Jack sighed. "I am never one to turn down a yarn. But I detect a certain repetitive quality in these galley-slave narrations, which forces me to agree with (speaking of blonde slave-girls) dear Eliza, who took such a dim view of the whole practice."
"But as I recall from your narrations—which were not devoid of a certain repetitive quality, by the way—" Dappa said, "she objected on moral grounds—not because it led to monotonous storytelling."
"I, too, could probably dream up some highfalutin grounds if all I had to pass the time was embroidery and bathing."
"I did not realize that pulling on an oar posed such a challenge to your intellect," Dappa returned.
"Until la suette anglaise delivered me from the French Pox, I had no intellect at all. When I'm rich and free, I'll come up with a hundred and one reasons why slavery is bad."
"A single good one would suffice," Dappa said.
Feeling the need for a change of subject, Jack turned towards Vrej Esphahnian, who had been squatting on his haunches smoking a twist of Spanish tobacco and watching the exchange.
"Oh, mine is banal compared with everyone else's," he said. "As you may recall, my brother Artan sent out letters to diverse places, inquiring about the market for ostrich plumes. What came back convinced him that our family's humble estate might be bettered if we established a trading-circuit to Northern Africa. I was dispatched to Marseille to make it so. From there, by buying passage on small coastal vessels, I tried to work my way down the Balearic coast of Spain towards Gibraltar, which I supposed would be a good jumping-off place. But I did not appreciate that the Spanish coast from Valencia downwards is infested with Moorish pirates, whose forefathers once were the lords of al-Andalus. These Corsairs knew the hidden coves and shallows of that coastline as well as—"
"All right, all right, you have said enough to convince me that it is, as you said, the usual galley-slave tale," Jack said, strolling over to the rail and stretching—very carefully. He picked up a bulging skin and squirted a stream of stale water into his mouth, then stood up on the bench to contemplate the rock of Malta, which was drifting by them a few miles to starboard. He had just realized that it was a very small island and that he'd better look at it while he had the chance. "What I meant was: How did you end up on my oar?"
"The ineffable currents of the slave-market drove me to Algiers. My owner learned that I had some skills beyond oar-pulling, and put me to work as a bookkeeper in a market where Corsairs sell and trade their swag. The winter before last, I made the acquaintance of Moseh, who was asking many questions about the market in tutsaklar ransom futures. We had several conversations and I began to perceive the general shape of his Plan."
"He told you about Jeronimo, and the Viceroy?"
"No, I learned of that on the same night as you."
"Then what do you mean when you say you understood his plan?"
"I understood his basic principle: that a group of slaves who, taken one by one, were assigned a very low value by the market, might yet be worth much when grouped together cleverly…" Vrej rolled up to his feet and grimaced into the sun. "The wording does not come naturally in this bastard language of Sabir, but Moseh's plan was to synergistically leverage the value-added of diverse core competencies into a virtual entity whose whole was more than the sum of its parts…"
Jack stared at him blankly.
"It sounds brilliant in Armenian." Vrej sighed.
"How came you to be at the bottom of the slave-market?" Jack asked. "I know your family was not the wealthiest, but I should've thought they'd pay anything to ransom you from Algiers."
Vrej's face stopped moving, as if he had spied a Gorgon atop one of Malta's cliffs. Jack gathered that the question was an impolite one, by Armenian standards.
"Never mind," Jack said, "you are right, it makes no difference why your family would not, or could not, pay your ransom." Then, after there'd been no word from Vrej in quite a while: "I'll not ask again."
"Thank you," said Vrej, as if forcing the words past a clenched garrotte.
"Nonetheless, it is remarkable that we ended up on the same oar," Jack continued.
"Algiers in wintertime is lousy with wretched slaves, trying to dream their way to freedom," Vrej admitted, in a voice still tight and uneven. But as he continued talking, the anger, or sadness, that had possessed him for a few minutes slowly drained away. "I reckoned Moseh for another one of these at first. As one conversation led to the next, I perceived he was a man of intelligence, and began to think that I should throw in my lot with him. But when I learned that he had acquired a new bench-mate named Jack Shaftoe, I looked on it as a sign from God. For I owe you, Jack."
"You owe me!?"
"And have, ever since the night you fled Paris. On that night my family and I incurred a debt to you, and if necessary we will travel to the end of the world, and sell our souls, to make good on it."
"You can't be thinking of those damned ostrich plumes?"
"You left them in our trust, Jack, and made us your commission-agents in the matter."
"They were trash—the amount of money is trivial. Please do not consider yourself under any obligation…"
"It is a matter of principle," Vrej said. "So I hatched a Plan of my own, every bit as complex as the Plan of Moseh, but not nearly so interesting. I'll spare you the details, and tell you only the result: I was traded to your oar, Jack, and chained to you in fact—though chains of iron are nothing compared to the chains of debt and obligation that have fettered us since that night in Paris in 1685."
"That is extremely civil of you," Jack said. "But the only thing in all the world that makes me feel more ill at ease than being obliged, is some other man's feeling obliged to me—so when we reach Cairo I'll accept a few extra pounds of coffee, or something, to cover the proceeds from the sale of those ostrich-plumes, and then you and I can go our separate ways."
AFTER RIDING THE front of a storm through the Strait of Gibraltar, they had spent a couple of days riding out the gale in the Alboran Sea, the anteroom of the Mediterranean. When the weather had settled down they had sailed southeast, steering toward the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, until they'd picked up the Barbary Coast not far from the Corsair-port of Mostaganem. They had not put in there—partly because they had no anchors, and partly because Nasr al-Ghuráb seemed to be under strict instructions not to make contact with the world until they had reached their destination. But a few miles up the coast from Mostaganem, where a river came down off the north slopes of the Atlas and spilled into the sea, al-Ghuráb had caused a certain flag to be run up the mast. Not much later a bergantine had come rowing out of a hidden cove and had drawn alongside them, carefully remaining a bow-shot away. There had been some shouting back and forth in Turkish, and the galleot's skiff had been sent over, carrying two corsairs and Dappa, and collected kegs of fresh water and some other victuals. This bergantine had then shadowed them on the slow progress along the coast to the harbor of Algiers. Slow because they had almost never laid hands on the oars; no one wanted to, most were not fit to, and the raïs had not asked them to.