Xavier finally smiled. He had a good crew. He closed his eyes, lifting his face to the twilight and the salt air. Everything was going well. He would survive this sojourn to Tripoli, complete his secret mission, and fulfill his own personal ambitions. Then why was he, deep within himself, disturbed?
Xavier opened his eyes and met the ripe gleaming of a full moon. A deep, rippling sense of uneasiness settled over him.
He stood. A moment later he was speaking to Tubbs, his first mate. “I want a full watch this night.”
“What’s wrong, Cap’n?”
“Nothing that I know of. But it cannot hurt to be safe.” He smiled, gripping the bowlegged Englishman’s shoulder, then turned and strode back to the prow of his ship.
Something was going to happen. Something significant. Momentous. He could feel it. With every sinew and muscle, every pore and fiber, of his entire being.
Xavier sent four longboats to shore with two dozen men to take on water. He himself captained one of the first ships, Tubbs remaining on board thePearlwith the pilot, Fernandez. The hulls of the longboats began to scrape the bottom of the sandy shore. Xavier eyed the coast again for the dozenth time, but all he saw was shimmering sand and piles of rocks. In the distance, to the south, a line of mountains made a jagged black shape.
His men sloshed through the surf to the shore, dragging the boats up with them. Xavier was still knee-deep in water when the screams began.
Eeerie, deathly—bloodcurdling.
And suddenly two dozen Arabs leapt out from behind the rocks, waving scimitars, their faces crazed with bloodlust. A dozen horsemen came galloping down the beach, firing muskets, screaming their Moslem war cry.
“Back to the longboats!” Xavier shouted, raising his pistol. “To the ship!”
Xavier braced his legs and fired, dropping a soldier intent on mowing down one of his men. Three of his men at the very forefront had already been chopped down savagely by the horde. Taking careful aim, he shot an approaching horseman on a white Arab steed. Around him, his men were either engaged in hand-to-hand combat with knives and daggers or were leaping into the longboats. The Arabs kept coming.
Xavier tucked his pistol into his belt and drew his dagger. He ducked the blow of a man wielding a scimitar, well aware that two of the longboats had just put out for thePearl.As he straightened, he feinted, then managed to plunge his blade into the Arab’s chest. The man’s eyes widened in surprise, and then, slowly, he fell to the ground.
Xavier immediately leapt on a native who was about to strangle one of his men. He slit his throat and threw him aside. “Into the longboat” he shouted, already heaving the boat off of the sandy shore.
“Yessir,” Allen cried, scrambling inside. “Cap’n! Look out!”
But Xavier had already turned, instinctively bracing himself to meet the Arab who was cantering his steed into the surf, his scimitar poised high in the air. The Arab horse pounded closer, wild-eyed. Xavier lunged forward, grabbing the horse’s bridle. A moment later he had cut its jugular. The animal screamed, going down into the surf, blood spewing. Xavier jumped on the Arab before he could disentangle himself from the horse and saddle, quickly finishing him off by holding him under the water.
“Cap’n! Hurry!” someone screamed.
Xavier released the dead man. He saw that the other two longboats had put out now, too, and were trailing their sisters to thePearl.The last boat, containing Allen and his quartermaster, was already ten feet distant. He quickly glanced back at the beach and saw at least a half dozen of his men lying prone in the white sand in crimson pools of blood. But three times that number of Arabs also lay dying or dead.
The rest of the foot soldiers had fled. The horsemen sat their mounts by the water’s edge, shouting at Xavier, cursing him in Arabic, waving pistols and scimitars, but they did not urge their horses into the surf.
“Cap’n!”
Xavier turned and began to plunge through the thigh-high waves as one of the longboats paused, its oarsmen waiting for him. His men cheered as he reached the side of the boat, four pairs of hands seizing him and hauling him aboard like a sack of potatoes.
Xavier sat on the wet bottom, panting.
“You all right, Cap’n?” His quartermaster asked. Benedict was one of the oarsmen.
Xavier did not answer. He sat up and looked at the beach. Comprehension filled him then, and he was grim.
“Cap’n—look!” Allen cried.
Xavier turned and saw the bright gleam of a sail on the horizon—racing toward thePearl.He stood and was leaping out of the longboat before it had even nosed thePearl,scrambling up the rope ladder. “Anchor aweigh!”
Xavier was met by Tubbs on the forecastle as thePearlwas readied for departure. Their gazes locked, Tubbs handing Xavier the spyglass. Xavier lifted it immediately. He trained it on the ship rapidly closing in on them.
It was a corsair cruiser.
“We been had, Cap’n, sir,” Tubbs said. ThePearlhad begun to creep forward slowly. “Don’t know if we can get out of the inlet in time.”
“Haul the port sail,” Xavier said. He did not lower the glass.
