In Destiny's Clutch, Page 2

  “And what may that be?”

  “That you’re a dull fellow when all is said, Messer Dragut. Hang me, and you hang the only man in all your fleet who can show you the way out of this trap.”

  Dragut stared between anger and amazement. “You can show me a way out of this trap?” he echoed. “What way may that be?”

  “Strike off my fetters, restore me my garments, and give me proper food, and I will discuss it with you.”

  Dragut glowered at him. “We have a shorter way to make men speak,” he said. Brancaleone smiled and shook his head. “You think so? Another of your delusions.”

  It was odd what a power of conviction dwelt in his imperturbable tones. The corsair issued an order, and turned away. A half hour later, Messer Brancaleone, nourished, washed, and clothed, looking once more like the elegant Italian gentleman who had first been hoisted aboard the galley, stepped on to the deck, where Dragut-Reis awaited him in some impatience.

  Seated cross-legged upon a gorgeous silken divan that was wrought in green and blue and gold, the handsome corsair combed his square black beard with fretful fingers. Behind him, stark-naked save for his white loin cloth, stood his gigantic Nubian, his body oiled until it shone like ebony, armed with a great curved scimitar.

  “Now, sir,” growled Dragut, “what is this precious plan of yours—briefly?” His tone was contemptuous.

  “You begin where we should end,” said the imperturbable Genoese. “I owe you no favors Messer Dragut, and I bear you no affection that I should make you a free gift of your life and liberty. My eyes have seen something to which yours are blind, and my brain has conceived something of which yours is quite incapable.

  These things, sir, are for sale. Before I part with them we must agree upon the price.” Dragut stared from under scowling brows.

  He could scarce believe that the world held so much impudence. “And what price do you suggest?” he snarled, by way of humoring the Genoese.

  “Why, as to that, since I offer you life and liberty, it is but natural that I should claim my own life and liberty in return, and similarly the liberty of Madonna Amelia and of my servants whom you captured; also it is but natural that I should require the restoration of the money and jewels you have taken from us, and since you have deprived us of our felucca, it is no more than proper that you should equip us with a vessel in which to pursue the journey which you interrupted.

  “Considering the time we have lost in consequence of this interruption,” Brancaleone went on, “it is but just that you should make this good as far as possible by presenting me with a craft that is capable of the utmost speed. I will accept a galley of six and twenty oars, manned by a proper complement of Christian slaves.”

  “And is that all?” roared Dragut.

  “No,” said Brancaleone quietly. “That is but the restitution due to me. We come now to the price of the service I am to render you. When you were Giannetino Doria’s prisoner, Barbarossa paid for you, as all the world knows, a ransom of three thousand ducats. I will be more reasonable.”

  “Will you so?” snorted Dragut. “By the splendor of Allah, you’ll need to be.”

  “I will accept one thousand ducats.”

  “May Allah blot thee out, thou impudent son of shame!” cried the corsair, filled with fury.

  “You compel me to raise the price to fifteen hundred ducats,” said Brancaleone smoothly. “I must be compensated for abuse since I cannot take satisfaction for it as between one Christian gentleman and another.”

  It was good for Dragut that his feelings suddenly soared to an intensity beyond expression, else might the price have been raised even beyond the famous ransom that Barbarossa had paid. Mutely he stood glowering, clenching and unclenching his hands; than he half turned to his Nubian swordsman. “Ali—” he began.

  Brancaleone once more cut in. “Ah, wait,”

  said he. “I pray you calm yourself. Remember how you stand, and that Andrea Doria holds you trapped. Do nothing that will destroy your only chance. Time enough to call in Ali and have my head hacked off when I have failed.”

  That speech arrested Dragut’s anger in full flow. He wheeled upon the Genoese once more.

  “You accept that alternative?”

  Brancaleone smiled with almost pitying amusement. “Why not? I have no slightest fear of failure. I can show you how to win clear of this trap and make the admiral the laughingstock of the world.”

  “Speak, then; let me know your plan!” cried Dragut fiercely.

  “If I do so before you have agreed to my terms, then I shall have nothing left to sell.”

  Angrily Dragut turned aside, and strode to the taffrail. He looked across the shimmering blue water to the fortifications at the harbor mouth; with the eyes of his imagination he looked beyond at the fleet of Genoa riding out yonder in patient conviction that it held its prey.

  The price that Brancaleone asked was outrageous—a galley and some two hundred Christian slaves to row it and fifteen hundred ducats. In all it amounted to fully as much as the ransom that Barbarossa had paid for him, yet Dragut must pay it, or fall into the power of his Christian foes. He came to reflect that he would pay it gladly enough to be out of this tight corner.

  He came about again. He spoke of torture once more, but in a half-hearted sort of way; for he did not himself believe that it would be effective with a man of Brancaleone’s temper.

  Brancaleone laughed at the threat, and shrugged his shoulders. “You may as profitably hang me, Messer Dragut,” he said, “for your infidel barbarities will but seal my lips for all time.”

  “We might torture the woman,” said Dragut the ingenious.

  Brancaleone, on the words, turned white to the lips; but it was the pallor of bitter, heartsearing resolve, not the pallor of such fear as Dragut had hoped to awaken. He advanced a step, his imperturbability all gone, and he sent his words into the face of the corsair with the fierceness of a cornered wild cat.

  “Attempt it,” said he, “and as God’s my witness I leave you to your fate at the hands of Genoa—ay, though my heart should burst with the pain of my silence. I am a man, Messer Dragut; never doubt it.”

  “I do not,” said Dragut, his piercing black eyes upon that set white face. “I agree to your terms. Show me a way out of Doria’s clutches, and you shall have all that you have asked for.”

  Chapter V:

  Really Simple.

  TREMBLING still from his recent emotion, Brancaleone hoarsely bade the corsair call up his officers and repeat his words before them. “And you shall make oath upon this matter,” he added. “Men say of you that you are a faithful Moslem. I mean to put it to the test.” Dragut, now all eagerness to know what plan was stirring in his prisoner’s brain, unable to brook further suspense in this affair, called up his officers, and before them all, taking Allah to witness, he made oath upon the beard of the Prophet that if Brancaleone could show him deliverance, he on his side would recompense the Genoese to the extent demanded.

  Thereafter Dragut and Brancaleone went ashore, with no other attendant but the Nubian swordsman. It was the Genoese who led the way, not toward the fort, as Dragut had expected, but in the opposite direction. Arrived at the northernmost curve of that almost circular lagoon, where the ground was swampy. Brancaleone paused. He pointed across a strip of shallow land, that was no more than a half mile or so in width, to the blue-green sea beyond. Part of this territory was swamp, and part sand; vegetation there was of the scantiest; some clumps of reeds, an odd date palm, its crest rustling slightly in the breeze, and nothing else.

  “It is really very simple,” said the Italian. “Yonder lies your way.”

  As he spoke, a red-legged stork rose from the edge of the marsh, and went circling overhead.

  Dragut’s face was purple with rage. He deemed that this smooth fellow had brought him there to make mock of him.

  “Are my galleys winged like that stork, thou fool?” he answered passionately. “Or are they wheeled like char
iots that I can sail them over dry land.”

  Brancaleone looked at him in stupefaction. “I protest,” said he, “that for a man of your reputation for shrewdness, you fill me with amazement. I said you were a dull fellow. I little dreamed how dull. Nay, now, suppress your rage. Truth is a very healing draft, and you have need of it. I compute now that aboard your ships there will be, including slaves, some three thousand men.

  No doubt you could press another thousand from the island into your service. How long would it take four thousand men to dig a channel deep enough to float your shallow galleys through that strip of land?”

  Dragut’s fierce eyes flickered as though he had been menaced with a blow. “By Allah!” he ejaculated, and gripped his beard. “By the splendor of Allah!”

  “In a week the thing were easily done,”

  Brancaleone resumed, “and meanwhile your fort will hold the admiral in play and mask your labors. Then, one dark night, you slip through this channel, and stand away to the south, so that by sunrise you shall have vanished beyond the sky line, leaving the admiral to guard an empty trap.”

  Dragut laughed aloud, in almost childlike glee, and otherwise signified his delight by the vehemence with which he testified to the unity of Allah. Suddenly he checked, and his eyes narrowed as they rested upon Brancaleone. “‘Tis a scurvy trick you play your lady’s grandsire!” said he.

  The Genoese shrugged and, smiled deprecatingly. “Every man for himself, Messer Dragut. We understand each other, I think. ‘Tis not for love of you I do this thing.”

  “I would it were,” said the corsair, with an odd sincerity, and thereafter, as they returned to the galleys, it was seen that Dragut’s arm was about the shoulders of the infidel, and that he spoke with him as with a brother.

  The fact is that Dragut, fired with admiration of Brancaleone’s resourcefulness, was cast down at the thought that so fine a spirit should of necessity be destined to go down to the pit. He spoke to him now of the glories of Islam, and of the future that must await a gentleman of his endowments in the ranks of the Moslem; he had of a sudden conceived so great an affection for him that he was filled with the desire to convert him to the true faith. But this was a matter in which Brancaleone was politely obdurate, and Dragut had not the time to devote to the conversation, greatly as he desired it. There was the matter of that canal to engage him.

  Brancaleone’s instructions were diligently carried out. Daily the fort at the Boca de Cantara would belch forth shot at the Genoese navy, which stood well out of range. To the admiral this was but the barking of a dog that dared not come within biting reach, and the waste of ammunition roused his contempt of that pirate Dragut whom he held at his mercy.

  There came a day, however, when the fort was silent; it was followed by another day of silence, in the evening of which one of the admiral’s officers suggested that all might not be well. Doria agreed with him.

  “All is not at all well with that dog Dragut.”

  Andrea Doria laughed in his white beard. “He wants us within range of his guns. The ruse is a little too obvious.”

  And so the great Genoese fleet remained carefully out of range of the empty fort, what time Dragut himself was some scores of miles away, speeding as fast as his slaves could row for the archipelago and the safety of the Dardanelles. In the words of the Spanish historian, Marmol, who has chronicled the event—although many of the details here recorded escaped his knowledge— ”Dragut left Messer Andrea Doria ‘with the dog to hold.’“

  Brancaleone accompanied the Moslem fleet at first, though now aboard the galley which Dragut had given him in accordance with their agreement, and with him sailed the lovely Amelia Francesca Doria, his chest of gold, the jewels, and the fifteen hundred ducats that Dragut, grimly stifling his reluctance, had paid the Genoese.

  On the second day of their voyage, the corsair was able to replace the vessel granted to Brancaleone. They met a royal galley from Naples, manned by Spaniards, and rowed by Moslem slaves. She was speeding to Andrea Doria with news that the viceroy was sending reenforcements. There was a sharp, short fight, and Messer Dragut added her to his fleet, liberating the Moslem slaves, and replacing them by the Spaniards who had manned the vessel.

  Some hours later, Messer Brancaleone and the corsair captain parted company with many expressions of mutual good will, and the Genoese put about and steered a northwesterly course for the coast of Spain.

  Chapter VI:

  That Impudent Genoese

  IT was some months ere Dragut learned the true inwardness of Messer Brancaleone’s conduct.

  He had the story from a Genoese captive, captain of a carack which the corsair scuttled in the Straits of Messina. The fellow’s name chanced to be Brancaleone, upon learning which Dragut inquired if he were kin to one Ottavio Brancaleone, who had gone to Spain with the admiral’s granddaughter.

  “He is my cousin,” the man answered. And Dragut now learned that in the teeth of the opposition of the whole Doria family, the irrepressible Brancaleone had carried off Madonna Amelia. The admiral had news of it as he was putting to sea, and it was in pursuit not only of Dragut, but also of the runagates, that he had come south so far as Jerbah, having reason more than to suspect that they were aboard one of Dragut’s galleys. The admiral had sworn to hang Brancaleone from his yardarm ere he returned to port, and his bitterness at the trick Dragut had played him was increased by the reflection that Brancaleone, too, had got clear away.

  Dragut was very thoughtful when he heard that story. “And to think,” said he, “that I paid that unconscionable dog fifteen hundred ducats and gave him my best galley manned by two hundred Christian slaves for rendering himself as great a service as ever he was rendering me!”

  He bore no malice, however. On the contrary, his admiration grew for that impudent Genoese, the only Christian who had ever bested Dragut in a bargain, and if he had a regret it was that so shrewd a spirit should abide in the body of an infidel. “In the service of Islam,” he was wont to say, “such a man as Brancaleone might have gone far indeed. But Allah is all-knowing.”

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