“Dispatch them instead to Cairo,” said the rais, “for that is where our trusted appraisers dwell. And send for your master, too. For there is one treasure here whose value only he can weigh.”
De Jonzac smiled thinly. “My master is a man of acumen-I assure you he leaves appraisals to experts, save, sometimes, when it comes to Barbary stallions.”
“How about English geldings?” the rais asked, and nodded to Yevgeny and Gabriel Goto.
Down on the oar-deck, Jack began to rattle his chains and to scream in English: “You bloody bastards! Sell me out to the Frog, will you? Motherless wog scum! May God’s curse be on your heads!”
Calmly ignoring this and further curses, Yevgeny came up behind Jack, pinioned his elbows together behind his back, and lifted him up off the bench so that de Jonzac could get a good look at him. Gabriel Goto then grabbed Jack’s drawers and yanked them down so they hung around the knees.
De Jonzac observed a long moment of silence as a frisson ran through his dragoons.
“Perhaps it is Ali Zaybak-perhaps some other English wretch who stood too close to a fire,” the rais said drily. “Can you recognize Jack Shaftoe?”
“No,” de Jonzac admitted.
“Having recognized him, could you place a value on his head?”
“Only my master could do that.”
“Then we will see you, and your master, in Cairo, in three days,” said Nasr al-Ghurab.
“That is not enough time!”
“We have been slaves for years,” said Moseh, who had been standing quietly, arms folded, the whole time, “and we say that three more days is too long.”
LATER THAT DAY they set off upriver, mostly under sail-power. The main channel was a few fathoms deep and perhaps a quarter-mile wide-which meant that they were never more than an eighth of a mile from French dragoons. For de Jonzac had sent out two pairs of riders to shadow them, one pair on each riverbank.
As soon as the galleot got clear of Rosetta-which was a sprawl of mostly humble dwellings with no wall to mark its boundary-Jack was dragged away from his bench and draped about in diverse neck-collars, manacles, and leg-irons, then taken back to the concealment of the quarterdeck where Yevgeny devoted a quarter of an hour to smiting an anvil, rattling chains, and producing other noises meant to convince anyone listening that Jack was being securely fettered. Meanwhile Jack-never one to stint on dramaturgy-screamed and cursed as if Yevgeny were bending red-hot irons directly around his wrists. In fact, the reason for his cries of agony was that he was ripping handfuls of goat-hair from his scalp and head. The skin was left covered with a scaly crust of hardened pine-gum. Various scrubbings with turpentine and lamp-oil got that off, taking several layers of skin and leaving him raw from the collarbones upwards. He wrapped his burning head in a turban, got dressed, belted on his sword, and strolled out into view looking every inch a Janissary; then paused, turned around, and shouted some abuse in Sabir at an imaginary chained wretch behind him.
He dared not look directly at his audience during this performance, but van Hoek was spying on the dragoons through an oar-lock, and reported that they’d witnessed most of it. They did not have much leisure for spying, though. The river was at its highest now, filling its channel and frequently spilling out into surrounding countryside, and so the galleot did not have to work her way around shallows as she would have in other seasons. Yet the current was gentle and she could easily make seven miles an hour upstream. Jack had been expecting a desert, and he could tell one was out there somewhere from the way everything collected a film of yellow dust. But Egypt, seen from here, was as moist and fertile as Holland. And as crowded. Even in the most remote stretches they were never out of sight of several dwellings. They passed villages a few times an hour, and large towns several times a day. For as far as they could see to both sides of the river, the flat countryside was covered with golden fields of corn and rice, and veined with wandering lines of darker green: the countless water-courses of the Delta, lined, and frequently choked, with reeds and rushes as high as a man’s head. Palm trees grew in picket-lines along waterways, and towns were belted with orchards of figs, citrus, and cassia.
All of it was scenery to the Cabal, and an obstacle course to the French riders. They fell behind the galleot when they had to swing wide around river-bends and flooded fields, then caught up when they found a way to cut across one of the river’s vast meanders. Fortunately for them they had left Rosetta trailing strings of fresh horses; and Egypt, like most of the Turks’ empire, was a settled and orderly country. Traveling along her high-roads was not as easy as in England, but it was easier than in France, and so they were able to keep pace during the day. This gave Moseh, Jack, and the others confidence that the four who’d gone ahead-Nyazi’s group-had reached Cairo without difficulty.
At night the wind fell. Rather than attempting to row through the dark, and perhaps run aground or stray into some backwater, the rais simply tied the galleot to a palm tree along the riverbank and then organized the Cabal into watches. The dragoons actually served as an outlying guard-post, as they were not keen to see the galleot’s cargo fall into the hands of some local Ali Baba and his forty thieves.
In the middle of the second day, the wind failed and the rais sent a dozen slaves ashore to pull the galleot by ropes-which was why they had not released all of the slaves in Rosetta. In this way they came, late in the afternoon, to the place where the Nile diverged into its two great branches: the one that they had just navigated, and another that ran to Damietta. Here, as night fell on the second day, they tied the galleot up again, and bided during the hours of darkness. Jack stood an early morning watch, then climbed into a hammock on the quarterdeck and fell asleep in the open air.
When he awoke, the sun was rising, the ship was under way, and he could see a strange terrain of angular mountains off to the west. Sitting up for a better look, he recognized them as Pyramids. When he had got his fill of gawking at those-which took a good long while-he turned around to face the rising sun and gazed across the Nile into the Mother of the World.
Now this was like trying to comprehend all the activity of an anthill, and read all the words in a book, and feel all the splendor of a cathedral, in one glance. Jack’s mind was not equal to the demands that Cairo placed on it, and so for a long while he fixed his attention on small and near matters, as if he were a boy peering through a hollow reed. Fortunately there were many such matters to occupy him: the Nile here was at least as big as the Danube at Vienna, and its course was crowded with boats laden with grain that had been brought down out of Upper Egypt. The captains of those boats had been shooting cataracts and beating back crocodiles for weeks, and were in no particular mood to make way for the unwieldy galleot. Many enemies were made as they worked their way in to the east bank of the river and made the galleot fast to a quay.
Almost immediately they were engulfed in camels, which is never pleasant, and rarely desirable-especially when they are being ridden and led by fierce-looking armed men. Jack thought they were under assault by wild nomads until he began noticing that all of them looked like Nyazi, and many were smiling. Then he heard Jeronimo bellowing in Spanish, “If I had a copper for every fly that swarms on you, beast, I’d buy the Spanish Empire! You smell worse than Vera Cruz in the springtime, and there is more filth clinging to your body than most animals shit in a year. Truly you must have sprung fully formed from a heap of manure, as flies and Popes do-may God have mercy on my soul for saying that! Jack Shaftoe is there smiling at me, thinking that you, camel, and I are well matched for each other-later I’ll make him your wife perhaps and you can take him out into the desert and do with him what you will.”