At Algiers most of the regular oar-slaves had been transferred into the Peñon, the squat Spanish fortress in the middle of the harbor, and locked up, for the time being, in places where they could not tell the tale of what they had seen. Empty wooden crates had come back, and the Cabal had busied itself packing the gold bars into them and stuffing straw in between so that they would not clank. Only after the crates had been nailed securely shut had fresh—and ignorant—oar-slaves been brought aboard.
They had also acquired a new drum. For on the day following their deliverance from Spaniard and storm, Jack Shaftoe had made a great ceremony of tossing the old one overboard. It had been a large wooden barrel-half with a cowhide stretched over the top, the hair still on it except where it had been worn away from being pounded. It was mottled white and brown like an unlabelled map, and it had bobbed stubbornly alongside them for a while, a little world loose in the sea, until Jack had stove it in with an oar. Meanwhile, Jeronimo had solemnized it in his own way: looking about at the gore that lined the hull, and the exhausted and half-flayed rowers, he had said, "We are all blood brothers now." Which he had probably intended as some sort of sacrament-like benediction. For his part, Jack could see any number of grave drawbacks to being part of the same family as Jeronimo. But he had kept these misgivings to himself so as not to mar the occasion. Jeronimo had included, among his new brothers, all of the galley-slaves who were not members of the Cabal, and promised that he would use his share of the proceeds to ransom them. This had produced only eye-rolling from those slaves who could understand what he was saying. As days had gone by, his promises had flourished like mushrooms after an autumn rain, until he had laid out a scheme for constructing or buying an actual three-masted ship, manning it with freed slaves, and setting out to found a new country somewhere. But as they had inched across the map towards Algiers, a depression had settled over him, and he'd gone back to predictions of a bloodbath in Egypt—or possibly even Malta.
Accompanied by another, more heavily armed galleot, they had left Algiers behind—they hoped forever. They had rowed briskly eastwards, passing by one small Corsair-port after another until they had traversed the mouth of the Gulf of Tunis and reached the Ras el Tib, a rocky scimitar-tip pointed directly at Sicily, a hundred miles to the northeast. Here they had offloaded all but a dozen of their oar-slaves and then used their sails to take them out into deep water—the first time they'd lost sight of land since the night of their escape from Bonanza. The raïs had immediately ordered the galleot's Turkish colors struck, and had raised French ones in their stead.
THUS DISGUISED—if a new flag could be considered a disguise—they now sailed under the guns of various medieval-looking fortresses that had been built, by various occult sects of Papist knights, on crags and ridges looking north across the strait. No cannonballs were fired in their direction, and after a few hours, when they rounded a point and gazed into the Grand Harbor of Malta, they understood why: for a whole French fleet was riding at anchor there beneath the white terraces and flowered walls of Valletta. Not just merchant ships—though there were at least a dozen of those—but men-of-war, too. Three frigates to serve as gun-platforms, and a swarm of tactical galleys.
And—as van Hoek was first to notice—there was also Météore. Evidently she had passed through the Strait of Gibraltar behind them and then made directly for Malta, to join up with the fleet, and await the galleot. Jack borrowed a spyglass to have a look at the jacht, and was rewarded by a view of a new flag that had been run up her mizzen-mast. It was a banner emblazoned with a coat of arms that he'd last seen carved in bas-relief on the onrushing lintel of a door in the Hôtel Arcachon in Paris. "I would know that arrangement of fleurs-de-lis and Neeger-heads anywhere," he announced. "The Investor is here in person."
"He must have come down via Marseille," van Hoek remarked.
"I thought I smelled a fish gone bad," Jack said.
Likewise, their galleot was noticed and identified immediately. Within a few minutes a longboat had been sent out from Météore, rowed by half a dozen seamen and carrying a French officer. This fellow clambered aboard the galleot and made a quick inspection—just enough to verify that the crew was orderly and the vessel seaworthy. He handed the raïs a sealed letter and then departed.
"I wonder why he just doesn't take us," Yevgeny muttered, leaning on the rigging and gazing at all those warships.
"For the same reason that the Pasha did not do so when we were in the harbor of Algiers," Moseh said.
"The Duke's interests in that Corsair-city are deep," Jack added. "He dares not queer his relations with the Pasha by violating the terms of the Plan."
"I would have anticipated a more thorough inspection," said Mr. Foot, arms crossed over his caftan as if he were feeling a chill, and glancing uneasily at a gold-crate.
"He knows we got something out of the Viceroy's brig—and that it was valuable enough to make us risk our lives by tarrying in front of Sanlúcar de Barrameda for several hours, transshipping it to the galleot. If we'd found nothing we'd have fled without delay," Jack said. "And that is as good as an inspection."
"But does he know what it is?" Mr. Foot asked. They were within earshot of their skeleton crew of oar-slaves and so he had to speak obliquely.
"There is no way he could," said Jack. "The only communication he's had from this boat is a bugle call, which was a pre-arranged signal, and I doubt that they had a signal meaning thirteen." Thirteen was a sort of code meaning twelve or thirteen times as much money as we expected.
"Still, we know that the Pasha of Algiers sent out messages on faster boats than ours, to all the ports of the Levant, telling the masters of all harbors to deny us entry."
"All except for one," Yevgeny corrected him.
"Might he not have sent a message here to Malta, telling about the thirteen?"
Dappa now came strolling along. "You are forgetting to ask a very interesting question, namely: Does the Pasha know?"
Mr. Foot appeared to be scandalized; Yevgeny, profoundly impressed. "I should imagine so!" said Mr. Foot.
Dappa said, "But have you noticed that, on every occasion when the raïs has parleyed with someone who does not know about the thirteen, he has been at pains to make sure I am present?"
"You, who are the only one of us who understands Turkish," Yevgeny observed.
Jack: "You think al-Ghuráb has kept the matter of the thirteen a secret?"
Yevgeny: "Or wishes us to think that he has."
Dappa: "I would say—to know that he has."
Mr. Foot: "What possible reason could he have for doing such a thing?"
Dappa: "When Jeronimo gave his ‘blood brothers' speech, and all the rest of you were rolling your eyes, I chanced to look at Nasr al-Ghuráb, and saw him blink back a tear."
Mr. Foot: "I say! I say! Most fascinating."
Jack: "For the Caballero, who is every inch the gentleman, it was no easy thing to admit what the rest of us have all known in our bones for so long: namely that we have found our natural and rightful place in the world here, among the broken and ruined scum of the earth. Perhaps the raïs was merely touched by the brutally pathetic quality of the scene."
Dappa: "The raïs is a Corsair of Barbary. His sort enslave Spanish gentlefolk for sport. I believe he intends to make common cause with us."
Mr. Foot: "Then why hasn't he come out and said as much?"