"Stand at attention," he ordered.
Sparrow and I were already at it, but knife points jabbing our backs brought them straighter still. Jim clapped his long arms to his sides and stood with feet apart.
"Are any of you officers? Address me as Murad Reis."
"I am, Murad Reis," I said.
"What is your name and rank?"
"Captain Whitman, in command of the Vindictive when we abandoned ship."
"Do you dare lie to me, you Yankee swine? I saw the cap'n through my glass. He was a black-bearded man."
"Sir, Captain Phillips appointed me captain of the vessel just before he died."
"You're quick to assume the honors—in that like the rest. But I take it you're telling the truth, so you may follow me to my cabin." He called an order in the Arabic tongue to our guards, and at once vanished down the companionway.
I was brought to gaudily furnished quarters and given a seat on a chest. With some histrionics, Murad Reis half reclined on an ottoman, smoking a water pipe lighted by a Negro servant.
"Have you been long enough in these seas to have heard of me?" he asked lazily.
"I heard English sailors speak of you when at the hospital in Valletta," I answered. At least I had heard his name mentioned not long ago.
"And of my brother, Hamed Reis?"
"Nay, sir."
"Did they speak of my nationality before I embraced Islam?"
"They thought you were English born, but I think you were born and raised in America."
" 'Tis a fact I curse to hell. However, I praise Allah for letting me see the light in time. The long and short of it is that my brother and I, both from Baltimore and not subscribing to the proposition of equality with peasants, were Loyalists in the late war. For this our manor house was robbed and burned, our plantation laid waste, and we forced to flee from the mob. We managed to get through to the English lines and finally on an English ship where we gave 'em some of their own medicine. After the war we wanted nothing more of an English king who'd make peace with traitors, or nothing more of the traitors themselves except to harry 'em whenever we came upon 'em. My brother found his heart's desire serving the Sultan of Morocco. I found mine under Pasha Yussuf. La illaha ill' Allah!"
There was a small Turkish quarter in Valletta and the latter cry was not uncommonly raised along the waterfront. It was the watchword of Mohammedans everywhere, and seemed to mean, "There is no God but God."
"I told you this much so you won't think it a piece of good luck that the reis into whose hands you've fallen was American born," Murad Reis went on.
"I won't think so, sir."
"In fact, any good luck you've ever had has run out."
"I'm resigned to being a prisoner of the Pasha of Tripoli."
Murad Reis removed the stem of the pipe from his mouth, threw back his head, and bayed with laughter. I had never heard such a laugh out of an American throat. Plainly he had learned it since he had turned pirate.
"You are, are you!" he cried when he had wiped his eyes. "You a New England Yankee and as dull-witted as that?"
"I don't understand you, sir."
"It's true that my Pasha has declared war on your Yankee Doodle. Many a Yankee captain will be ransomed or sold into slavery when your president prostrates himself before my Pasha's throne. But you and your two hearties won't be among the number."
His eyes glistened with mirth as he waited my answer.
"What is our status then, if you'll kindly tell me?"
"Gladly. You are three dead men."
"We didn't know it."
"You may take a long time to find it out, but in the end—if you breathe that long—you'll see what I mean. In resisting capture by my Pasha's frigate Ayesha, the Vindictive sank with all hands. No doubt the Vindictive caught fire, which reached her magazines and caused her blowing to hell. It's not the first time that a Yankee vessel, presuming to do battle with her betters, went down with no soul saved. In fact, I was present at a similar event in the late war."
Murad Reis, was the ship you mean the new Saratoga, commanded by Captain Fairbank and sunk by Our Eliza under Captain Godwine Tarlton? The latter s crew were mainly lascars, Captain Phillips said. Were two of his officers young Loyalists fighting their own countrymen and now reis of pirate kings? My blood runs cold.
But I did not speak, and under Murad's searching glance, my face stayed still.
"Your blowing up the Vindictive to keep her out of my hands will never be known to living man except myself," he went on, the evil mirth gone from his face and his tone low and earnest. "You'd naturally ask how I could pull the wool over the eyes of my crew, and what would be the good. Let me tell you. I have the only glass on board. There's method in my madness—I have my own ways of doing things —and before long I'll be the Reis Effendi, which means the admiral of my Pasha's fleet. When I saw four men come overside from that bloody, empty deck, I suspected you'd set fuse to powder. It was just what Yankee dogs would do, God damn their souls to hell!"
At the last his voice did not change in the least, but the pupils of his eyes spread and almost filled the pale-gray iris.
"As you swam out, I called to my crew that the ship had caught fire—you were quitting her like rats—I could see it with my glass close to the deck, under the fallen foremast—it must be a pot of Greek fire turned over, for it burned without smoke. Couldn't the lubbers see it in the scupper vents? So when she blew, not one of 'em guessed the truth."
What was the truth of the Saratoga's sinking, Murad Reis? It was not what was given out, if I believe the intimations of my soul. Did Our Eliza's captain have the only glass—or the only witnesses of standing—in his white hands? What great cause was served?
"What had I to gain?" Murad Reis asked, languidly blowing smoke. "Since you're a dead man, I'll tell you. My rascals fight for loot—each man his appointed share. He'll risk his life for it, but if there's no booty to be got, he'd rather lie in the sun. We'll have many fights with Yankees in the next year, and we don't want the word to go out that they'll sink their own ships rather than strike their colors, for that's madness worse than a dervish's, and Mohammedans hold madmen in holy terror. The Vindictive fought us to hell as it was, if 'twill comfort your soul. What have we got to show for it but a leaking ship—we'll have to turn back to Tripoli with our cruise barely begun—forty-two men lost in trade for your thirteen, and a prize of three breathing corpses!"
"That's the exact number, sir. You kept a good count."
" 'Twasn't easy, with so much running back and forth, but I thought it about right. You other three are no longer Whitman, Jones, Smith, however you've signed on. What's your given name?"
"Homer, sir."
He looked a little startled. "Slur it a little, and that's Omar in Arabic. But don't think it will be any use to you. We'll call the black by the number fourteen, fifteen for the little cockerel, sixteen for you. You'll be put ashore, and before we sail again, I'll tell my crew you were set upon by street gangs—Yanks are hated in Tripoli almost as bad as in London—and stoned to death. But that won't happen. You're going out on the desert to disappear. Now what's that in your pocket, fastened to your belt by a black thong?"