Annapolis, page 15
“Antonia,” her mother interrupted, “what uprooting is needed? In Annapolis, our slaves pass naturally into the world of the freedman. There are more freedmen here than in any other city in America.”
Antonia heard the tone of calm and threatening logic in her mother’s voice, and she knew she had pursued the subject far enough. “I wish only to see the future through our president’s eyes.”
“I wish only to see my son again,” said Black Jed.
Jefferson leaned across the table. “You shall have your wish—soon, I think.”
“What has happened?” asked Black Jed.
“I’ve ordered Tobias Lear to negotiate the cheapest settlement he can.”
“But what of Eaton?” asked Antonia. “What of Gideon Browne?”
“The young lady is very outspoken.” Preble seemed to brighten. “Like Midshipman Browne, if I recollect.”
She said, “His last letter described a plan to cross the desert—”
“A quixotic thing, I’ve come to conclude,” said Jefferson. “If Commodore Preble could not batter this bashaw to his senses, I’m convinced we will not resolve this thing without negotiation.”
“But if they’re fighting in the desert,” asked Antonia, “aren’t you… betraying them?”
Sara gasped at her daughter’s words to the president.
“I like a young lady whose beliefs are strongly held.” Jefferson sipped his wine. “Strongly held beliefs mean a strong nation.”
Black Jed tried to speak, but he was gripped by a fit of coughing that changed his color from paste white to arterial purple. When it was over, Sara asked if he would like to go to his bed.
“No. I want to hear good conversation from people I love.”
And for a moment, no one in Black Jed’s family could swallow their emotion.
So Jefferson kept up the talk for them. “You know, we and this Hamet Karamanli have a common enemy, but I’ve no intention of linking the fate of your son and our diplomacy to Hamet. Besides, we don’t even know if Eaton found him.”
Antonia noticed Preble look down at his plate, as if restraining himself from speaking. She said, “They might also be attacking Derna at this very moment.”
“Then I’ll welcome their success,” answered Jefferson, “so long as it contributes to our own.”
xii
Miracles and Betrayals
There were times when it seemed that they might starve, or dry up and blow away for want of water. There were times when it seemed that the whole expedition might disintegrate in a sandstorm of distrust.
But Eaton drove them on, over five hundred miles of desert, a desert no army had crossed since the Romans, and when it seemed that they could go no farther, the American ships met them at the Bay of Bomba, with cannons and food and cool casks of water. This, Eaton said, proved the friendship of the United States.
Truly, Ali Gurgheis told Gideon, it was a miracle. But the need for miracles had only begun. Ahead lay Derna, Benghazi, and five hundred desert miles more to Tripoli. But the Americans, said Ali, had shown that they knew how to make miracles.
So on they marched to the Wadi Derna and the whitewashed city in the valley by the sea. At Derna, the fortress turned its guns toward the Mediterranean. But no enemy had come out of the desert in centuries, so nothing more than a breastwork of rocks and rubble faced the heights to the southeast.
After a day of scouting, Ali Gurgheis came to Hamet’s pavilion to report another miracle: they had arrived ahead of the bashaw’s relief column.
And Hamet lost his nerve once more. He said he feared that his people were being used to frighten his brother, and after the men of the Philadelphia had been released, America would no longer care about his fate.
Gideon saw it as a weak man’s final moment of doubt.
But Eaton calmed Hamet’s fears, and the fears of his followers, once more staking his personal honor on the honor of his country. “We will take you to the throne of Tripoli, my lord Karamanli. You have my word.”
“Then”—Hamet’s birdlike hands fluttered—“we will fight.”
“Honor,” thought Gideon as he strolled the camp with Ali on that starry night, was a powerful word, and Eaton used it well.
THE NEXT MORNING, the desert light was like limestone, hard and bright.
On the hills to the southeast, the Arab cavalry had assembled. Out on the water, Lieutenant Isaac Hull was maneuvering his three ships. And on the flat ground before the breastwork, Presley Neville O’Bannon ordered his marines into position.
Gideon Browne, armed for the day with a musket, quickstepped forward with the other Americans, and there they were, stretched in a single thin line across the plain—three midshipmen in their blues and soiled whites; eight marines in blue coats, red breeches, leather collars, small-brimmed hats perched smartly—eleven men looking as stalwart and as foolish as any group of warriors ever had.
“Now, then,” shouted O’Bannon to the Americans and the mixed brigade of fifty mercenaries and Arab foot soldiers behind them, “there’s eight hundred men on that breastwork, but they ain’t fighters. And they ain’t come out of the desert.”
“And none of them have us!” shouted one of the Greek cannoneers.
“Yes!” shouted another, shaking the sponge rammer. “We will—”
Suddenly the thunderous roar of eight cannon erupted from the fortress of Derna, and eight jets of smoke went shooting out toward the ships.
They were answered by a single shot from the twenty-four-pounder that Isaac Hull had mounted on his schooner, the Argus. A half second later, the iron ball sent a huge gout of masonry bursting from the fortress.
A gentle breeze blew the smoke across the field in front of the breastwork, and there was awestruck silence on the plain and heights southeast of the city. Many of Eaton’s Arabs had never heard the sound of such an artillery piece before, let alone seen the effects of one.
On Hull’s second shot, a cheer rose from the marines, and the mercenaries picked it up, and now the Arabs seemed to find their voices, and the cheer rolled up the hill to where the tribal flags of green and red fluttered.
Another volley came splattering out of the fortress. Then the air was crushed by an invisible wave, a full broadside of nine guns jolting from the Argus, seven from the Enterprise, and four from the Hornet.
All across Derna, the rocks flew and the dust rose like smoke, and the three vessels were consumed by a gray cloud of their own making. The fortress fired another blast, weaker, more ragged, poorly aimed, and it was answered by twenty tongues of flame licking through the clouds around the American ships.
Then came the piercing sound of a bugle from the top of the hill, and Eaton cried to the Arabs, “Did I not promise that our navy would silence their guns?”
The Arabs roared, their blood rising. They could barely keep their horses and camels under control.
And Eaton whipped them higher, shouting, “We ride in the name of Hamet Karamanli, the rightful bashaw!”
“For our lord Karamanli and for Eaton Pasha!” cried Ali Gurgheis.
Hamet was bobbing about on his white stallion, waving his scimitar, completely transformed by the excitement and sound. He raised the scimitar above his head and shouted, “Let God be your agent!”
Eaton swept his scimitar toward the south side of the city.
And with a wild cry, the Arabs went thundering down the hill and swarming across the plains, playing their part in Eaton’s plan—a flanking maneuver to cut off escape and reinforcement.
Then Eaton swung his scimitar toward the breastworks, and O’Bannon shouted, “Fix bayonets!”
Gideon fixed his with a shout, just like the marines.
“That’s it, Gid,” said Private John Whitten, a gangling New Yorker whose best feature was his Adam’s apple. “Shout loud. And move quick. But don’t run!”
Gideon’s world was beginning to close down to the few things he could comprehend—the men close by, the goal, the voice of his commanding officer. And then a cannon shot came from behind and nearly blew off his hat. The Greek cannoneers had opened up on the breastwork.
And then the breastwork opened up on the attackers. A wall of musket fire—all of it aimed right at Gideon’s chest. He dropped to the ground and half of the Arabs did the same.
“Get up!” screamed O’Bannon. “No musket can hit anything at two hundred and fifty yards. Get up and keep movin’.”
The defenders were untrained. Fast loading and volley fire were alien to them. And the Greek cannoneers were as good as any American gun crew Gideon had ever seen. Every sixty seconds, they sent another ball screaming at the breastwork. So the advance became a kind of minuet with a sixty-second beat—cannon blast, run, drop, cover, and blast.
But as the attackers drew closer, the firing grew hotter. An Arab was struck down on the flank. A marine was shot in the foot but managed to hobble on. O’Bannon urged them toward a little gully two hundred yards from the breastwork, where they dropped and waited for another Greek cannon blast.
Gideon tried to hear what was happening with Hamet’s cavalry. There was firing to the south, maybe some to the west, but above the thunder of the naval bombardment, it was impossible to know for certain. Without the Arab flanking attack, however, Gideon knew the Americans would never get over that wall. And then something else was going over it—a cannonball followed by what looked like a long, weighted spear.
“Up and run!” cried O’Bannon.
“Let’s make the most of this,” said Whitten. “Them damn fool Greeks forgot to pull the rammer out of the gun. They just shot it into Derna.”
This advance brought them to within a hundred and fifty yards, the outer edge of accurate range for the muskets.
“Gettin’ hot now, Gid,” shouted Whitten.
“Make for those trees!” cried O’Bannon. And they went scrabbling and rolling for a stand of peach trees about thirty yards to their left.
They stayed there for what seemed an hour, though it could only have been a few minutes. All around them, peach blossoms were fluttering down through the streams of lead and exploding splinters of wood.
“Where the hell is Eaton?” Gideon wiped the sweat from his face and looked over his shoulder, toward the hill and the now-silent gun emplacement. And there sat Eaton, his white robes fluttering, two or three messengers around him.
Just then one of the mercenaries got up and started to fall back. Another followed him, then two Arabs. It took all the willpower Gideon had not to join men who were showing so little honor but such good sense.
Then Eaton was galloping across the plain, straight toward the retreating men. And the first one he came to, he decapitated with his scimitar. The body stood for a few seconds, a gushing fountain of blood, a warning to any who would run. Then it collapsed as the other men went scrambling back to the peach trees.
Eaton pounded his huge black horse into the knot of frightened men. “Mr. O’Bannon! We can’t stay here all day.”
“Then we can advance under volley fire, sir.”
“Damn the volley fire! A charge. Now.”
O’Bannon hesitated for only an instant before a mad, maniacal grin came to his face, as if he could see the brilliance of such audacity. “A charge, then!”
“Up! Up now!” Eaton wheeled his horse in the crowded little grove of trees.
“This is madness,” said Gideon to Whitten.
Eaton whirled on him, like a superman who could hear whispered remarks in the din of battle. “You’ll charge, damn your blood, or I’ll have your head, too.”
“There’s hundreds behind that breastwork, sir.”
And Eaton shook his scimitar at Gideon. “Show them the fury of the few, and the fearful many will run, Mr. Browne.”
And that crazy proposition—as crazy as the notion that an American could march a thousand Arabs across five hundred miles of desert he had never seen, rendezvous with the U.S. Navy, and attack the second largest city in Tripoli—proved to be the final miracle.
When the defenders saw sixty madmen rushing toward them, most broke and ran, and the rest were routed. Then marines and Arabs charged through the city from two directions and fought all the way to the courtyard of the waterfront fortress.
It was said that when O’Bannon sent the American colors up the flagpole, the men on the ships let out a wild cheer. But inside the fortress, Gideon saw the anger in the eyes of Ali Gurgheis, who carried a Tripolitan flag he had planned to raise himself over his country.
“AND THEY TOOK Derna?” asked the bashaw.
“Yes, Lord,” said the messenger.
The bashaw grew as gray as any Arab Jason Stafford had ever seen. “My brother’s own children are hostages under my roof, but never did I believe he had the balls to father them.”
“It would seem he is no gelding.” Sidi Mohammed rubbed his eyes.
The bashaw looked at Jason. “Not one word of this. I want no panic.”
Jason shook his head. He knew well when to keep his mouth shut.
Sidi Mohammed asked the messenger, “How many were the defenders of Derna?”
“Eight hundred… eight hundred brave souls, Lord.”
“And with my brother?” asked the bashaw.
The messenger stretched his neck, as if he could feel the blade that might behead him for the news he brought. “Many thousands… many, many thousands.”
“Many thousands?” The bashaw’s anger faded to simple, expressionless shock. “In addition to the ships?”
“Many thousands, led by fanatical Americans and the madman Eaton.”
Sidi Mohammed smiled. “In defeat, men sometimes enlarge the number of their enemy so that even in defeat, they, too, are enlarged.”
“No, Lord.” The messenger shook his head so vigorously that desert dust puffed up all around him. “I speak the truth.”
The bashaw stalked to the balcony and stared out at the sea. “Americans. They cross my desert. They blockade my shore. They would rather fight than pay the piddling tribute that even mighty England pays. What kind of men are they?”
His son Muhammed, a scowling seventeen-year-old hulk who seemed always to be lurking in the shadows, said, “Show them what kind of man you are. Execute your Americans.”
And the bashaw nodded, as though pleased that his son was learning the art of treachery. Some good was coming of this after all.
“Majesty”—Sidi Mohammed cleared his throat—“if you execute them, you cannot trade them… not for money, not for your throne—”
“If the Americans would go away and take my brother with them,” said the bashaw gloomily, “I would give up the hostages now.”
“Do that, and your people will lose respect for you,” said Sidi Mohammed. “Kill them, and the Americans will pound our city to dust.”
This remark renewed the bashaw’s bluster. In the best of times, he was a man of unpredictable mood, but nothing in Jason’s memory had produced a more madly swinging pendulum than this morning’s news. “I am not a man to threaten!”
“But you are a man of wisdom,” said Sidi Mohammed in a soothing voice. “The man of wisdom will negotiate.”
Jason cleared his throat. “Captain Rodgers is now in command, Highness. He is a fighter, but he answers to Tobias Lear, who is a negotiator—”
“And from what we read in all their lime juice letters,” said Sidi Mohammed, “Lear considers Eaton as much a madman as we do.”
Jason was not surprised that they had been reading the secret letters, but he was pleased that the bashaw’s pendulum was swinging back to negotiation.
“BEFORE I’D GIVE you $200,000 for the hostages,” said Captain John Rodgers, “I’d give you $200,000 to blow Tripoli off the face of the earth.”
Sidi Mohammed sat at the mahogany table in the day cabin of the Constitution, his hands folded neatly in his lap.
Rodgers, a beefy man with a high forehead and fiery complexion, strode back and forth between the carriages of two twenty-four-pounders.
Tobias Lear, as tall as Rodgers, but far bonier and altogether white—white skin, white-powdered hair, white linen coat over white waistcoat—sat and studied the bashaw’s earlier offer. “In addition to the money, you demand a promise of peace, the return of all Tripolitan prisoners, and full restitution of all property taken from them?”
“This is so.”
“This is asinine,” said Rodgers.
Sidi Mohammed shifted his eyes to Jason. “Asinine?”
“Something only an ass would do.” Jason had come as the foreign minister’s translator of difficult phrases. He stood at attention, his hat tucked under his arm, his buttons polished, his mind set on acting the model midshipman.
“You know their language well,” said Rodgers to Jason. “How well do you know the spirit of your mates? Can they take more bombardment?”
“They’re… we’re navy men, sir. We’ll do our duty.”
“Bravely spoken,” said Sidi Mohammed. Then he shifted his gaze. “Warriors must speak bravely, must they not, Colonel Lear?”
“And I must speak frankly,” answered Lear. “There can be no accord until you bring us a proposal less asinine than this.”
“And,” added Rodgers, “do not insult us by dressing up midshipmen and bringing them out for show. If you wish us to see how well you treat our officers, bring out Captain Bainbridge or Lieutenant Porter.”
Sidi Mohammed stood. “Any accord must include an agreement to stop those who have taken Derna from marching farther.”
Lear stood in response. “Your worry should not be with a group of renegades in the desert, but with the guns of our fleet.”
“Since the leaving of Preble, we have not once heard those guns. I think you are more judicious men than Preble… or Eaton.”
“Preble is a fine officer,” said Rodgers.
“And Eaton is a loose cannon,” said Lear.
“Loose cannon?” Sidi looked at Jason.
“A gun broken free from its tackles on a rolling deck,” explained Jason. “An unpredictable man.”
