This remark dampened all conversation for a few minutes, and Jack took stock of his situation.
After a long series of wrestling-bouts, the torchères had been extinguished and the Turks and free Algerines had departed, leaving the banyolar to the slaves. Both the starboard and the larboard oars, in their entirety, had now convened on the roof of the banyolar to smoke pipes. The night was nearly moonless, with only the merest crescent creeping across the sky—out over the Sahara, as Jack supposed. Consequently there were more stars out than Jack had ever seen. A few lights glimmered from the embrasures of the Kasba, but other than that, it seemed that these ten galley-slaves had the night to themselves:
Larboard Oar
YEVGENY THE RASKOLNIK, a.k.a. “Rus”
MR. FOOT, ex-proprietor of the Bomb & Grapnel, Dunkirk,
and now entrepreneur-without-portfolio
DAPPA, a Neeger linguist
JERONIMO, a vile but high-born Spaniard
NYAZI, a camel-trader of the Upper Nile
Starboard Oar
“HALF-COCKED” JACK SHAFTOE, L’Emmerdeur,
King of the Vagabonds
MOSEH DE LA CRUZ, the Kohan with the Plan
GABRIEL GOTO, a Jesuit Priest of Nippon
OTTO VAN HOEK, a Dutch mariner
VREJ ESPHAHNIAN, youngest of the Paris Esphahnians—
for the Armenian they’d picked up in the market was none other*
“We are held captive in this city by the ineffable will of the market,” Moseh de la Cruz began.
These words sounded to Jack like the beginning of a well-rehearsed, and very long presentation, and so he was not slow to interrupt.
“Pah! What market can you possibly be talking about?” But looking around at the others it seemed that he was the only one showing the least bit of skepticism.
“Why, the market in tutsaklar ransom futures, which is three doors down yonder alley-way, on the left,” Moseh said, pointing. “It is a place where anyone with money can buy into the deed of a tutsaklar, which means, captive of war—thereby speculating that one day that person will be ransomed, in which event all of the shareholders divide up the ransom, minus certain duties, taxes, fees, et cetera, levied by the Pasha. It is the city’s primary source of revenue and foreign exchange—”
“All right, pardon me, I did not know that, and supposed you were framing some occult similitude,” Jack said.
“As I watched Yevgeny’s bout this evening,” Moseh continued, “it came to me that said market is a sort of Invisible Hand that grips us all by the testicles—”
“Hold, hold! Are you babbling some manner of Cabbalistic superstition now?”
“No, Jack, now I am using a similitude. For there is no Invisible Hand—but there might as well be.”
“Very good—pray continue.”
“The workings of the market dictate that tutsaklar who are likely to be ransomed, and for large fees, are well-treated—”
“And ones like us end up as galley-slaves,” Jack said. “And ’tis clear enough to me why I am assessed a low value by this market, and my nuts gripped most oppressively by the Invisible Hand of which you spoke. Likewise, Mr. Foot is broke, Yevgeny’s of a daft sect whose members torture one another, Dappa is persona non grata in all lands south of the Sahara, Vrej Esphahnian’s family is chronically ill-funded. Se?or Jeronimo, whatever fine qualities he may possess that I haven’t seen evidence of yet, is not the sort that anyone who has spent much time with him would be disposed to pay a lot of ransom for. I know not the tale of Nyazi but can guess it. Gabriel is on the wrong side of the fucking world. All plain enough. But van Hoek is some kind of a naval officer, and you are an intelligent-seeming Jew—why have you two not been ransomed?”
“My parents died of the Plague that ravaged Amsterdam when Cromwell cut off our foreign trade, and so many honest Dutchman were cast out of their homes and took to sleeping in pestilential places—” van Hoek began, rather peevishly.
“Avast, Cap’n! Do I look like a Roundhead? ’Twasn’t my doing!”
“I was suckled by government-issue wet-nurses at the Civic Orphanage. The worthies of the Reformed Church taught me reading and figures, bless them, but in time I grew up into a difficult boy.”