“They’ve formed a sort of enterprise wherein Yevgeny is Labor, and Mr. Foot is Management. Its exact nature is difficult to explain. Later, it will become clear to you. In the meantime, it’s imperative that the ten of us remain together!”
“What possible reason could you have for giving a damn whether we stay together?”
“During the last several years of touring the Mediterranean behind an oar, I have been developing, secretly, in my mind, a Plan,” said Moseh de la Cruz. “It is a plan that will bring all ten of us wealth, and then freedom, though possibly not in that order.”
“Does armed mutiny enter into this plan? Because—”
Moseh rolled his eyes.
“I was simply trying to imagine what r?le a man such as myself could possibly have in any Plan—leastways, any Plan that was not invented by a raving Lunatick.”
“It is a question I frequently asked myself, until today. Some earlier versions of the Plan, I must admit, involved throwing you overboard as soon as it was practicable. But today when fifteen hundred guns spoke from the three-tiered batteries of the Pe?on and the frowning towers of the Kasba, some lingering obstructions were, it seems, finally knocked loose inside your head, and you were put back into your right mind again—or as close to it as is really possible. And now, Jack, you do have a r?le in the Plan.”
“And am I allowed to know the nature of this r?le?”
“Why, you’ll be our Janissary.”
“But I am not a—”
“Hold, hold! You see that fellow scraping barnacles?”
“Which one? There must be a hundred.”
“The tall fellow, Arab-looking with a touch of Negro; which is to say Egyptian.”
“I see him.”
“That is Nyazi—one of the larboard crew.”
“He’s a Janissary?”
“No, but he’s spent enough time around them that he can teach you to fake your way through it. Dappa—the black man, there—can teach you a few words of Turkish. And Gabriel—that Nipponese Jesuit—is a brave swordsman. He’ll bring you up to par in no time.”
“Why, exactly, does this plan demand a fake Janissary?”
“Really it demands a real one,” Moseh sighed, “but in life one must make do with the materials at hand.”
“My question is not answered.”
“Later—when we are all together—I’ll explain.”
Jack laughed. “You speak like a courtier, in honeyed euphemisms. When you say ‘together,’ it means what? Chained together by our neck-irons in some rat-filled dungeon ’neath that Kasba?”
“Run your hand over the skin of your neck, Jack, and tell me: Does it feel like you’ve been wearing an iron collar recently?”
“Now that you mention it—no.”
“Quitting time is nigh—then we’ll go into the city and find the others.”
“Haw! Just like that? Like free men?” Jack said, as well as much more in a similar vein. But an hour later, a strange wailing arose from several tall square towers planted all round the city, and a single gun was fired from the heights of the Kasba, and then all of the slaves put their scrapers down and began to wander off down the beach in groups of two or three. Seven whom Moseh had identified as belonging to the two Oars of his Plan tarried for a minute until all were ready to depart; the Dutchman, van Hoek, did not wish to leave until he was good and finished.