Little Enoch Sutler, whom his shipmates knew best as Sparrow, and whose name in the prison was Kamstash, remained as dauntless of spirit and as true a man as ever walked the deck of the Vindictive. But if his fortunes seemed better than mine in the eyes of our fellow slaves, I greatly feared they were worse. Because of his small size, he had been put in the finishing gang, whose task was to smooth and then polish with pulverized lava the thin blocks of granite hewn from the bed. In spite of constant wetting of the abrasive, some of it was breathed in along with other dust too fine to be caught by a face cloth. According to prison lore, the finishers lived better and died sooner than any other gang. Like all the rest. Sparrow developed a cough and bloodshot eyes.
In the depths of Sparrow's mind I was still Mate Whitman—even Cap'n Whitman, now that Cap'n Phillips had been gone so long. If I had bade him do so, he would have asked for harder but healthier labor; but I could not do so against his own will. He greatly feared that the foreman, irked by what he might deem ingratitude for mercy given, would put him at some task beyond his strength and lay him open to the torment of the kurbash. It was quite possible; and since Captain Phillips had appointed the duty, to me alone, I had no right to ask him to live longer than he desired.
Of us three survivors, the lot of 'Giny Jim was the happiest. Long before they could communicate with words, he had made friends with a tar-black Nubian named Zimil, a former slave who had been permitted to embrace Islam and had since become second-in-charge of the palm groves. Zimil had managed to have Jim put to work there, with plenty of dates and coconuts to eat and the delicious milk to drink. Since he could not climb trees in our heavy irons, he got shed of all except light ankle rings. Although he still slept in the stockade, the two were inseparable in daylight hours, and could soon talk an astonishing mixture of Arabic and English.
Sparrow and I profited indirectly from the friendship, since Jim never missed an opportunity to give us dates and coconut meat. Of equal importance to me, almost every night he was able to bring into the stockade a wooden flask containing a quart of palm toddy, one of the strongest fermented drinks, nearly the match of the fortified wines of Spain. This he slipped into my hands; I in turn sold it to Kerry, but at a higher price than a little advice and a few Arabian sayings. Thereby I slowly obtained possession and use of a wonderful tool.
It was no less than the Arabic language in its pure and classic form. If Kerry's teaching while we labored was assiduous, that night he got pleasantly drunk; but if he slacked the task, he remained unpleasantly sober. It demanded strong application of mind on his part as well as on mine, patience, and much use of dusty throats, but when he found that I stood firm—and drunkards can hardly believe that of anyone—he usually earned his tipple.
All this while we three had listened in hidden and desperate hope for news from Tripoli. None was good until December, 1803, when Kerry heard a vague rumor of a large American frigate and a heavy-gunned schooner blockading the pirate stronghold.
On Christmas Eve, a brutal guard named Caidu summoned Kerry and me for what I feared was a whipping. Instead of leading us to the post, he let us squat by the watch fire while he seated himself grandly on a bench. At once he began to speak rapidly in Arabic, which I had barely started to learn.
When he paused, Kerry turned to me.
"The gentleman begins by reminding us that since tonight begins a great Christian feast, he is going to give you some news of great interest to all Yankees. And you'd better brace yourself against something pretty rocky."
Caidu spoke again to considerable length. I did not glance into his malicious face, but I could not keep from watching Kerry's.
"Sittash, have you Americans a fine frigate named—as near as I can catch it—the Fee-deff ?"
"Yes, the Philadelphia."
"Well, the bastards have captured it."
"I don't believe it."
"He seems pretty damned cocksure. Thirty-two guns—"
"That's right."
"About three hundred officers and men—"
"They could guess that—"
"Don't fool yourself, Sittash. They've got her, I'll bet five quid. America's a little nation and far from here. Well, how about us splitting what your friend brought tonight? It's Christmas Eve, and we'll toast to the old brig yet."
"Thanks, but he brought the same to me and to the little fellow. We'll celebrate Christmas as merrily as we can."
I would hear more of the Philadelphia, I thought—Caidu would not miss letting me know how she had been given a Moslem name, the flag of Tripoli flown from her mainmast, and sent forth with a swarthy crew to capture Yankee traders. But he remained queerly silent, and it was in February, that 'Giny Jim—entered in the book as Oribatash—finished her story.
"It come out better dan we 'spected," he said, "but don't you tell nobody but Sparrow, 'cause Zimil, he got it from de quarry mas', and if it gets out, he'll s'picion Zimil tol' me, and he'll would be to pay."
"I won't even tell Kerry."
"The Philadelphia was lyin' in Tripoli harbor, guarded by de guns of de forts. But some o' our boys sneak in at night in a ketch and set her afire, so de pirates couldn't use her 'gainst us, and she burn to de waterline, praise God!"
He fell silent then, and in his eyes was a vision. I saw it too—a smaller but no less gallant ship for a second bathed in flame. . . .
The American war with Tripoli—which I was once too proud to call a war—was waged fitfully for a year and a half more. Although there were no decisive battles, the Pasha had lost at least one frigate and several gunboats and had reduced his blood-price for his American prisoners by more than two-thirds. When he surrendered at last, how many would be returned? Would the Yankee admirals be content with the Philadelphia men, or would they scour the remote slave pens for countrymen captured in unrecorded piracies and spirited away?
Sometimes I visioned marchers across the desert, flying a bright flag, playing "Yankee Doodle," coming to burn our stockade to the ground and hanging any whipper who had ever laid lash to a Yankee back or kurbash to the sole of a Yankee foot. It was at least a fair hope. And until it had been fulfilled or failed, I could not run desperate risks with Sparrow's, Jim's and my own life in an attempt to escape.
In the blaze of summer, four years and four days after I had met a dark-haired girl roaming the beach of Malta, the hope failed. Sparrow was the first to bring me word. He had had it from an English-speaking marble buyer who had paused in his survey to watch him polish the beautifully marked onyxlike stone.
"We assembled a great big naval force in front of the town," Sparrow told me. "The muley tol' me—and he was right polite and nice—we had six frigates, four or five brigs and schooners, a dozen or more gunboats, and a sloop of war. The Pasha seen he couldn't do nothing against a force like that, and besides another American, a General named Eaton, led a army of Moors and Arabs and some Greeks and a few of our boys from about Alexander clean to Derna— six hundred miles it was—and captured Derna. He was going to put Hamet Pasha on Yussuf's throne to make peace with us. So Yussuf seen he'd better not fight us no more, so he let the Philadelphy men go for sixty thousand dollars and signed a peace treaty to leave our ships be."
Sparrow paused, a strange expression on his small, peaked face.
"Is that all?" I asked.