Swords From the Sea (74 page)

"Easy," Paul told him. The other was a boy named Dave, from Tarrytown. "Bear a hand, Dave," Paul directed. "This trail-"

He was pulling futilely at the heavy trail, and Dave laid aside his musket to heave at the trail, swinging it. Others bent in to help, and the gun came around. Dave never stopped talking. "Hit was too hot up there. So we-uns took an' come down here."

Paul groped in the pail for a burning match, feeling the priming on the gun's breech. It pointed at the wide gate where he had sat that morning, where garrison troops moved in disorder, throwing together a barri cade or gathering for a counter-attack. One part of his mind assured him of this, while he kept on counting the men who climbed into the battery from the beach. Twenty-four-and O'Bannon's hoarse voice. "Stand back there-"

Beside him a gun of the battery exploded. Paul stepped aside and laid his match on the priming of his gun. The hot smoke swirled up at him.

The blast of his gun was almost drowned by a half-dozen heavier reports behind him, and the hiss of solid shot passing near his head. Dave ducked and said "Jerusalem! "

The Hornet, lying so close in, had not fired that broadside. The smoke eddied up from the Nautilus. The schooner was warping in abaft the battered sloop.

"Those sailors," called O'Bannon, "will shuck us out of here next. Mr. Mann, will you break out that ensign you are carrying."

The flushed midshipman gaped and tugged at the small flag he had stowed under his jacket. Then, remembering, he called back, "Aye-aye, sir," and ran to lay the ensign on the stone parapet, spreading it carefully so it could be seen clearly from the ships. Then he climbed up beside it and waved his cap.

But the Nautilus and Argus were firing over the battery into the town.

Into the battery Percy Farquhar climbed, laughing. "Five bob you owe me, Eugene." He was only a step ahead of the Tyrolese, who puffed under the weight of a musket. "Won by two paces. You'll bear me out, Paul?"

In the stress of the moment the Englishman had not thought that Paul had not been with them, in the race. After them pushed Selim the janizary and his men, noisy with excitement. Their familiar voices and the pressure of their bodies around him as they all worked to turn the battery on the entrance of the street made Paul feel as if he had never been away from them. Eaton gripped his shoulder, exclaiming like Dave: "Bainbridge! Thank God! I thought I sent you to Bomba, and here you are safe in Derna."

When Eaton moved his left arm, blood spattered from it. "This morning I prayed God that I would not be the failure that all my life I have been."

The man called Drub-Devil, who had thought himself a failure! ... Something stirred in Paul's memory. At the gate the news Hadjali had let out and-the soldier had confirmed-that a relief force might be approaching from Tripoli.

Before he could speak of it, O'Bannon strode up, his coat flapping open. "The Hornet's boats are coming in at last, sir."

It seemed to them as if they had been in the battery an hour, whereas only a few moments had passed. The two boats from the sloop were grounding on the beach below the battery, men climbing out of them.

"I think we can go into the town," added the lieutenant thoughtfully. "If you will give the order, sir."

Wiping the sweat from his eyes, Eaton called: "Come on, you fellows."

O'Bannon called down at the boats: "What say, sailors? Rise and shine upon the battery. We are going to take the town."

Thirty of them ran on with Eaton over the ground where Paul had crawled that morning. His mind kept counting them as he tried to follow, walking slowly, weakly, into the empty gate, past the recess from which the guard had disappeared.

All the inhabitants had disappeared from the street. Paul walked on, finding himself alone, toward the sound of scattered firing. He felt the surge of an old fear.

Thirty men could not advance against the hundreds of disciplined soldiery he had seen staring at him when he was penned up. The firing seemed to be going away into the side streets.

When he made his way into the open square, he found a crowd clustered around the door of the mosque, and horsemen coming and going like hounds questing after game. They were Hamet's Arabs. He learned afterward that they had broken in from the hills when Eaton's force had taken the battery and turned it on the town.

The enemy had disappeared from sight. Paul climbed after the Americans up the street through palm gardens to the castle enclosure. When he saw Eaton and Hamet standing talking on the terrace above him, he went to the pool where water lilies floated, in bloom. Kneeling, he drank from his hand, and washed his aching burning head. In the shade beside him a fine carpet stretched empty. He crawled over to it and sat down.

Chapter Ten

The old Moslems who stood before him with their hands crossed and their heads bowed had come up from the sanctuary of the mosque. Some of them had offered him water when he was held in the niche. Their plea he could not understand, except that they called him Pasha and Akinpasha. When he took them up to Eaton, he learned that the old men were sheiks of the town who offered themselves as hostages for the payment to be exacted from the people by the conquerors who had come in from the sea. They asked only that the victorious soldiery should not take their girl children and animals in the looting. And they wanted to know how much tribute would content the Yankee pashas.

"The poor devils have had to deal with Spanish and Tripolitan masters," Eaton muttered. "They can't realize we're any different. God, I'm glad my children are growing up at home-"

By showing the old men a gold piece from his pocket, the New Englander tried to demonstrate that the Americans would not loot; instead they would pay for food and materials. The committee of hostages murmured assent, but looked forlorn as before.

"Tarnation take 'em!" complained Eaton. "They think we're after Italian gold, like this. Here!" He flung words at the despairing men. "Yah rafik-"

Their eyes quickened and the nearest of them tried to catch Paul's hand. Their voices babbled excitedly. Eaton, pallid, his injured arm slung by a neckcloth, explained, "I've named you as our surety against looting, Lieutenant Bainbridge. The poor beggars seem to understand you're not like the corvos." He winced with pain. "I must get this wrist dressed-the bones are shattered, I think. While I'm on the brig, you will assume command by seniority. O'Bannon's asleep, and I don't trust Leitensdorfer with these rich villas deserted. Keep Selim out of mischief if you can. I'll send Mademoiselle to you to interpret-and get Hull to put patrols ashore. We must maintain a show of force-God knows it will have to be a show. Hamet thinks the Tripolitans have drawn back to the heights. I've put the three Marines at the doors here-"

"Where are the others, sir?"

Eaton's eyes shifted. Too many men had been hit during the charge on the battery. "One is only slightly hurt." The ebullition of the action was draining out of him. "You are in bad case yourself, my boy. Hull's surgeon should have a look at you."

"Turn about, sir, I've had two days' rest."

When Eaton went down the garden steps, the old men crowded after him, shouting to the housetops. From the mosque door women edged cautiously to listen, and human heads appeared along the parapets of the flat roofs. The shouting went out into the streets-something about peace and mercy.

At sunset, making the rounds of the disordered rooms of the palace, Paul found servants emerging from dark corners to stand submissively with hands crossed. They seemed frightened. Lanky Dave put down a gilt incense burner he had been inspecting. "Seems like the harem should be somewhere about," he murmured.

"It isn't," Paul assured him. "And all this property belongs to Hamet Pasha now."

Passing through chambers fantastically rich in carpets on the floor, and hangings of cloth of gold, he came upon Marie Anne waiting at the head of a stair. Her hair was drawn back neat with combs, and her blue scarf was tucked about her throat. He only noticed the beauty of her small head, and the remembered sound of her voice.

"Lieutenant, criers are going through the streets saying that by command of Hamet Pasha, ruler of Derna, no man shall take property, or he shall lose his right hand."

She had meant to appear at her best, and to be cool and efficient before Paul. She had told herself that this silent officer was less honest than Isaac Hull, and less of a compagnon than Farquhar. But in a moment this stranger became Paul, haggard as a skeleton, the blood not washed from his coat. "How long," she demanded angrily, "have you had fever?"

"Have I? I don't know."

"Then how long since you have eaten something?"

"Last night."

When Selim appeared, reeking with wine and news of how the Bey and his officers had taken refuge in the mosque and then had smuggled themselves out of the town, Marie got the servants to make a fire in the brazier, which heated the state reception room. They fetched a pot for her and water which she boiled with bits of meat, to make a thin soup.

Selim kept pulling at his sleeve, asking a question. Marie said the janizary wanted to know why Paul did not post sentries around the city.

Going to the balcony outside the window, he stared into the haze of dusk vibrating with faint sounds. He had no men available to watch this haze dissolving into night. "Tell Selim to go and find sentries," he ordered at last. "Tell him to find the sheiks and their boys to watch until sunup. I trust him with this responsibility."

At moonrise they took the soup out on the balcony to drink. The balcony had cushions strewn for his late highness the Bey, who liked to sit there and observe the city. Down below torches flared and lanterns bobbed. The people had come out to offer fruit and bread to the strange sailors who marched back and forth, keeping together, without breaking into any houses.

The sight of the patrols, the splendor of the gardens under the night sky, exhilarated Paul. Marie belonged to it.

But she had known the balconies of Cairo and the hopelessness of the foreign officers, who could never change or understand the multitudes of Orientals in the streets below them.

"The hills are dark," she whispered, showing him the slopes dim under the moon beyond the lights.

The fever in him kept him talking, about his brother and the loss of the great frigate. She listened intently, because this was Paul's secret that he had kept to himself. It frightened her, and she was barely able to hide her fear from him.

"But if you cannot get to Tripoli?" she asked cautiously.

That morning he had felt hopeless enough. The change of the day and the nearness of Marie intoxicated him. "We will. We won today."

Did they? His injury and the battering of the great guns, the dread of the people who had whispered to her that the coming of the Americans would only increase the wrath of Tripoli-all that had passed through the girl's consciousness. She wanted to urge him to protect himself.

"Perhaps there are things we are not meant to do. But Paul, we must never lose what we are, ourselves. What you are."

"A prince of Asia, just now." He laughed excitedly.

She decided quickly to humor him. "A pasha, certainly-as Eugene would say."

Because she was so gay, laughing softly with him, he took her hand, and slept, with her beside him.

They started for the fort the next day when the danger of their situation became apparent.

Mounted forces of Tripolitans appeared along the heights in strength. The army that had come too late to defend the town now threatened it, concealed in the dense verdure of the valley. The Bey and the greater part of his garrison had escaped after the confusion of the attack, and had of course joined the column from Tripoli. Their movements could not be observed.

The rambling circuit of Derna ran for some two miles, and the whole of it could not be defended. The presence of the ships secured the shore, and the Arab horsemen formed a small mobile reserve. But the weak side of the town, cut in two by the ravine of the Derna River, lay toward the hills.

On that side Eaton and Eugene picked out a half-demolished caravanserai, to make over into a fort. On the edge of the ravine, it commanded the southern slopes-when cannon could be moved up to it from the ships.

Daily the stone walls of the new fort rose higher. Peasants hauled the stones up from the ravine, being paid a little each day with money Eaton borrowed from the naval officers.

When the walls were breast-high and the embrasures began to take shape, Eaton had the American flag hoisted on a staff. Whereupon the people called it the Kalah Amrica, the American Castle.

It looked across the city toward the palace vacated by the Bey. The walls of the fort began to take on significance in Derna. Never before in that part of the world had there been a Kalah Amrica, with a strange flag like this one.

The people, profoundly distrustful of their old masters the Tripolitans, hoped for much from their new fort. It was sturdy, with a ditch around it. And they gained a few rials from it-something hitherto unknown.

Naturally they knew nothing of the argument between Eaton and Isaac Hull about it. To Eaton, the fort was a necessity, a first step toward his hoped-for occupation of a point of the African coast. Hull had parted with all his money and most of his stores readily enough, but he did not want to lose any of his cannon.

"Before you're satisfied," he grumbled, "you'll have the Argus dredged up the river."

"Faith," Eaton laughed, "if I could move the Argus to the mountain, the vessel would be of real service."

Chapter Eleven

The attack came as a complete surprise. That morning some cavalry had been observed moving above the fort. Leitensdorfer had gone up with a detachment of sailors to strengthen the working party there. Eaton was on the shore, where the guns of the battery had been placed to bear on the town. The Tripolitans must have filtered down into the hollow from the point where Eaton had first approached Derna. Their rush carried them past the outer buildings into the streets. Only handfuls of Arabs and Greeks were in that quarter to resist them, and these were driven to the housetops.