Then, with a groan, the stone railing gave way. Blocks as heavy as anvils were levered off the bridge lip by Fulton and fell just as the gondola was passing underneath, crashing into the vessel and snapping it to pieces. The occupants tumbled into the water.
The inventor, oar still in hand, leaped from the other side of the bridge to a water-washed porch and scrambled toward our boat. “Fire at the next one!” he ordered.
I liked his cool head.
So when the second attacking gondola came out of the gloom, slowing at the sight of comrades thrashing in the water, we let loose a volley: Cuvier’s two pistols, my rifle, and Smith’s blunderbuss all went off at once. There were screams, more oaths, and the second pursuing boat tipped as dead and wounded spilled into the canal.
“Now, now, go for the harbor!” Fulton cried as he jumped aboard. Our gondolier sculled as if he were on fire.
“Nice work, Robert,” I congratulated.
“It’s all in the leverage. Archimedes showed how it could be done. ‘Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth,’ the old Greek said.”
“Clever bastard, wasn’t he?”
At the next bridge, where the canal narrowed because of the structure’s abutments, Fulton had us stop while he wedged the extra oar at an angle widthwise across the canal behind us, just at water level where it could catch a gondola’s bow. “That will block the rest until they chop it away,” he said. “It may give us enough time.”
Then we hurried on, our gondolier panting.
“Being with you is proving to be consistently dramatic, Monsieur Gage,” Cuvier said, in order to say something. He was getting quicker, I noticed, at reloading.
“Bloody exciting,” Smith agreed. “Who are those devils?”
“Egyptian Rite, I assume. Or their hired mercenaries. Anxious, persistent, and hostile. Lucky they didn’t cut us off.”
Finally we broke from the narrow canal and glided out into the broader lagoon. The domes of the Basilica were a geometric symphony against the sky, and moored gondolas bobbed in the light chop. But how to find a ship in the middle of the night?
Then a lantern glowed in the stern of a xebec.
“Here, here! This is the one you want!”
CHAPTER TEN
Our gondolier sculled briskly toward the Turkish vessel, anxious to get rid of us.
Its Muslim captain, brown as leather and whip-quick, beckoned us closer. His sleeveless vest revealed muscle worthy of a skilled topman, and his dark eyes were lively as a rug merchant’s. “Row to the other side of my vessel, away from the city! Yes, come to Hamidou! I heard shots and suspect you need quick passage, my new friends!”
We rounded the stern and drifted close to the other side. Half a dozen other sailors with close-cropped beards lined the gunwale, dressed in bloused trousers, bright sashes, and in some cases, turbans.
“Gage, these are Muhammadans,” Cuvier objected.
“And we need to go to Ottoman waters.”
“Yes! I will take you where you wish to go for half what these Christians would charge you,” the entrepreneur promised. “No ship is swifter, no passage cheaper, than my Mykonos. But you have money, my friends?”
“Yes, and we need to leave now.”
“Then you need Hamidou! Dragut is the best sailor on the Adriatic and the Aegean. Look at my little arrow here. Fifty feet long, narrow and shallow, able to slip anywhere. My sails are black, so we move like a phantom.”
“Do you know the island of Thira?”
“Of course! I was almost born there! And for two hundred francs, we leave at this moment. For three hundred, we leave an hour ago!” He laughed. “The Christians will charge you three times that to go to Turkish waters. They are afraid of pirates. But I have nothing but friends!”
“And why are you quite so cheap?” asked Fulton, with Yankee skepticism.
“Because I go to the Aegean anyway. I take you to Thira, trade at nearby islands, and then pick you up to bring you back.” He nodded. “I, Hamidou Dragut, vow it!”
“You’re a Turk?”
“I am Greek, I am a Turk, I am whatever you want me to be. I sail with all faiths. Do not hesitate! Look—do you see the gondolas? They are looking.”
I climbed the side of the hull and looked across the deck of his ship at Venice. Craft had emerged from the same canal we had and were sculling toward the moored gondolas, searching.
“There are more of them than there are of you,” the captain said.
“We’re hoping to slip in and out of Thira before anyone much notices.”
“Then Hamidou is the man for you! I am a ghost. Invisible. A good smuggler.”
“Not smuggle. Simply arrive and depart without official interference.”
“Thira is a small island, with small bureaucrats. A word, a coin, and you will be secret enough. I know everyone. All are my friends.”
His gaze flashed from one to the other of us looking for belief with the energy of a man who is used to doubt, because he doesn’t worry too much about truth or principle. In other words, I knew the type and recognized his usefulness. “This Dragut looks like just the rascal we need,” I told the others.
“Trustworthy?”
“Expedient.”
We boarded, coins were counted out, and Dragut’s men sprang to quietly raise anchor and sails. The crew hauled on the lines in the dark with the surety that comes from long practice. None objected to our sudden nighttime departure, once they saw money. Even as the pursuing gondolas hunted along the shore, we drifted from Venice before first light blushed in the east, not daring to set a lantern. The water hissed under our keel, a dawn breeze carrying the smell of the city, and then the sails stretched as the wind freshened, rigging creaking. The boat leaned, came alive, and settled into rhythm. The city’s lamps began to fade behind us, disappearing with the last of the stars.
We collapsed into sleep.
I awoke at midmorning and inspected the craft we’d hired. Our xebec had two main masts and a mizzen, lateen sails, a dozen light cannon to ward off thieves, and a high, graceful poop we savants could relax on while the half-dozen Muslims worked the ship. There was a simple cabin below that Hamidou said we could share with him but which was too low to stand in. His crew slept on the open deck, and below a main-deck grating was the hold for sails, supplies, and cargo. Long, narrow, and shallow-drafted, it was ideal for poking in and out of the tight harbors of the Mediterranean.
The city had disappeared, and we were alone on the sparkling Adriatic. “Good morning!” Hamidou greeted. “I will get you to Thira two days faster than any captain in Venice!”
We ate a breakfast of couscous and lamb—the crew’s leftovers from the night before—and took stock. The nice thing about a scrape with danger, I decided, was that we four savants had developed the fellowship of shared peril. We had the exhilaration that comes from escape, and the camaraderie that comes from relying on each other for our lives.
I, with my rifle, tomahawk, and sword, was considered the veteran. I’d been in battles, and this granted me an assumption of competence and courage. It’s why men work hard to become dangerous.
Smith, cheerful at this opportunity to see more of the world than the bottom of a canal ditch, took an avid interest in the working of the Islamic ship and a dedication to cleaning his blunderbuss. He fired it once for the sailors, the kick punching him backward, and its roar made them jump and cry in wonder and delight. The bullets kicked up a spray on the sea.
Fulton had sewn a patch on his wounded bag and was fitting metal tubes to extend the pipes, half filling the bag with seawater and squirting it at Cuvier in a spray he adjusted by tinkering with the nozzle.