Parked to one side of the street was a humble-looking hay-wain, harnessed to a camel. As the last cart, carrying Jack and Gabriel, jounced past it, a whip cracked and this vehicle bolted out into the middle of the street. By this point nothing could have prevented the gold-cart from reaching the platform, so Jack vaulted off of it, and turned round to face the hay-wain, anticipating some sort of attack. But by the time he had recovered his balance, the hay-wain had stopped in the middle of the street, directly in the path of the pursuing horde. The driver (Nyazi!) and another man (Moseh!) jumped off and chocked its wheels there, and at the same time the pile of hay on the cart’s back seemed to come alive; most of the load showered into the street. Revealed were a long tubular black object (a cannon!) and, clambering to his feet next to it, a black man (Dappa!).
Now in a way this was not surprising, for it was all a part of the plan-they’d spent all of yesterday buying the damned piece. In another way it was, for it was supposed to have been set up at dockside, loaded, aimed, and ready to be fired. Instead of which it had just gotten here-in the nick of time, Jack thought, if it had been loaded. But Dappa, rather than jamming a torch against its touch-hole, now began to rummage through a clanking assortment of implements strewn about his feet, while from time to time casting a glance up the length of the street to (at first) count, and (presently) estimate the number of heavily armed, screaming men sprinting their way.
“I have not done this before,” he announced, fishing out, and inspecting, a long, rusty pick, “but have had it all explained to me, by men who have.”
“Men who have lost sea-battles and been taken as galley-slaves,” Jack added.
Dappa brushed hay from the butt of the cannon and shoved the pick into the touch-hole.
“Help load the boat!” Jack screamed at Moseh and Nyazi. To Dappa he suggested, “For Christ’s sake, don’t worry about clearing the bloody touch-hole!”
Dappa returned, “If you’d be so good as to get the tampion out of my way?”
Jack scurried around to the muzzle-side of the wagon, turned his back to the on-rushing horde-which was not a thing that came naturally to him-reached up, and yanked out a round wooden bung that had been stuffed into the gun’s muzzle. It was shot out of his hand by a pistol-ball.
Dappa had an arrow through his sleeve, though not, apparently, through his arm. He was regarding a long-handled scoop. “As you are in such a hurry today,” he announced, “we shall dispense with the customary procedure of swabbing out the barrel.” As he spoke he shoved the scoop into some crunchy-sounding receptacle, which was hidden from Jack’s view by the side of the wagon, and raised it up heaped with coarse black powder. Balancing this in one hand he produced a copper-bladed spatula in the other, and leveled the powder-charge; then, moving with utmost deliberation so as not to spill any, he turned the scoop end-for-end and introduced it to the cannon’s muzzle, then, slowly at first, but quicker as he went along, hand-over-handed it until the entirety of its long handle had been swallowed by the barrel. He then gave it a half rotation to disgorge its load, and began gingerly to extract it.
Jack had until now been caught between a desire to make sure that Dappa didn’t do it wrong, and a natural concern for what was approaching. To describe the foremost of the attackers as irregulars would have been to give far too high an estimate of their discipline, motives, armaments, and appearance; they were thieves, avaricious bystanders, micro-ethnic-groups, and a few Janissaries who had broken ranks when they had caught sight of gold bars. Most of these had faltered when they had caught sight of the cannon. But awareness had now propagated up the street that it was still in the process of being loaded. Meanwhile the French platoons had re-formed and begun marching in good order down the hill, reaming the street clear in a manner very like what the gun-swab would have done to the barrel of the cannon, had Dappa not elected to omit that step. The emboldened rabble swarming out from their places of concealment mingled together with the not-so-emboldened ones being rammed down the street by this piston of French troops and all joined together into-
“An avalanche, or so ’tis claimed by certain Alpine galeriens I have rowed with, may be triggered by the sound of cannon-fire.” Dappa had torn off his shirt, wadded it up, and stuffed it down the barrel, and was now feeding in double handfuls of shot. He followed that with his turban, and finally took up his long rammer. “I wonder if we may halt an avalanche thus.” His long dreadlocks, freed from the imprisonment of the head-wrap, fell about his face as he bent forward to get the pad of the rammer into the muzzle.
“Don’t bother taking the rammer out-at this range ’twill serve as a javelin,” was Jack’s last advice to Dappa, as he turned his back and began to stalk up the hill towards the Mobb. For there were one or two fleet-footed scimitar-swingers, far ahead of the pack, who might arrive soon enough to interfere with the final steps of the rite.
“Where did that horn of priming-powder get to?” Dappa wondered.
Jack feinted left long enough to convince the hashishin on the right that he had a clear path to Dappa; then Jack lashed out with a foot and tripped him as he ran by. Moseh emerged from nearer to the quay. He had located another boarding axe, his tongue was coming out, he had an eye on the man who’d just planted his face in the street, and he was followed by Nyazi and Gabriel Goto, who had been watching all of these developments with interest and decided to leave off ship-loading work.
A scimitar slashed downward from the left; Jack angled it off the back of his blade. A tapping sound from behind suggested that Dappa had found his priming-powder and was getting it into the touch-hole.
“Has anyone got a light?” Dappa said.
Jack butt-stroked his opponent across the jaw with the guard of his sword and yanked a discharged pistol out of the fellow’s waist-band, then turned round and underhanded it across five or six yards of empty space to Dappa. Which might have got him killed, as it entailed turning his back on his opponent; but the latter knew what was good for him, and prudently flung himself down.
As did Jack; and (as he saw now, turning his head to look up the hill) as did nearly everyone else. A small number of utterly unhinged maniacs kept running toward them. Jack got to his feet, making sure he was well out of the way of the cannon’s muzzle, and backed up to the wagon. Nyazi, Moseh, and Gabriel Goto closed ranks around him.
There followed a bit of a standoff. Crazed hashishin aside, no one in the street could move as long as Dappa had them under his gun. But as soon as Dappa fired it, he’d be defenseless, and they’d be swarmed under. Pot-shots whistled their way from a few doorways up the street; Dappa squatted down, but held his ground at the cannon’s breech.
It bought them the time they needed, anyway. “All aboard!” called van Hoek-a bit late, as the boat had already cast off lines, and the gap between it and the quay was beginning to widen. “Now!” called Dappa. Jack, Nyazi, Gabriel Goto, and Moseh all turned and ran for it. Dappa stayed behind. The French regulars leapt to their feet and made for him double-time. Dappa cocked the pistol, held its pan above the small powder-filled depression that surrounded the orifice of the cannon’s touch-hole, and pulled the trigger. Sparks showered and, like stars going behind clouds, were swallowed in a plume of smoke. A spurt of flame two fathoms long shot from the cannon’s muzzle, driving the ram-rod, some pounds of buckshot, and half of Dappa’s clothing up the length of the street. The riot that came his way a moment later suggested that none of it had been very effective. But by the time the Mobb engulfed the cannon, Dappa was sprinting down the quay. He jumped for it, caromed off the gunwale, and fell into the Nile; but scarcely had time to get wet before oars had been thrust into the water for him to grab onto. They pulled him aboard. Everyone went flat on the decks as the French soldiers discharged their muskets, once, in their general direction. Then they passed out of sight and out of range.