Barbary Slave by Gardner Fox - Chapter 08

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 8

Mustafa reis stared up from the main deck at Stephen Fletcher. An eternity of torture and agony for the two Americans lay in those hard black eyes. The corsair sea captain let his gaze rove the girl for a long moment, before he turned and barked orders at the staring crew.

The Spanish merchantman and the corsair brig were drifting farther and farther apart. There was no fight left in either ship, for Mustafa reis wanted only to consolidate his grip on the power this moment was giving him, and the Spaniards desired nothing so much as to run and lick their wounds in peace.

“Take him to the deck tent,” shouted Mustafa reis, waving a mailed arm, “Now that Yussuf is dying, I am pasha in Tripoli and on the Burka.”

Corsair fighting men ran to do his bidding. Their strong brown hands lifted the motionless body of their former ruler and carried him gently up the quarter-deck stairs. They brought him in under the striped length of canvas and lowered him on Marlani's chaise. Mustafa reis came after them, a hand on his scimitar hilt, his chest rising and falling with excitement.

'Yussuf will be dead by sundown,” he announced, staring into the bloodless face of his pasha. “I will rule in Tripoli and on the Mediterranean! His palace will be my palace, his women, my women. His slaves too, will belong to me.

His hand gestured, but he did not look at Fletcher.

"Take the nasrany man. The woman, too. Chain them a yard from each other in the hold, down where the rats grow hungry.”

Eve screamed and fought against the hands that caught her arms and wrists. “Not the rats, no, no! I—I couldn't stand them!”

Fletcher was surrounded by pirates, hanging about his neck, weighting down his arms. All he could do was writhe and strain, while a bare forearm against his throat choked until his head felt like an overblown balloon. Eve was dragged from his side towards the deck companionway,

where all the crew and the janissaries were gathering to stare.

Then Yussuf Caramanli groaned.

The men holding Eve Doremus and Fletcher turned to look at their pasha on the lounge. A trickle of spittle ran down his jaw from a corner of his lips. Blood rose in his face, making it swarthier that usual. The blood at his ribs, where a Spanish bullet had ripped the flesh, was bright and red.

Her fear of a few moments earlier replaced by a new arrogance, Marlani Chamiprak came striding forward from the deck-rail against which she had been cowering.

“The pasha is not dead,” she said hoarsely, glaring at Mustafa reis. “Yussuf Caramanli still lives, and I am his bash-kedin. Release the Americano man and woman. They belong to me, not to Mustafa reis!”

The men stared from the angry woman to the reis. Each of them knew that, if they disobeyed Marlani Chamiprak and Yussuf Caramanli lived, they would be boiled alive in oil for their treachery. On the other hand, if they disobeyed Mustafa reis and Yussuf died, it would be the sea captain who would give orders for their death by torture. Sweat stood out on their dark foreheads, and foreboding lay in their eyes as they glanced. unhappily from the bash-kedin to the corsair lord.

Mustafa reis was thinking hard. Yussuf was alive, but no man could tell how long he would stay alive. Now that the pashaship was so close, he could wait a little while, and pretend loyalty, knowing that he would soon find a way to put Yussuf Caramanli in a Moslem grave.

His glance touched Marlani Chamiprak and ran down the smooth, coppery body, scarcely hidden by that silken veil. He sighed as he studied her slim legs, rounded hips and overripe breasts. He ached to taste her desert savagery on the seraglio cushions, he admitted to himself, but patience was the weapon of a clever man. Believing himself clever, he would practice patience.

The corsair captain bowed low. “The bash-kedin speaks truth. Our pasha is still alive, and we must do all we can to keep him alive. Release the Americanos. Give them to her command, so that they can nurse our pasha.”

Hands fell away from Fletcher as grateful sighs reached his ears.

Marlani Chamiprak clapped her hands. “Bring hot water and clean cloths. Hurry! Hurry!” She looked at Fletcher. “You have some knowledge of wounds, nasrany. As an American marine, you’ll have stopped a wound before now!” No seaman in this day and age was without some crude knowledge of emergency surgery. More than once, on board the Adams or the Constellation, Fletcher had attended to a bullet-probing during the short sea war with France.

“I’ll need a thin stiletto,” he told the woman. Marlani looked at Eve Doremus. “You’ll stay with me, girl, to nurse Yussuf back to health. There will be more reward in this for you than for any crewman. By keeping Yussuf alive, you’ll keep yourselves alive. We three have more to lose if the pasha dies than any other.

Fletcher found a thin Italian dagger whose needle-like blade was to his liking. He knelt over the inert form of the pasha. Eve cut away the leather tunic and Marlani lifted off the coat of chain-mail, baring the corpulent chest. The wound was deep and ugly. Clenching his teeth, Fletcher bent forward and began to probe.

When the pasha showed signs of recovering consciousness, Marlani held a vial of strong French brandy to his lips, forcing him to swallow. Her breathing was shallow and frightened. The thought came to Fletcher that by turning chirurgeon, he was giving Mustafa reis a chance to blame him for Yussuf's death; for if he failed in his task, that wily sea captain would call him a murderer. But is could he lose, since Mustafa meant to kill him by torture, anyhow. Grimly, he worked on, his hands bathed in blood. It took a little less than an hour, but when he was done, the leaden pellet lay on a low tea table, and clean white bandages swathed the pasha's naked chest. Yussuf was breathing hoarsely and heavily. A veil of perspiration beaded from his brown forehead, but that might only be the effect of the strong French brandy that his bash-kedin had poured so enthusiastically down his gullet.

Marlani came close to Fletcher, warm fingers touching his shoulder.

“Will he live, Stefan?”

“Who knows?” Her eyes were bright, almost feverish, as she stared down at him. She breathed faster as she bent and placed her moist mouth to his. Against his lips she whispered, “If he dies, then you die, too—and I become one of Mustafa reis harem women!”

Marlani was aflame with the excitement of this new danger. Hungrily, she pressed against Fletcher, her mouth grinding against his. He thrust her away from him roughly. The pasha of Tripoli was watching them.

Yussuf Caramanli lay with his eyes wide open, staring at his favorite wife. For an instant, before he saw Fletcher watching him, hate and fury gleamed deep in those black orbs. Then the eyelids fell heavily, and the pasha slept.

Fletcher shivered. He would not know for hours, perhaps not even until dawn, whether Yussuf Caramanli would live or die. Judging from the anger he had seen in those fierce eyes, it would make little difference to him. Mustafa reis would kill him by torture, but so might Yussuf, now that he had seen him in the passionate embrace of Marlani Chamiprak.

The Burak slid through the blue waters of the Mediterranean with the ease of a playful dolphin. Her rigging hummed faintly in the onshore breeze, and the sails overhead were fat with wind. Men lounged on the fore-deck or worked lazily at coiling grapnel ropes. A few janissaries, under the watchful eye of the aga, mended bullet-torn mail shirts, or sharpened curved scimitars. The decks were neat and clean, and from the striped deck tent to the trail boards, the Burak glistened with seaworthiness.

An air of waiting held the ship and its men. Eyes that worried over a pumice stone, or a loose link in a chain-mail shirt, turned thoughtfully toward the raised quarterdeck, where the two Americanos could be seen leaning against the starboard rail. All last night those two and Marlani Chamiprak had worked to keep Yussuf Caramanli alive. He was still alive, but for how long? Dark heads shook uncertainly at this question, and dark eyes stared broodingly at Mustafa reis.

The sea captain squatted languidly beside a stout carronade. He gave no outward sign that he seethed with fury. All last night Yussuf Caramanli had hovered between life and a burial at sea. It was five hours past dawn, and he seemed stronger with every minute. Mustafa mulled over several plans in his mind, and decided finally to let the fate that Muhammed said was written in the mind of Allah guide his course of action.

Marlani Chamiprak sat on a plump hassock beside the cushioned divan where Yussuf Caramanli lay breathing heavily. Her brown hand clasped his as her kohl-shadowed eyes studied his bland, expressionless features with the devotion of a religious fanatic. There was no hunger in this coppery woman to bed down with Mustafa reis. She had seen his cruelty often enough to know that it was an ingrained part of the man, like the flow of blood in his veins. What he had done with other women, once he tired of them, he would do with her.

Yussuf pasha she could control. Mustafa reis would control her.

And so Marlani Chamiprak, even as Eve Doremus and Stephen Fletcher, prayed to her gods that this man would live to a fine old age.

Stephen Fletcher was tired. All night he had been on his knees beside the dying man, changing his bandages, and soothing his fevered face with cold compresses. He had found a little catnip in a ship's locker, and made a hot brew to let the pasha sleep more soundly. His face was haggard, and his sunken eyes were ringed with black shadows of fatigue. Eve stirred beside him, her white hand clutching his arm convulsively. “Will he live, Stephen? Will he?”

He shrugged. “All the ship waits for that answer. Perhaps all the world, too. Who knows what treaties Mustafa reis may sign with the bey of Algiers and the bey of Tuis? If the Barbary states unite, can the United States win out against them?”

She shivered and pressed closer, so that he could reassure her by the strength of his arm about her waist. "I'm frightened.” she told him.

“Aye,” he nodded. "My stomach is none too firm itself, at the moment.”

Marlani Chamiprak cried out, and Fletcher whirled. He saw her half standing, crouched forward, fists clenched at her side. He groaned, “The man's dying!" and ran into deck tent.”

Yussuf Caramanli was staring upward with wide eyes. He smiled faintly.

Marlani whispered, “He lives! He lives! The fever is gone, and he knows me!”

Eve leaned heavily against Fletcher, her hands clutching his arms for balance. She moaned, "I thought—I thought it was his end, instead!”

Fletcher slid to a knee beside the lounge and with gentle fingers, sought the bandages. He laid them back as his practiced eyes studied the clean brown flesh on either side of the wound. The discoloration and swelling were gone. Unless a complication developed, Yussuf pasha would be a well man within a few days.

Across the figure of the pasha, Marlani Chamiprak lifted her head and stared at him; triumph shining in her eyes.

Yussuf pasha lifted a hand to touch his wife. “I was at the gates of paradise, but you brought me back. I could hear the singing of the houris that Allah promises to all true believers, but just as my hands were reaching for the jeweled handles of the garden gates, I heard you calling me.” Marlani hissed into his ear, “Mustafa reis had all but made himself pasha in your place! The Americano man and woman he ordered chained in the holds! Myself he thought to enjoy on the cushions where you lie now!”

Yussuf Caramanli smiled, but his eyes darkened in anger. The bash-kedin whispered hoarsely, “He would have wrapped you in a canvas shroud and tossed you over the ship's rail if Stefan had not hunted out the bullet in your ribs and doctored your flesh with alcohol.

Then, remembering the pasha's face when he had touched consciousness earlier, Fletcher added, “When Marlani saw you lived, her joy was so great she couldn't restrain herself from a kiss of gratitude!"

“I owe you my life twice, then. It was a good day that Allah brought you to me, Americano! I mind I said once that the lines of our fates were interwoven, yours and mine. At the time I asked myself, for good or for evil? Now I know the answer to my question. Even the kiss helped me to regain my health, by rousing my spirit!”

His weak hand fumbled a moment at his chest, finding the snake-like chain of fine golden links holding a jeweled crescent. “Take this, Stefan. Put it about your neck. It is my gift to you, and will make you a wealthy man, for the diamonds in it alone will buy you anything from a fine ship to a harem full of women."

“Later,” said Fletcher. “I don't want you to move, for now. You need rest and sleep. In a few days, you'll have your old strength back.”

The pasha looked beyond Fletcher. When the American turned, he realized that Mustafa reis had come among them while they talked, and he stood now, tall and brown and silent in his chain-mail and his wide trousers and pointed slippers, staring down at his ruler with enigmatic eyes.

Mustafa reis looked out across the cold waters of the inland sea, where the moonlight was tipping the waves with white fire. For five hours he had leaned against the larboard rail-capping, motionless. It was night now, and the Burak still fled from the wind like a hare before the hounds. Ever since mealtime, when he had spurned the rice and meat cakes the ship's cook brought him in his cabin, he had been silent and morose, roving the ship from quarter-deck to curving beak. Turmoil bubbled inside him.

Yussuf pasha lived, and would continue to live. Stephen Fletcher and the Americano woman were safe from his torturers, as Marlani Chamiprak was safe from the seraglio cushions where he had already, in his fertile imagination, enjoyed her lush body.

And what would happen to Mustafa reis, who had dared to lift his eyes to the pashaship while the Caramanli still lived? The corsair captain shivered, and wrapped his black wool cloak tighter about his shoulders. If Tripoli were not engaged in war, Yussuf would have him hung naked in a steel cage above the market square, to starve slowly while the vultures came flying to peck away at his living body.

For the first time in his life, Mustafa reis felt gratitude toward these accursed Americanos whose big frigates could smash a brig like the Burak with two good broadsides. The Caramanli dared not kill him—his seamanship and his fighting prowess were needed too much for him to be put to death as a traitor. Yussuf pasha would forget Mustafa's treason in order to protect his crown.

Ah, but when this war was over? What would happen then to Mustafa reis? Yussuf pasha was a jealous man. He was more jealous of his throne than of his wife. With his wealth, he could buy a dozen fine wives any day in the week, but a kingdom like Tripoli came into a man's hands only once in a lifetime. No, the pasha would not forget Mustafa reis then, when peace lay across Tripoli like a marabout's blessing. That would be the time to put the rebellious reis in a cage and give him to the beaks of the vultures.

Mustafa reis smiled thinly as his brown hand closed to a fist. “I'd be a fool to stay and let him kill me,” he whispered into the scarf at his throat.

Still, by leaving Tripoli he would be giving up everything it had taken years to amass, by plunder and piracy, in his great stone house near the Street of the Sail-makers. There was a better way to protect himself than this.

Yussuf Caramanli could still die, by poison.

Some minutes after dawn, a curving dagger was plunged into the back of the ship's cook. The man gurgled once, and his writhing body shuddered again and again, while Mustafa reis hammered home the length of his bared blade into the man’s back.

As the cook slipped to the dirty planking of his little cook-room, Mustafa reis stepped over him to the wooden shelf where a bowl of barley porridge lay beside a tray of Balban figs. This was the pasha's breakfast. From a pocket of his jellaby, the corsair captain drew out a small vial of purple Venetian glass. Unstoppering the vial, he held it over the bowl and watched the colorless poison run down into the porridge.

Mustafa reis stoppered the flask and went to the small kitchen locker. He pushed open the locker door and placed the empty vial carefully inside where it could be easily found. Then he turned and stared at the dead cook.

Iskander could not be found dead like this, stabbed in the back. He would have to go overboard into the sea. The deck above was silent; the ship slept. Only the helmsman at the wheel and the lookout in the maintop would be awake to what Mustafa reis did in the dawn hours.

The corsair captain bent and shouldered the body of the dead cook. He was a light man, thin and bony. He wore only a thin loincloth against the heat of his cooking fires, glowing redly now in the iron braziers. Mustafa reis carried the dead cook up the companionway to the main-deck hatch and lowered him slowly to the stair-treads Then he went back to the kitchen for two of the big barrels in which the food refuse was kept, to be dumped over-side for the fishes.

Sheltered by the hatch cover, Mustafa reis stripped naked and donned the thin twist of linen that was the dead man's only garment. He lowered the thin body into one of the barrels, then carried them both to the larboard rail.

The helmsman dozed at the wheel. In the maintop, the lookout was slumped in sleep. Mustafa reis smiled. He lifted the heavier barrel and emptied it, watching the body hit a following wave with a splash. He emptied the other barrel, then plodded back into the companionway.

In the kitchen he donned his own chain-mail, trousers and slippers. He dropped the loincloth out the kitchen port. Then, picking up the breakfast tray, he moved from the kitchen along the narrow companionway to the door of the cabin where the Americano woman slept. He put the tray on the floor and scratched lightly at the door panels.

When he heard the bed ropes creak, Mustafa whirled and fled for the safety of his own cabin, and a good sleep. When he was awakened Yussuf Caramanli would be dead and he Mustafa reis, fould be pasha of Tripoli in his place.

Eve Doremus stretched lazily in her little cabin bunk. She wore no clothing—there was no such thing as nightclothes in the Barbary states—and the red, early morning sun was a soothing warmth across her flesh. She was lazy with lanquid flesh and hazily remembered dreams. In those dreams, Stephen Fletcher had been pasha of Tripoli and she and Marlani his favorite wives, and whenever it was her turn to come to him on the seraglio divan, he always called Marlani. Until this very last time of all, just before the cook had scratched on her cabin door. She had gone angrily into the selamlik, to find Fletcher calmly smoking a water-pipe and discussing types and manners of revenge with Mustafa reis. Fletcher, as pasha, had ordered the sea captain away, and had come to Eve, and—

She giggled, flushing, burrowing a little deeper into the cabin bunk. That had been a fine dream, but its memory was a pallid substitute for the real love her body needed. A little shocked, but secretly pleased at herself, Eve realized that the last night she had spent with Stephen Fletcher in his palace room was the most important night in all her life. It taught her she was, first and last, a woman. It was his hands that had brought her vividly to life and for the first time she had been warmed by a sense of fulfillment and emotional peace.

In the days and weeks since then, sailing across the Mediterranean in the Burdik, she had been constantly near him. When he leaned against the rail, the wind whipping his yellow hair of his bronzed forehead, something pulled her to his side so that her hips could brush his, her shoulder press his own. More than once, she had wanted to whisper an invitation to him to tiptoe down to her little cabin when night closed in around the Burak. It wouldn't have been so brazen, for she had often read in his eyes the adoration the big American marine had for her.

“Land of mercy!" she whispered to the little cabin room. “If I don't stir myself and get his breakfast to him, Yussuf will have me whipped until Stephen won't want to look at me!”

She came off the bed and yawned, both white arms stretched toward the ceiling beams. Then she dove for the silken vest and thin, loose trousers in which she clad her body during the warm days on deck.

Just across the door sill she found the platters of Balban figs and steaming porridge. With the tray in a hand she moved swiftly down the companionway and up onto the main deck. The ship was just stirring itself into wakefulness. Men were crouched in the rail shadows, munching sour black bread and dates. On the quarter-deck, Fletcher sat cross-legged before the deck tent, a curved scimitar before him. Eve walked toward him, her eyes dancing, feeling his gaze ardently clinging to the smooth flowing curves of her body. Remembering her dreams, she smiled flirtatiously at him. Then she was within the deck tent, sitting beside the divan on a hassock, placing the platter of food on the low, bedside table. The white kitten that was Marlani Chamiprak's plaything stretched and mewed, and rolled playfully over on its back.

“Run along, Piri,” she whispered. But the kitten mewed and rubbed its back against her bare ankle.

Yussuf Caramanli sat up as Eve pressed thick cushions behind his back. His eyes were clear and bright, for he was nearly recovered. He even grumbled a little when Eve showed him the figs and porridge that Iskander had sent for his breakfast.

“Give me the figs and send the porridge back to the kitchen bins,” he growled.

The kitten mewed plaintively, scratching lightly at Eve's foot with a soft paw.

“Little Piri would not scorn the barley paste,” she told the pasha.

“Then give him some I ought to make Iskander come up here and eat it off the floor the way the cat does!”

Eve bent and put a little of the mush on the deck planks. Piri sniffed at it and began to eat. He caught a clump of the wet barley with his teeth, chewing, dropping the little pellet and then retrieving it. Eve watched him for a moment.

“Highness, you must eat. Stefan says it is the only way in which you can recover your strength.”

Yussuf Caramanli growled and grumbled, sliding lower into the cushions. “The figs will give me all the strength I need.”

Eve held the silver bowl in her left hand, while her right selected a spoon. “You’d eat this if you could see the way little Piri is doing away with the—oh!”

She broke off and stared. There was such alarm in her voice that the pasha heaved himself onto an elbow to stare down at the little kitten. It was contorted into a ball of white fur, mewling piteously. It arched and jerked, writhing across the deck planks. A white froth come to its lips.

“Poison!” whispered Yussuf hoarsely. His eyes bulged and he fell back, mouth open in horror. His hands went instinctively to his middle, almost feeling the pains that would have been convulsing him if he had eaten the gruel.

Eve sat frozen in shock. It occurred to her that she would be suspected of poisoning the food, for it had been she who had tried to argue Yussuf into eating it. She stared at the kitten, not seeing Fletcher as he came running from the deck rail, not hearing Marlani Chamiprak cry out as she hurtled forward from the curtained section of the deck tent, where she had been completing her dressing.

Fletcher bent and picked up the kitten, it's body contorted in death. Marlani sobbed softly and came close to Fletcher, peering down at the animal. Then she turned and threw herself on her knees beside the pasha, weeping in a terrified frenzy.

Yussuf said, “The Americano girl is the guilty one! It was she who kept urging me to eat the porridge!”

Fletcher stepped forward. “I cannot believe that, pasha effendi. With you dead, Mustafa reis would take her, and me, and your bash-kedin. He would be pasha in your place. By killing you, she'd be dooming herself to death by torture. It doesn't make sense.”

Yussuf Caramanli scowled thoughtfully. After a while he said, "No, it does not make sense. I know, as you know, that only my living body keeps Mustafa reis from his vengeance. But if if was not the Americano girl, who was it?”

Corsairs came running with bared blades, to scour the ship on the orders of a revitalized pasha. They returned with word that Iskander the cook could not be found. In his herb cabinet they had come across an empty glass vial that, had held deadly poison.

“Iskander?” whispered Yussuf slowly. “Now why should my cook, who has been with me for twelve years, choose this time to put poison in my food?”

Yussuf Caramanli lay a while, silent, among his divan cushions. Then he smiled grimly and looked at Fletcher. “Mustafa reis is the man who did this. He's the only one on board ship with a sufficient motive, whose hate for you and the Americano girl, and his lust to become pasha in my place, would make him take such chances. Yet, I have no proof of this. Lacking proof, I cannot act, for Mustafa reis is a man strong among my people. You'll have to watch him, Stefan. Watch him to protect my life. That is my command.”

As the days slid away to the gurgle of white sea foam running under the keel-boards, Yussuf pasha regained his strength swiftly. Now Fletcher was with him always, except while he oversaw the preparation of food. The freedom of the ship was his, and he moved among the corsairs with a lithe stride and arrogance in the swing of his wide shoulders. These dark men gave way sullenly, and yet respectfully, for every man of them had seen his saber-play when he held the quarter-deck stairs against the Spaniards.

Only Mustafa reis remained antagonistic, with a deadly calm that told Fletcher he was only waiting for another chance to rob the world of the man who held him back from vengeance. The sea captain would watch Fletcher with slitted eyes and a gentle smile on his lips, as though a fallen angel of Shaitan whispered words of promise into his ear.

Now Allah relented in his treatment of the Burak. At sunset on the second day after the white kitten had died, the corsair brig ran down a broad-beamed Greek schooner and boarded her almost without a fight. To the delight of every corsair, the Schooner's hold bulged with gold ingots. With such a prize, the Burak needed only a safe harbor to make its journey fabulously successful. The sails remained aloft at night, and the helmsman steered by Polaris. A favoring wind came off the coast of Sicily to carry the Burak before it. Men could not sleep in the night, but remained awake, staring into the darkness, afraid that a distant glimmer was not the campfire of a fishing crew but the riding lights of a United States warship.

It was at the fifth hour of the night; when the sails creaked faintly overhead and the rush of water under the keel was louder than the whispers of the men hanging breathless at the railings, that Fletcher came toward the deck tent on silent, slippered feet. He had been below, to sleep a little against the night watch he would stand on the quarter-deck. He was a little early, for his sleep had been restless. The knowledge that the pasha of Tripoli had stumbled with the luck of sultan on a golden fortune weighted down his spirits.

The aga sat with Yussuf under the striped deck awning. His words carried easily in the stillness, and at the tone the man used, Fletcher paused and stood still.

“The gold is just one more proof of Allah's favor, blessed one! You've not forgotten the fleet you have been building at Zletin and Sabratha?”

“I have not forgotten, Ayub,” said Yussuf Caramani grimly. “More than fifty new ships, fitted out with the finest cannon my gold could buy in France and Spain. That's why this Greek ship is such a boon from Allah. It restores a fortune to my treasury rooms when they are most depleted.”

The aga, laughed softly. “Fifty brigs, each with twenty heavy guns, hidden now at Jerba. Enough to sweep the Americano fleet off the seas! And the best of it is, no one suspects. No, not even our own corsair captains!”

A low chuckle filled the air. “The less ears to hear, the less tongues to speak. I've been as secretive as a thief in the money pots. Now I only wait until the last of those fifty ships is complete with crew and gunpowder, and I'll take them out into the Mediterranean and teach the Americano dogs what it means to beard a Barbary pasha in his den!”

Fletcher felt his stomach heave. Anguish flooded in, paralyzing his legs and chest. A fleet of fifty brigs, each armed with twenty cannon! Even the Constitution and the President could not hope to stand against such sea power If he himself had not known of such a weapon, hidden in the shoals near Jerba, Commodore Samuel Barron, who commanded the Mediterranean fleet in this blockade war against the Barbary state of Tripoli, could not possibly know.

He had heard no mention of a date when those ships would be properly outfitted and ready to be flung against the Americans, but he remembered the frantic activity that had taken the pasha to Zliten and Sabratha again and again while Marlani Chamiprak had strained her body to his in the deserted selamlik. Soon now, they would be ready.

He would have to move fast. Immediately upon their return to Tripoli, he would meet his friends in the Olive Tree Tavern and arrange for their escape. Eve Doremus would go with him; he would never leave her behind to face the fury of a betrayed Yussuf Caramanli!