Barbary Slave by Gardner Fox - Chapter 09
1955 Genre: Historical Fiction / Swashbuckling Pirates
SOLD INTO SLAVERY! It was unthinkable that innocent Eve Doremus of Boston would be forced to parade her naked beauty in a Barbary Coast slave mart. Or that the blond giant who guarded the Sultan's female chattels would be a U.S. Marine lieutenant. Yet anything was possible in exotic, violent, 19th Century Tripoli.
Amid the love-making, intrigues and tortures of the Pasha's pagan court, Eve and her marine—Stephen Fletcher—fell in love. But their romance was destined to face every temptation and peril as they loved and battled their way to freedom.
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CHAPTER 9
The Olive Tree Tavern was almost empty. The shadows cast by the hanging oil lamps were long and black, adding to the funereal pall that held the three men in its spell at the long wooden table. Wooden noggins of oily rum were moved in restless little circles across the table top.
“The damned double-dealer!' It was Mark Avison who rasped the words, straightening suddenly, his pocked face flushed under unruly yellow hair. His wide shoulders flung back suddenly in anger, he lifted his big hand and banged his noggin of rum down hard so that the liquid spilled out and ran down his fingers.
“Easy, Mark. Easy,” counseled the saturnine Framingham, his dark eyes bright. “We’ve nothing to go on but suspicions. True, Yuvaz hasn't sent us word as was promised, but—“
The man with the curly blond hair would not be mollified. He hunched forward on the wooden bench and thrust his scarred jaw forward. “What further proof do we need? He sent the little slave girl to find us—Shellah, her name is—and explain that he was working to get us horses and weapons. Now two weeks have gone by, and not a peep out of him! I don't like it. I wouldn't be surprised to learn he was betraying us to Yussuf, as soon as the pasha comes back from his little sea jaunt!"
"Hold your tongues!” hissed Ned Brunner. The stocky Pennsylvanian was staring at the wide door of the tavern, his broad face an oaken mask. They could hear the footfalls themselves, now: one set of feet striding confidently, the other padding more softly, fearfully. Slowly, Brunner relaxed and his wide mouth quirked in a derisive smile.
“We're too high strung, the lot of us. Fine ones, we are, to play at heroes escaping to freedom!”
Then his cold gray eyes widened, and his companions swiveled around on the bench. Stephen Fletcher was coming through the door out of the late spring night, one hand resting on the shoulder of Yuvaz the Armless.
Mark Avison stood up erect, and some of the anger in him spilled over. “It’s good to see you, Steve, but that double-dealer with you—I wager a month's pay, if ever I collect pay as a marine again, that he's working with the pasha to betray us all!”
Fletcher chuckled and pushed Yuvaz onto the bench beside Ned Brunner. “Then you lose the bet. Yuvaz is with us, all the way. Right, Yuvaz?”
The armless man nodded silently, eagerly. His eyes were feverishly bright as he hunched forward, writhing. If he had arms, he would have been hugging himself at the moment.
“It is true words Stefan speaks. A little while ago, I was undecided about betraying you. Mashallah! I admit it, you see. I was not concerned with whether a handful of Americanos escaped the walls of Tripoli so much as I was concerned over Hamet Caramanli, and his return to the throne!”
Mark Avison jerked forward, a big hand reaching out for the smaller Yuvaz. “So you'd have given us up to torture, would you, just to play your little game? And the desert girl, Shellah? What of her, eh? You'd have let her go to the rack, or be hung in a cage for the birds to eat?”
Fletcher moved against Avison, knocking him off balance to a sitting position on the bench. He was as big a man as the New Englander, and as strong. His hand held the former marine down and he said evenly, “Go easy, Mark! No harm's been done to Shellah, nor is any likely to come, as long as you keep your head. As long as we all keep our heads, for that matter. Yuvaz has been gathering swords and pistols, and horses and saddles, too, for us.”
Caleb Framingham chuckled softly, his sombre eyes moving from Avison to Fletcher. His lank black hair hung uncut about his skinny neck, swirling a little as he bobbed his head at the armless man. “If he's done all that, Steve, why hasn't he sent us word? We've been worried sick.”
Fletcher smiled grianly. “He’s been busy in other ways. Tell them, Yuvazi's!”
The armless man writhed ecstatically, his black eyes rolling in his head. “I’ve had word from the Tauregs, in from the oasis of Jaghbub! They brought news that Hamet Caramanli has joined forces with the Americanos!”
“God’s my life!” exclaimed the suspicious Brunner, wide mouth opening. “I don't believe it!”
Framingham waved a bony hand for silence. “Go on, go on!”
Yuvaz said eagerly, “You remember William Eaton, the Americano who was United States consul at Tunis, back in 1799?”
Fletcher added, “He’s been made a general since then. My father told me once he served under Washington during our Revolution.”
Yuvaz nodded. “He is the man. At the outbreak of Yussuf's war with your country, Eaton was still your consul at Tunis. When the Philadelphia went down, he decided that the only way the war could be brought to a successful finish was to depose Yussuf and put Hamet back on the throne as pasha. I did not know this until very recently, when I talked to the Jaghbub nomads.”
The armless man spoke on, and it was Avison who brought a noggin of rum to him and held it so he could drink. Eagerly, Yuvaz resumed his tale. He spoke of the fact that Eaton and Consul General James L. Cathcart of Tripoli who left that city at the outset of the war decided they would undertake an expeditionary attack on Tripoli by land, to act in conjunction with the Sea blockade under Commodore Edward Preble, then commanding the fleet. To receive support for this venture, Eaton returned to the United States in the spring of 1803, where he appeared before President Thomas Jefferson and the Congress of the United States of America.
Eaton was appointed navy agent, and directed to act with Commodore Samuel Barron, who was replacing Preble as commander of the Mediterranean squadron. In midsummer, 1804, Commodore Barron took the U.S.S. President to Tripoli with General William Eaton as a passenger. Put ashore at Alexandria, Egypt, Eaton began communicating with Hamet Caramanli, to secure his cooperation in a land assault on Tripoli.
All these matters took time, and much secrecy. Hamet was naturally suspicious, Yuvaz stated apologetically, for if their attack should fail, death would be his gift from Yussuf. Lieutenant P. J. O'Bannon of the United States Marine Corps and Midshipman George Mann of the Argus were his American companions as he conducted his negotiations with the ex-pasha of Tripoli. It was agreed that Hamet would rouse up the local sheikhs, and bring a force of Barbary Arabs to fight together with the United States marines and Greek mercenaries under Eaton and O'Bannon. A caravan of baggage camels would carry their equipment.
Their march began in March, 1805, from Marabout. They traveled by way of sand valleys and rocky lowlands, fighting the greed of local sheikhs and the mercurial enthusiasms and despairs of the Tripolines who rode with Hamet Caramanli. They made from five to twenty miles a day, across a hot barren land where the thermometer over one hundred and fifty degrees day after day were revolts to be overcome, and lagging spirits to be cheered or lashed into barbaric eagerness. Slowly but steadily a sweltering land where heat and sand and lack of the little expedition moved westward across the coastal shore of northern Africa.
April found the Bedouin sheikhs deserting in large numbers. They were at Sidi, Barrani when Eaton faced the treacherous sheikh, El Taib, and threatened to shoot him down as an enemy if he gave more trouble. This breach of relations was patched up, and the march went on, but the Qued Ali tribesmen were fickle and insincere in their friendliness, though their large herds of goats and sheep, camels, horses and cattle had added meat to the rice diets of the Americans.
Yuvaz shook his head and looked sorrowful. “I could not understand this attitude of the desert peoples. Hamet was their pasha. They should have welcomed the change to put him back on his throne!”
Brunner grinned sardonically. “They don't have your faith. Maybe they heard about your arms.”
Yuvaz scowled for a moment, then showed his white teeth in a mirthless grin. “Yussuf will lose more than his arms , if Hamet becomes pasha. I, myself, will personally direct his torture!”
Avison shivered, staring into the maniacal eyes. He gestured,abruptly, and growled, “How close to Tripoli are they now?”
From Sollum to Bardia and beyond, there were more threats of revolt, explained Yuvaz. Once the American marines faced their desert allies with rifles at the ready when a disaffection threatened the food supply. The lack of water, Yuvaz admitted, more than once contributed to revolt. At an old Roman ruin, they were obliged to drink water with two dead men floating in it. To top this, the Argus was late at the rendezvous point off Bomba.
On the morning of April 16, the Argus hove into sight, followed two days later by the Hornet. Equipped with good food and freshwater, the expedition pressed on toward Derna. Eaton had brought a mutinous band of desert sheikhs, fickle officers and janissaries of a deposed pasha, and a handful of American sailors and marines six hundred miles across a sweltering land where heat and sand and lack of water were enough to drive men mad. But now his cannon pointed down at Derna, and Derna commanded the land gates of the city of Tripoli.
Yuvaz laughed harshly and stared around him at the intent Americans.
“At one time, I could not make up my mind whether to betray you and earn the good graces of Yussuf so that I might continue to plot against him, or help you to spite him. All that is forgotten, now. The Americanos are allies of my lord, Hamet the Blessed. So you are my allies. I have scimitars and pistols, bags of gunpowder and shot, hidden in the cellars of my friends. There are fleet horses, too, with saddles for their backs, ready to carry you to safety. You will ride the coastal road to Derna, where your General Eaton is in command.”
“He took the place, then?" asked Framingham. Yuvaz nodded. “After a fight of two and a half hours. Eighty-five men he had—against ten times that number!" The armless man shrugged. “There were two thousand Arabs under Hamet, but—“ Yuvaz spat in disgust—“they were hired with money given Hamet the Blessed by your General Eaton. It was not the Bedawi tribesmen who won Derna, but the American marines and the Greek cannoneers who fought with them!
“That is why you can now escape from Tripoli by land. You have Derna to escape to. You men will be welcomed by Hamet, for you know the defenses of Tripoli better than any except Yussuf's own captains. I myself will go with you, as guide and interpreter.”
Yuvaz fell silent, to drink again as Avison held the noggin to his mouth. He sat silent, now, listening to the excited voices of the Americans swirl around him. The years were bringing his vengeance near, and Yuvaz hugged the moment with every wild beat of his fanatical heart.
Fletcher was saying, “We'll leave tomorrow night. We've got to get word to Commodore Barron about that secret fleet! He's going to have to smash that now, if he can, before it's ready to go to sea against him.”
“There'll be the Argus or the Hornet at Derna, ready to carry word. How soon can we be there, Caleb?”
The lank New Yorker scowled thoughtfully. “Derna’s roughly seven hundred miles from Tripoli. A fast horseman can make that distance in a little less than ten days. If we leave the Cyrenaica, Gate at midnight, we’ll be there in plenty of time.”
"If Yussuf doesn't catch us and bring us back,” growled Brunner gloomily.
Yuvaz shook his head, Yussuf Caramanli will not know for sure whether the American forces will be marching west along the desert roads of Cyrenaica toward Tripoli. He will not dare leave the city to chase a few escaped slaves. He'll prefer to remain here, where he is strongest!”
Fletcher nodded. “And where he can keep a finger on his hidden fleet, to hurl it out against the blockading ships when it's ready.” He drew a deep breath, then added grimly. “Let’s hope he doesn't do that until we've gotten word to Barron!”
The girl was waiting in the shadow of a marble trellis as Fletcher came striding through the palace gardens, past the flower squares and the dolphin fountain that splashed its crystal waters into the wide pool below. She came forward with a faint clash of bangles and necklaces, her soft, dark eyes glowing brightly under the gold-threaded rim of her hood.
“Stefan, I came to warn you—“
“Shellah!”
“Hssst! No noise! Marlani has sent Eve to the haremlik, to stitch seed pearls onto some divan cushions. Instead of Eve, you'll find Marlani waiting in your room.”
Fletcher drew a deep breath, feeling anger and panic rising in him. That amorous she-cat If she got in his way, he'd wring her soft brown throat with his own hands! The lives of a score or more Americans, including that of Eve Doremus herself, depended on a swift escape tomorrow night should Yussuf pasha catch his favorite wife and himself together in his little room, there’d be no escape except to the torture dungeons.
“The fool! That stupid little mink of a fool girl!”
Shellah smiled, but there was anxiety in her eyes. "You won't let her change your plans, Stefan?"
Her worry caught his ear. He remembered something that Mark Avison had said, earlier this night. Fletcher grinned. “He’s a big brute, isn't he?”
Shellah flushed and let her eyes fall. “Mark Avison promised he'd come back for me when the Americanos put Yussuf off the throne.”
“And they will, if Marlani doesn't upset our little apple-cart with her heat!”
Shellah whispered a prayer to Allah as Fletcher whirled on a heel and moved across the garden path toward the arched portico of the Selamlik quarters, where the grill work windows glimmered like fairy tracings in the moonlight. His mind balanced Marlani Chamiprak and her appetites against everything he planned, and he was alarmed at the small, mocking voice of doubt in him. He knew well enough what the bash-kedin wanted, and the dangers in giving in to her, but he didn't know what his reaction to her would be. He found himself rationalizing, that he could take her as she asked, and run the risk of being found by Yussuf Caramanli. Or he could attempt to dissuade her, plead the dangers of discovery, and hope that for once, she would let reason rule her flesh. As his fingers stretched for the door pull, Stephen Fletcher told himself that whatever happened, it was the will of fate. I'm becoming as fatalistic as a Turk, he thought, and opened the heavy wooden door.
Marlani Chamiprak lay on the little bed propped up against fat, tasseled cushions. Her black hair was gathered high on her head, in thick coils fixed with golden pins. A transparent black khalak was wrapped about her lithe body. “Are you mad, to come here like this? Always before, it was in the Selamlik, when Yussuf was away at Sabratha or Ziten!”
She stretched lazily, and golden bangles clashed musically as they slipped from her wrists to her elbows. For an hour she had waited here, letting the explosive hunger of her appetite build slowly, knowing that shortly this big blond Americano would be in her arms and that powerful body be once again at her command. The fact that Yussuf was within these same palace walls only added to the flavor of this meeting.
“Close the door, Stefan,” she whispered again. Her eyes glittered under their long black lashes. Her full mouth, wet and red, lay like a tempting, overripe fruit in the dusky copper of her face. Fletcher admitted, even as he heard the door latch click behind him, that she was a living torment to the senses. He loved Eve Doremus, and he would have died for her, but this girl from the sand country of inner Libya was a succubus!
“Now come here, and sit beside me.” Her hand patted the edge of the low rope-bed. As he lowered himself to the mattress, Fletcher said hoarsely, “You’re playing with fire, Marlani. If Yussuf suspected we were here—"
“He almost caught us after that fight with the Spaniard, didn't he? I wonder what he thought when he saw me kissing you? Did he really believe what we told him later, that it was out of gratitude?” She laughed softly, and slid lower against the cushions, so that a fold of the thin black veil slipped, and a naked shoulder glowed softly in the lamplight. “And if he believes that lie, will he also wonder what else I might do—in gratitude?”
Her hand touched his wrist and ran up the arm to the hard shoulder, her palm like smooth, fiery satin. The silvered nails dug into his flesh, stinging him. Against the black silk of the khalak her pointed breasts began to rise and fall swiftly.
“Danger stimulates me, Stefan,” she moaned. “To think that Yussuf might walk in that door at any moment—”
She rose suddenly to fling herself against him, head bent a little sideways as her mouth found his, strong young arms around him, straining her body to him.
Marlani never thought of her heritage from savage forebears, from men who lived out their lonely, nomad lives between the oases of Kufra and of Jaghbub, from women raised only that they might study means and ways to bring men pleasure. She only knew that in her flesh lived an insatiable desire for the frenzy of love, a primeval need to perform it in danger, to hurt and be hurt, in inseparable ecstasies of pleasure and pain. As her fingernails scraped along his back, rousing an animal cry from his lungs, she laughed and twisted away.
He lunged after her. One hand caught a fold of her thin black veil and tugged. Then Marlani was whirling on bare feet, her golden anklets tinkling, and the khalak was pulling free, baring her body.
For an instant she paused, quiet, arms held high then she flung herself against him.
At that same instant the door opened.
Yussuf Caramanli stood there, legs spread, eyes like bright black coals.
Marlani Chamiprak screamed. She clawed at Fletcher's chest with her painted nails and the body that had strained toward him now arched furiously away from him.
“Yussuf ! Yussuf ! Protect your basih-kedin! The Americano is like a mad dog!”
“You foul bitch,” the pasha whispered. “Like an alley cat, slinking here and there for your pleasures!”
He came forward. As Marlani shrank from him, the back of his hand caught her alongside the jaw and drove her stumbling back against the wall. The veins in his temples throbbed with rage, and his jaw muscles worked convulsively.
“Should I bury you to your neck in the sand, you desert whore? Or flay you alive, and hang you up on hooks above the slave market?”
The woman whimpered and went to her knees. Her face fell forward into her hands, and the thick black hair came flooding down across her wrists and forearms to veil her body. Almost soundlessly, she sobbed in great jerking heaves.
Yussuf Caramanli looked at Fletcher. The American had never seen hatred like this. It rose from within and distorted the man, mottling his flesh, reddening his bulging eyes and twisting the hard lips into a horrible grimace. And yet it seemed that the pasha was trying to control that rage, to think calmly while every nerve and muscle in his body urged a hot, quick revenge.
“As for you, you nasrany boar, I'll make you wish you'd never been born before I’m through! Molten lead poured down your throat will be too quick—the flayer's knife too easy I need time—time in which to outdo Mustafa reis in your punishment!"
Yussuf gestured and several of his palace guards, who had been standing at the doorway waiting, came forward and grasped Fletcher's arms, bending them up behind his back. Grimly, Fletcher succumbed. To get away now, he would have to overcome a whole city. Worse than the thought of his own approaching tortures was his betrayal of the Americans of the Oliver Tree Tavern. Mark Avison, Caleb Framingham, Ned Brunner: they would wait in vain, now, for their escape. And the U. S. S. Constitution, and the Argus, patrolling the Mediterranean, would be blown out of those via by the hidden fleet that Yussuf pasha was hiding along the shoals of the African coastline.
The guardsmen forced him from the room, bent forward before them as their hands twisted his wrists up against his shoulder blades. Behind him, he could hear Marlani Chamiprak scream in utter terror.