Now these galeriens were no more impressed by Jeronimo’s prowess with the whip than they were by his Classical allusions.* At the height of his rage Jeronimo was no more or less prepossessing than any comite of the French Navy. It was, rather, the odd comments he made when he calmed down that convinced them all that El Desamparado was a madman, and scared them all into silence and submission.
In any event, the French padlocks that had secured the slaves when they’d been brought over had been tossed into the bilge, and their chains heated up in the galleot’s portable brazier and hammered shut, just in case any lock-picks had escaped the search.
Now, as the galleot rowed through the wreckage of the French flotilla with clouds of grapeshot and lengths of smoking chain flying overhead, Jack fished one of those padlocks out of the bilge. As Yevgeny parted the chain of Gerard with a few terrible hammer-blows, Jack worked his way through the giant key-ring that the French had handed over to them, and got that padlock open. Then Jack, Yevgeny, Gerard, and Gabriel Goto got into the skiff and rowed the last few yards to the slowly sinking galley.
Hundreds of chained men had already been pulled below the water, and perhaps two score remained above it. The bench to which Monsieur Arlanc and his four companions were joined by a common chain, and from which they’d all been dangling for the last quarter of an hour, was only a couple of yards above the water now, and their legs were washed by every wave. Jack clambered onto that bench holding one end of the chain that went around Gerard’s waist, then wrapped Gerard’s chain around Arlanc’s and padlocked them together. He threw away the key and, for good measure, smashed the body of the lock with a hammer to make it unpickable.
Gerard’s eyes went immediately to the chain that went round the waists of Monsieur Arlanc and his four comrades, and terminated at the end of the bench along the aisle, where it was padlocked to a stout loop of iron.
Jack jumped back into the skiff; handed Gerard his set of lock-picks; and threw him overboard, saying, “Go and redeem thyself.”
Of course there was much more to it than that, and when Jack told the tale afterwards he would give the full report, with all due embellishments: the hysterical blubbering of some galeriens, the pious praying of others, the many strong hands that shot up out of the water to grip the gunwales of their skiff and were cut away by Gabriel’s sword. The officers and French Marines still clinging to the galley’s forecastle, trying to buy passage on the galleot, or failing that, to fight their way aboard, only to be beaten back by Jeronimo and Nyazi and van Hoek and the others. The banks of powder-smoke drifting by overhead, and the bodies of the drowned galeriens below: pale blurred forms in strings of five, like pearls.
But at the time Jack took little notice of this ambience and concentrated on the matter of the lock and the chain almost as intently as Gerard. At the moment that the galley pulled Gerard under water he still had not got the lock open, and Jack began to think his plan had failed. The Turk who sat in the aisle was pulled under crying “Allahu Akbar!” and then the man who sat next to Monsieur Arlanc went down intoning “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.” Then it came to the point where Monsieur Arlanc’s face was only visible in the troughs of the waves. But then the head of Gerard re-appeared, followed by that of the Turk; they were clambering uphill, using the galley as a ladder even as it slid deeper. Gerard reached a temporarily secure place, turned around, hefted the opened padlock in one hand, and flung it at Jack’s head. Jack ducked it and laughed. “There is your redemption, English!” screamed Gerard, weeping with rage.
NOW THEY MADE direct for the Mouths of the Nile, sailing by day and rowing by night. Every few hours they sighted remnant ships of the French fleet, now scattered across fifty miles. Several times they saw Meteore, which had survived the battle with the amputation of her mizzenmast, and she signalled to them with mirror-flashes.
“A group of two, then a group of three,” said Nasr al-Ghurab.
“According to the Plan, this is a signal that we are to curtail the voyage, and put in at Alexandria instead of going on to Abu Qir,” Moseh said.
Al-Ghurab rolled his eyes. “That would be as good as going direct to Marseille. In El Iskandariya, the French are almost more powerful than the Turks.”
“There is no point in making it easy for the Investor to bugger us,” Jeronimo scoffed.
“Then we shall go to Cairo and make it slightly more difficult,” said the rais.
“Cairo I like better than Alexandria,” Jack said, “but I do not like Cairo much. It is a cul-de-sac-the end of the line.”
“Not so-we could row up the Nile to Ethiopia!” Dappa said.
Nyazi, viewing Dappa’s jest as a challenge to his hospitality, declared that he would gladly sleep naked in the dirt to the end of his days in order to provide the Cabal with comfortable beds-providing they could get as far as the foothills of the Mountains of Nuba.
“The entire point of choosing Cairo was that it is as far East as Mediterranean vessels can go,” Moseh reminded them, “and so our cargo should have the highest value there, at the reputedly stupendous bazaar of the Khan el-Khalili, in the very heart of that ancient city, called by some the Mother of the World. And this is as true now as it was before.”
“But once we go in we cannot come out-the Investor needs only to post ships before the two Mouths of the Nile, at Rosetta and Damietta, and we are bottled up,” van Hoek pointed out.
“Nonetheless, this half of the Mediterranean is yet Turkish. Turks control every harbor,” said the rais, “and word has gone out, on faster boats than ours, that if a galleot should appear, with a crew of mostly infidels, and such-and-such markings, it is to be impounded at once, and the crew put in irons. Going to Cairo and trading our cargo for a vast array of goods in the Khan el-Khalili is not such a miserable fate compared to the alternatives-”
“One, being buggered by the Investor in Alexandria,” said Jeronimo.
“Two, being thrown into a dungeon-pit in some flyblown port in the Levant,” said Dappa.
“Three, running the ship aground in some uninhabited place and trudging off into the Sahara bent under the weight of our cargo,” said Vrej.
“Ethiopia sounds better every minute,” said Dappa.
“I shall distribute my wives equally among the nine of us who still have penises,” proclaimed Nyazi, “and Jack can have my finest camel!”
“Jack, fear not,” said Monsieur Arlanc, taking him aside. “I know one or two negociants in Grand Caire. Through them, I can help you sell your share of the goods, and get a bill of exchange, payable in Amsterdam.”
Jack sighed. “I do not predict any of us will sleep easy in Cairo.”
So they made no response to messages from the Investor’s jacht, and used their (now) superior speed to stay well clear of her. And yet they did not attempt to pull away and vanish during the night-times, as there was no advantage in throwing the Investor into a rage.
High sere country, veiled in dust, began to appear off to starboard. The water took on a brown tinge and then became polluted with mud, sticks, and straw, which Nasr al-Ghurab called sudd. He said it had been washed down out of Egypt by the Nile. The river, he said, would be at its fullest now, as it was the month of August.