The Confusion

Jeronimo said, “You are all filthy liars, or imbeciles. Obviously there is no reason to go to Cairo!”

“On the contrary: There is an excellent reason, which is that the Investor expects to meet us there, to claim his rake-off.”

“The investor himself!? Or did you mean to say, the Investor’s agents?” Jack said sharply.

Moseh said, “It makes no difference,” but exchanged a nervous look with Dappa.

“I heard one of the Pasha’s officials joking that the Investor was going to Cairo to hunt for Ali Zaybak!” said the rais, trying to inject a bit of levity. The attempt failed, leaving him bewildered, and Moseh on the verge of blacking out.

“Why do we waste breath speaking of the Frog?” Jeronimo demanded. “Let the whoreson chase phant’sies to the end of the earth for all we care.”

“The answer is simple: He has a knife to our throats,” said al-Ghurab.

“What are you talking about?” Jack asked.

“That jacht did not sail down here only to provide a diversion,” said the Corsair. “He could have dispatched any moldy old tub for that purpose.”

“The Turk makes sense,” Dappa said to Jack in English. “Jacht means ‘hunter,’ and that is the swiftest-looking vessel I’ve ever seen. She could sail rings around us-firing broadsides all the while.”

“So Meteore is poised to kill us, if we play any tricks,” Jack said, “but how will she know whether or not we need to be killed?”

“Before we row away tonight, we are to sound a certain bugle-call. If we fail-or if we sound the wrong one-she’ll fall on the galleot at first light, like a lioness on a crate full of chickens,” the Turk answered. “Likewise, we are to give certain signals to the Algerian ships that will escort us along the coast of Barbary, and to the French ones that will accompany us through the eastern Mediterranean.”

“And you are the only man who knows these signals, I suppose,” Dappa said, finding amusement here, as he did in many odd places.

“Hmph…what’s the world coming to when a French Duke cannot bring himself to trust a merry crew such as ours?” Jack grumbled.

“I wonder if the Investor knew, all along, that the brig would contain gold?” Dappa said.

“I wonder if he will know tomorrow,” said Jack, staring into the eyes of the rais.

Al-Ghurab grinned. “There is no signal for that information.”

Moseh, clapping his hands together, now said, “I believe the larger point our captain is making is that even if some of us…” glancing towards Jeronimo, “are inclined to turn this unexpected good fortune into a pretext for intrigues and skullduggery, we’ll not even have the opportunity to scheme against; betray; and/or murder one another unless we get the goods off this brig fast and commence rowing.”

“This is merely a postponement,” Jeronimo sighed. Obviously, it would take many days to cheer him up. “The inevitable result will be double-crossings and a general bloodbath.” He reached down with both hands and heaved a gold bar off the top of the hoard with a grunt of effort.

“One,” said Nasr al-Ghurab.

Jeronimo began trudging up the stairs.

Moseh stepped forward and wrapped his fingers around a bar; bent his knees; and pulled it up off the stack. “It is not so different from pulling on a wooden oar,” he said.

“Two,” said the rais.

Dappa hesitated, then forced himself to reach out and put his hands on a bar, as if it were red hot. “White men tell the lie that we are cannibals,” he said, “and now I am become one.”

“Three.”

“Don’t be gloomy, Dappa,” Jack said. “Recall that I could’ve run away last night. Instead I listened to the Imp of the Perverse.”

“What is your point?” Dappa muttered over his shoulder.

“Four,” said al-Ghurab, watching Jack grab a bar.

Jack began to mount the stairs behind Dappa. “I’m the only one of us who had a choice. And-never mind what the Calvinists say-no man is truly damned until he has damned himself. The rest of you are just like trapped animals gnawing your legs off.”

What when we fled amain, pursu’d and strook

With Heav’ns afflicting Thunder, and besought

The Deep to shelter us? This Hell then seem’d

A refuge from those wounds: or when we lay

Chain’d on the burning Lake? that sure was worse.

–MILTON,

Paradise Lost

They left the ram embedded in the brig’s buttock and rowed off about an hour before dawn as one of the Corsairs played a heathen melody on a bugle. Most of their previous cargo and ballast had been thrown overboard as the gold bars had been passed from hand to hand up out of the brig’s shot-locker and across the deck and slid down a plank into the galleot. As sunrise approached, the breeze off the ocean consolidated itself into a steady west wind. First light revealed a colossal wall of red clouds that began somewhere below the western horizon and reached halfway to the stars. It was a sight to make sailors scurry for safe harbor, even if they were not aboard an undecked, anchorless row-boat fleeing from the iniquity of Man and the wrath of God.