return of the admiral, while he and Edwards went aft to see to the small arms.

Paul Jones ordered the boarding party mustered in the waist for inspection. He had brought back with him three long shallops-riverboats captured from the Turks-and he set some of the Cossacks to work at once wrapping rags around the oars.

They were all watching him, as he examined their pistols and greeted some that he knew by name. They noticed the square set to his shoulders, and the way he wore his three-cornered hat a little aslant. They tried to listen when he called the lieutenant from the Vladimir and Ivak together for a few words.

When he took his seat at the tiller of the shallop they nudged one another and whispered. He was going with them. No doubt of that now.

Edwards was with Jones in the first boat; Ivak and Dmitri had the second, and the lieutenant took the last, in which Pierre found himself.

"S'bogun!" a voice called after them.

The dark mass of the three-decker fell away as the oars bit into the water and started down the channel almost silently because the thumping of the tholepins was muffled by the rags. Jones's shallop was in the lead, the others following close enough to keep it in sight.

Out of the maw of the boat eyeballs flickered at the man who sat in his shirtsleeves by the tiller. The dull gleam of bared steel or teeth that flashed in a smile gave him assurance that they were ready for what was to come.

"He is like a man of stone," one whispered under his breath. "Aye, like the stone figures-the kurgans on the steppe."

They sensed his cheerfulness, and it made them light-hearted, so that they turned to stare at the burned framework of a stranded ship, still licked by little flames, or at the campfires along the shore, which were like red eyes winking at them. They had never seen so many fires before, and Paul Jones studied the shore thoughtfully.

These were not watch fires. The Turks must have moved back several regiments and bivouacked near the line of the Otchakof fortifications. He headed inshore until they were skirting the outer fringe of the rushes. By doing so he avoided whatever patrol boats were out in the channel. If the shallops were seen by pickets on the land, they were taken for Tatar fishing craft. Cutters might have aroused suspicion, but certainly the Moslems were not looking for a raid by the Russians that night.

Jones followed out his plan, which was to work along shore under the very guns of the water batteries, until he came to the jetties. That evening he had noted carefully the position of the galley, anchored in the center of Hassan's flotilla.

"Here's the corner bastion," whispered Edwards. "Yonder lantern is on the palisade. What's all the stir about?"

Far off in the darkness horses neighed and wagons creaked and armed men marched, or so it seemed. The shore was rife with movement, but nothing could be seen and the murmur of the wind in the rushes and the lap and gurgle of the water made it impossible to judge what was happening.

"On my soul and honor, some mischief is brewing," added the Englishman, bending closer to the water to listen.

Jones laid a hand on his knee warningly as they passed under the stern of a small xebec and heard men talking on the deck.

Evidently they were noticed, because the murmur of voices ceased and someone hailed them in Turki.

"Ma'uzbillah! Even the dogs take refuge behind walls. Are ye from the river Boug?"

"From the river," a Syrian in front of the officers made response promptly.

Edwards wondered what had happened at the river; but they were not challenged again, although they made out the loom of the two water batteries and the muzzles of cannon a stone's throw away. When they heard the clattering tholepins of a guardship approaching, Jones gave command to cease rowing, and they drifted until the other boat pulled past. He steered around anchored vessels, penetrating into the mass of shipping from which Edwards for once wondered whether they would escape again. But in the early hours of the morning the Moslem crews slept like the weary men they were, until the long hull and the raking yards of Hassan's galley loomed up before the shallops.

Then came a sharp challenge and the flash and bellow of a musket, proof that the Algerians were awake. Edwards swore under his breath, finding time to wonder again why the watchers on this particular vessel should fire at small boats so casually, not knowing that the Algerians were accustomed to keep all other craft away from the galley for a good and sufficient reason.

"Mr. Edwards," observed Jones, "be pleased to order the men to pull with a will for that galley."

Chapter IX

The Horseman in the Mist

And with a will the men in the shallops bent to their oars, closing in like hawks on a heron. Delay would have brought a discharge of slotted carronades. Jones, rising to his feet, steered under the counter of the galley and let go the tiller as the sailors dropped the oars. Some tossed grappling hooks with lines attached over the rail; others pulled themselves up to the sills of the open ports, actually gaining footing on the muzzles of the cannon.

Over their heads a shouting arose-a pattering of bare feet on the deck boards-the angry mutter of a drum. Muskets flashed along the bulwarks; and bullets slapped into the water behind them. Since firearms were invented the children of Othman have usually overshot their mark.

Edwards saw Jones catch a line and go up it, his feet braced against the galley's side. Turning to a bearded giant at his side, the Englishman offered him a shilling to lift him to his shoulders. Promptly the sailor dropped his pike and gripped the officer about the knees, heaving him up easily as if Edwards had been a man of straw.

Someone gave him a hand and swung him to the rail, in time to see Jones standing on the bulwark.

"Up with ye, lads," he called down to those in the shallop. "Don't fire till ye can singe their beards!"

Drawing his own pistol, he thrust it into the face of an Algerian who was running at the admiral with a drawn scimitar. The man crashed down into the scuppers and Edwards jumped over his body. A dozen sailors had gained footing on the deck beside him, and those who came up from the shallop discharged their pistols as they straddled the rail.

But now a flare at the break of the poop scattered the darkness and showed turbaned figures thronging from forecastle and poop. They stared in amazement at the Christians climbing into the waist, then rushed, scimitars in one hand, knives in the other, and a shout ululating in their throats.

They hewed at the pike heads thrust toward them and leaped forward, stabbing with their curved daggers. Cutlass clanged against scimitar, and the shouting grew to a hoarse roar, wordless and menacing as men came to grips and blood spattered on the deck.

Sailors were coming up from the third shallop, and Pierre, cutlass in hand, plunged into the fight. Throwing his smoking pistol into the face of a Moslem, he slashed the man through the ribs and stooped to pick up a half pike that lay by a dead Russian. With this in his left hand, he cleared a space for others to follow.

The big Provencal, stripped to the waist, shining with sweat, teeth gleaming through the tangle of his beard, roared from an open throat. The mighty thews and the height of him made even blood-crazed Mos lems pause, and the sailors rallied to him as the Algerians thronged forward in greater numbers.

Paul Jones, leaving the bulwark, thrust to Pierre's side, his slender rapier making play under the whirling arm of the giant.

The boarders were being pressed back and harassed by musketry from the galley's poop when a shout went up from the other rail.

"Hourra!"

The second shallop had passed to the far side of the galley, and Ivak and the Cossacks-who were old hands at this sort of thing-swarmed up the side almost without opposition. Their rush took the Algerians aback and broke up the crowd of Moslems in the waist into little knots. The Cossacks had the advantage of pistols, and held their fire until they could bring down a man.

Raging like trapped wolves, Hassan's men were beaten back to the quarterdeck. Many, cut off from their fellows, jumped over the rail. No one cried for quarter and no quarter was given.

Around the poop ladders a bitter struggle began, almost in silence. Good swordsmen and dour fighters, the Algerians held the ladders against the pikes and cutlasses of the borders, while the muskets of the reis and his officers picked off the Russians.