The Rosetta Key

This was madness! I still was as miraculously unhurt as Napoleon, watching from the dunes. The reef ended and I plunged into deeper water with a wild hopelessness. Where could I go? I drifted, paddling feebly, down the outer edge of the reef, watching as men huddled until bullets finally found them. Was that Najac running up and down the sand, furiously looking for my corpse? There was a higher out-cropping of reef that rose above the waves nearer Jaffa itself. Could I find some kind of hiding place?

Bonaparte, I saw, had disappeared, not caring to watch the massacre to its end.

I came to the rock where men clung, as pitifully exposed as flies on paper. The French were putting out in small boats to finish off survivors.

Not knowing what else to do, I put my head underwater and opened my eyes. I saw the thrashing legs of the prisoners clinging to our refuge, and the muted hues of blue as the edifice descended into the depths. And there, a hole, like a small underwater cave. If nothing else, it looked blessedly removed from the horrible clamor at the 1 2 0

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surface. I dove, entered, and felt with my arm. The rock was sharp and slimy. And then at my farthest reach my hand thrashed in empty air.

I pulled myself forward and surfaced.

I could breathe! I was in an inner air pocket in an underwater cave, the only illumination a shaft of light from a narrow crack overhead.

I could hear the screams and shots again, but they were muffled. I dared not call out my discovery, lest the French find me. There was only room for one, anyway. So I waited, trembling, while wooden hulls ground against the rocks, shots rang out, and the last blubber-ing prisoners were put to the sword or bayonet. The soldiers were methodical; they wanted no witnesses.

“There! Get that one!”

“Look at the vermin squirm.”

“Here’s another to finish off!”

Finally, it was quiet.

I was the only survivor.

So I existed, shivering with growing cold, as the curses and pleas faded. The Mediterranean has almost no tide, so I was in little danger of drowning. It was morning when we were marched to the beach and nightfall by the time I dared emerge, my skin as corrupted as a cadaver’s from the long soaking. My clothes were in shreds, my teeth chattering.

Now what?

I numbly treaded water, bobbing out to sea. A corpse or two floated by. I could see that Jaffa was still burning, banked coals against the sky. The stars were bright enough to silhouette the line of vegetation along the beach. I spied the flicker of French campfires and heard the occasional shot, or shout, or ring of bitter laughter.

Something dark floated by that wasn’t a corpse and I grabbed it: an empty powder keg, discarded by one side or the other during the battle. Hour followed hour, the stars wheeling overhead, and Jaffa grew dimmer. My strength was being leached by the chill.

And then in the glimmer of predawn, almost twenty-four hours since the executions had begun, I spied a boat. It was a small Arab lighter of the kind that had taken me from HMS Dangerous into Jaffa.

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I croaked and waved, coughing, and the boat came near, wide eyes peering at me over the gunwale like a watchful animal.

“Help.” It was barely more than a mutter.

Strong arms seized me and hauled me aboard. I lay at the bottom, spineless as a jellyfish, exhausted, blinking at gray sky and not entirely certain if I was alive or dead.

“Effendi?”

I jerked. I knew that voice. “Mohammad?”

“What are you doing in the middle of the sea, when I deposited you in Jerusalem?”

“When did you become a sailor?”

“When the city fell. I stole this boat and sculled out of the harbor.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to sail it. I’ve just drifted.” Painfully, I sat up. We were well offshore I saw with relief, out of range of any French. The lighter had a mast and lateen sail, and I’d sailed craft not too dissimilar to this one on the Nile. “You are bread upon the waters,” I croaked. “I can sail. We can go find a friendly ship.”

“But what is happening in Jaffa?”

“Everyone is dead.”

He looked stricken. No doubt he had friends or family that had been caught up in the siege. “Not everyone, of course.” But I was more honest the first time.