"It would be useful if we could send someone into the city now, and let him loiter around the House of the Golden Mercury for a while," van Hoek said. Which to Jack would have meant no more than the singing of birds, except that the name jogged a memory.
"There is a house in Leipzig of the same name—it is owned by the Hacklhebers."
Van Hoek said, "As salmon converge from all the wide ocean toward the mouths of swift rivers, Hacklhebers go wherever large amounts of gold and silver are in flux."
"Why should we care about their doings in Cadiz?"
"Because they are sure to care about ours," van Hoek said.
"Be that as it may, there's not a single man, free or slave, aboard this galleot who could get through the city-gate. So this discussion is idle," said Moseh.
"You think it will be any different at Sanlúcar de Barrameda?" van Hoek scoffed.
"Oh, I can get us into that town, Cap'n," Jack said.
AFTER THE HEAT of midday had broken, they rowed north, keeping the salt-pans to starboard. Their ship was a galleot or half-galley, driven by two lateen sails (which were of little use today, as the wind was feeble and inconstant) and sixteen pairs of oars. Each of the thirty-two oars was pulled by two men, so the full complement of rowers was sixty-four. Like everything else about the Plan, this was a choice carefully made. A giant war-galley of Barbary, with two dozen oar-banks, and five or six slaves on each oar, and a hundred armed Corsairs crowding the rails, would of course bring down the wrath of the Spanish fleet as soon as she was sighted. Smaller galleys, called bergantines, carried only a third as many oarsmen as the galleot that they were now rowing across the Gulf of Cadiz. But on such a tiny vessel it was infeasible, or at least unprofitable, to maintain oar-slaves, and so the rowers would be freemen; rowing alongside a larger ship they'd snatch up cutlasses and pistols and go into action as Corsairs. A bergantine, for that reason, would arouse more suspicion than this (much larger) galleot; it would be seen as a nimble platform for up to three dozen boarders, whereas the galleot's crew (not counting chained slaves) was much smaller—in this case, only eight Corsairs, pretending to be peaceful traders.
The galleot was shaped like a gunpowder scoop. Beneath the bare feet of the oarsmen there was loose planking, covering a shallow bilge, but other than that there was no decking—the vessel was open on the top along its entire length, save for a quarterdeck at the stern, which in the typical style of these vessels was curved very high out of the water. So any lookout gazing down into the galleot would clearly see a few dozen naked wretches in chains, and cargo packed around and under their benches: rolled carpets, bundles of hides and of linen, barrels of dates and olive oil. A spindly swivel-gun at the bow, and another at the stern, both fouled by lines and cargo, completed the illusion that the galleot was all but helpless. It would take a closer inspection to reveal that the oarsmen were uncommonly strong and fresh: the best that the slave-markets of Algiers had to offer. The ten participants in the Plan were distributed in outboard positions, the better to peer through oarlocks.
"In this calm we'll have at least a night and a day to await the Viceroy's ship," Jack noted.
"Much hangs on the tides," van Hoek said. "We want a low tide in the night-time. And the weather must remain calm, so that we can row away from any pursuers during the hours of darkness. At sunrise the wind will come up, and then anyone who can see us will be able to catch us…" His voice trailed off to a mumble as he pondered these and other complications, which had seemed hardly worth mentioning when they had been developing the Plan, and now, like shadows at sunset, stretched out vast, vague, and terrifying.
The brassy light of late afternoon was gleaming in through their larboard oar-locks when the galleot sank slightly lower into the water, and began to quiver and squirm in a current. At first they did not even recognize it—this was the first river of any significance they'd encountered since passing Gibraltar, or for that matter since leaving Algiers. Jack knew in his arms and his back why the Moors who'd roved up this way ages ago had named it al-Wadi al-Kabir, the Great River. When Jeronimo felt it tugging at his oar, he stood up and thrust an arm through his oar-lock to clip the top of a wave with one cupped hand. Slurping up a mouthful of water, he coughed, and then affected a blissful expression. "It is fresh water, the water of the Guadalquivir, rushing down from the mountains of my ancestors," he announced, and more in that vein. During this ceremony his oar did not move, which meant that no oars on that side could.
"Speaking personally," Jack said loudly, "I have more experience of sewers than of mountain streams, and cannot believe we have come all this distance to row in circles in the run-off of Seville and Cordoba!"
Jeronimo thrust out his chest and prepared to challenge Jack to a duel—but then the nerf du boeuf came down across the Spaniard's shoulder blades as their overseer reminded them that they were yet slaves. Jack wondered how long it would take Jeronimo to get into a sword-fight after he was allowed to have a sword.
The next few hours provided more reminders of their lowly station in the world as they stroked upstream with the sun clawing at their faces. Van Hoek cursed almost without letup, and Jack reflected that, for an officer, nothing could be more humiliating than to face backwards, and never see where you were headed. But at some point they began to see tops of masts around them, and heard the blessed sound of the anchor-chains rumbling through their hawse-holes, and bent forward over their warm oars to stretch out the muscles of their backs.
Nasr al-Ghuráb, the raïs, was kul oglari, meaning the son of a Janissary by a woman native to the territory round Algiers—in any event, he spoke passable Spanish as well as Sabir. In the latter tongue, he now said, "Bring out the spare wretches." Planking was pulled up and four damp oar-slaves climbed out of the bilge and quickly replaced Jack, Moseh, Jeronimo, and van Hoek. This took place under cover of a sail that had been spread out above them as if to be mended, so that any curious sailors who might be looking down from a yard or maintop of a nearby ship would not witness the ennoblement going on in the aisle of this newly arrived galleot. Meanwhile—in case anyone was counting heads—four of the Corsair crew retreated beneath the shade of the quarterdeck to take refreshment and doze. A canvas sack full of old clothes—looted from persons who were now captives in Algiers—was also brought up, and the four began to paw through it like children playing dress-up.
"Turbans are advisable for going abovedecks," Jack pointed out, "as my hair's sandy, and van Hoek's is red, and that of Moseh—"
They all stood and looked dubiously at Moseh until finally he said, "Get me a dagger and I'll cut off the forelocks—crypto-Jews can expect no better."
"May you become free and rich and grow them until you must tuck them into your boot-tops," Jack said.
They spent the last hour before sunset up on the towering quarterdeck turbaned, and covered in the long loose garments of Algerines. The town of Sanlúcar de Barrameda rose above them on the south bank where the river flowed into the gulf. It resembled a feeble miniature rendition of Algiers—it was encompassed by a wall, and below it spread a beach of river-sand where some fishermen had spread out their nets to inspect them. Van Hoek gave the town but a glance, then seized a glass from the raïs, climbed up the mast, and devoted much time to scanning the water: apparently reading the currents, and fixing in his mind the location of the submerged bar. Moseh's attention was captured by a suburb that spread along the bank upstream of the town, outside the walls: Bonanza. It seemed to consist entirely of large villas, each with its own wall. After a while the avid Jeronimo spied the Viceroy's coat of arms flying from one of these, or so they all assumed from the invective that geysered forth.