The Confusion

“There is no time to talk,” Arlanc said. “But know that the men they have sent you are very dangerous: murderers, conspiracists, phanatiques, looters of bakeries, outragers of women, and locksmiths gone bad.”

“I would rather have a Huguenot or two,” Jack mused, scanning the other four members of Monsieur Arlanc’s team. The headman, who sat on the aisle, was a Turk.

“It is a noble conception, Jack, but not destined to happen. They will never agree to it-it is not part of their plan.”

“What about God? Doesn’t He have a plan?”

“I believe only that God preserved me until now so that I could show you what I have showed you,” said Monsieur Arlanc, glancing up towards de Jonzac frozen in another pallid flash, “and thereby repay you for your generosity in the stables. What on earth are you doing, by the way?”

“It is a long story,” Jack said, taking a step away-for al-Ghurab had finally picked out the last slave, and was calling to him. “I’ll explain it when we reach Egypt.”

Monsieur Arlanc smiled like a saint on the gridiron, and shook his head. “This galley will never reach Egypt,” he said, “and my mortal body is, as you can see, one with it.” He patted the chain locked round his waist.

“What, are you joking? Look at the size of this armada! We’ll be fine.”

Arlanc closed his eyes, still smiling. “If you see Dutch colors, or English, or-may God forbid it-both combined, make for Africa, and stop not until you have run aground.”

“And then what? Go on foot across the Sahara?”

“It would be easier than the journey we begin tomorrow. God bless you and your sons.”

“Likewise you and yours. See you at the Sphinx.” Jack stormed off down the aisle. For once, the galeriens did not hound him the whole way. They seemed sober and deflated instead, as if they had all guessed at the subject of Jack’s and Monsieur Arlanc’s conversation.

THE VOYAGE FROM MALTA to Alexandria was a rhumb-line a thousand miles long. The Dutch hit them halfway, five days into the passage, somewhere to the south of Crete. Jack supposed that if he were God watching the battle from Heaven it might make some kind of sense: the onslaughts of the Dutch capital ships, the stately maneuvers of the French ones, and the slashing zigzags of the galleys would form a coherent picture, and seem less like an interminable string of dreadful accidents. But Jack was just a mote on a galleot that was evidently considered too small to be worth attacking, or defending. Now they understood why the shrewd Investor had never insisted on having the loot taken off the galleot and loaded into a man-of-war: He must have suspected that half or more of his capital ships would end up on the bottom of the Mediterranean.

Every time a French frigate was struck by a Dutch broadside, a vast cloud of spinning planks, tumbling spars, and other important materials would come flying out the opposite side and tear up the water for a hundred yards or more. After this had happened several times the ship would stop moving and a galley would be brought in to tow it from the line of battle, somewhat like a servant scurrying into the middle of a lively dance-floor to drag away a fat count who had passed out from drink.

The galleot, for its part, wandered about aimlessly, like a lost lamb searching for its mother in a flock that was being torn apart by wolves. Van Hoek spent the day up on the maintop, cheering for the Dutch, and occasionally shouting explanations-so cryptic and technical as to be useless-of what was going on to the others. Very early the Cabal had met to discuss surrendering to the Dutch forthwith. But there was much that could go awry with that plan. At the very best it would mean surrendering all of the gold, and many in the Cabal did not share van Hoek’s natural affinity for the Dutch side of things anyway.

The galley to which Monsieur Arlanc was chained survived most of the battle without serious damage. Then (according to van Hoek) she was called in to ram a certain Dutch ship. Along the way she came under fire from others, and a bomb apparently went off in her sterncastle, starting a fire that, a few minutes later, detonated her powder magazine and essentially blew open her stern. Very quickly her bow began to point up in the air, her ram sweeping relentlessly upwards like the hand of a clock. The galeriens in the forward half of the ship-presumably including Monsieur Arlanc-let go their oars and hooked their arms over their benches, though some of them broke loose, so that skeins of slaves dangled and swung like strings of trout hanging before a fishmonger’s stall.

“Let us row in that direction,” Jack said, “because it is no more dangerous than what we are doing anyway, and because it is good form.”