While we labored we could hear the echo of the French guns, seeking the range as their first trenches advanced toward the walls.
Even the bowels of Djezzar’s palace would tremble when an iron ball crashed into the outer walls.
Franklin gave the name “battery” to lines of Leyden jars because 1 4 0
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they reminded him of a battery of guns, set hub to hub to give concentrated fire. In our case, each additional jar could be connected to the last to add to the potential shock of French soldiers that I intended.
We soon had so many that the task of energizing them all with friction—by turning a crank—looked Sisyphean, like rolling a boulder endlessly uphill.
“Ethan, how are we going to turn your glass disks long enough to power this huge contraption?” Miriam asked. “We need an army of grinders.”
“Not an army, but a broader back and a dimmer mind.” I meant Big Ned.
Ever since I had stepped ashore in Acre I’d been contemplating my reunion with the hulking, cranky sailor. He had to be paid back for his treachery at the Jerusalem gate, and yet he remained a dangerous giant still resentful about his gambling losses. The key was not to blunder into him when I was at a disadvantage, so I carefully planned my lesson. I learned he’d heard of my miraculous reappearance and boasted he still owed me a tussle, once I left the protection of my woman’s skirts. When I was informed he’d been assigned to help hurriedly patch the moat masonry at the base on Acre’s key tower, I appeared to give a hand from the sallyport above.
A wall is strongest without cracks for cannonballs to pry at, so that’s why Smith and Phelipeaux wanted repairs made. It was a bold job, British marksmen traded sniper fire with French sharpshooters in their trenches while a few volunteers, including Ned, labored outside the walls below in the dark. Despite my problems with Ned and Tom, I’d come to admire the flinty determination of the English crew, a working man’s porridge of the poor and illiterate who had little of the idealism of the French volunteers but a dogged loyalty to crown and country. Ned had that same starch. As muskets flashed and banged in the dark—how I missed my rifle!—baskets of stone, mortar, and water were lowered to the repair crew while they chipped, scraped, and fitted. Near dawn they finally scrambled back up a rope ladder like scurrying monkeys, bullets pinging, my arm giving each a hand inside. Finally there was only Ned below. He gave the ladder a good tug.
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The look on his face when his escape route came loose and rattled down to make a heap at his feet was priceless. There’s something to be said for revenge.
I leaned out. “Not fun to be locked out, is it, Ned?” His head flamed like a red onion when he recognized me fifty feet above. “So you’ve dared come out of the pasha’s palace, Yankee tinkerer! I thought you wouldn’t come within a hundred miles of honest British seamen after the lesson I taught you at Jerusalem! And now you plan to leave me in this moat and let the French do your work for you?” He cupped his hands and shouted. “He’s a coward, he is!”
“Oh, no,” I countered. “I just want you to get a taste of your own base treachery, and see if you’re man enough to face me honestly, instead of slamming gates in my face or hiding in a ship’s bilge.” His eyes bulged as if pumped full of steam. “Face you honestly! By God, I’ll rip you limb from limb, you cheat, if you ever have the pluck to stand toe to toe like a man!”
“It’s a bully’s way to rely on size, Big Ned,” I called down. “Fight me fairly, sword to sword like gentlemen do, and I’ll teach you a real lesson.”
“Bloody thunder, indeed I will! I’ll fight you with pistols, marlin-spikes, cudgels, daggers, or cannon fire!”
“I said swords.”
“Let me up then! If I can’t strangle you, I’ll cleave you in two!” So with our duel set to my satisfaction I lowered a rope, hoisted the ladder back up, and got Ned back into Acre just before the dawn light would make him a target.
“I just showed you more mercy than you showed me,” I lectured as he glowered, dusting mortar from his clothes.
“And I’m about to return the mercy you showed at cards. Let’s cross blades and be done with our business once and for all! I wouldn’t let you buy your way out now if you had money to pay me back ten times!”
“I’ll meet you in the palace gardens. Do you want rapier, saber, or cutlass?”
“Cutlass, by God! Something to cut through bone! And I’ll bring 1 4 2
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my bullyboys to watch you bleed!” He glared at the other men who were enjoying our exchange. “Nobody crosses Big Ned.”
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My willingness to duel such an animal came from thinking a few cards ahead. Franklin was always an inspiration, and while working at Jericho’s new forge I mused how the sage of Philadelphia might use ingenuity instead of brawn. Then I set to work.
Ned’s sabotage was simple. I disassembled the cloth-and-wood handle from his cutlass, bolted on a copper replacement, roughened the handle to let my opponent take firm hold, and polished the entire assembly. Metal is conductive.
Mine was more complicated. I hollowed its haft, lined it with lead, doubled its wrapping for my own added insulation, and—just before my opponent arrived—held its butt end against a stout wire leading from the cranking machine I had built to generate a frictional charge.
I was spinning away, storing electricity in the steel of my weapon, when my opponent appeared in the courtyard.
Ned squinted. “What’s that then, you bloody Yankee tinkerer?”
“Magic,” I said.
“Hey, I wants a fair fight now!”
“And you shall get it, blade to blade. Your muscle to my brain.
Nothing fairer than that, eh?”
“Ethan, he’ll split you like a bolt of wood,” Jericho warned, as I’d coached. “This is madness. You stand no chance against Big Ned.”
“Honor requires that we cross blades,” I recited with equally rehearsed resignation, “no matter what his skill and size.” I suppose it’s not sporting to lead on a bull, but what matador doesn’t wave a cape?
I gave some minutes for a crowd of assembled sailors to bet against me—I covered them all, with a loan from the metallurgist, figuring I might as well make a profit from all this bother—and then took a fencing stance on the garden path where we’d duel. I liked to think the harem girls were watching from above, and I knew Djezzar was.
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“On guard, you big bully!” I cried. “If I lose I’ll give you every shilling, but if you lose, then you’re beholden to me!”
“If you lose, I’ll take what I’m owed from the steaks and chops I’ll have turned you into!” The crowd roared at this wit and Ned preened.
Then he charged and swung.
I parried.
I wish I could report there was some gallant and expert swordplay as I deftly countered his brute force with athletic skill. Instead, as steel touched steel, there was simply a blaze of sparks and a sharp report like a gunshot that made the spectators cry and jump. Our blades merely touched, yet Ned flew backward as if he’d been kicked by a mule. His cutlass went flying, narrowly missing one of his shipmates, and he crashed down like Goliath and lay there, eyes rolled back in his head. The sword stung in my own hand, but I’d been insulated from the worst of the jolt. The air had a burning smell.