Corsair Read Online Free PDF Page B

base.
    The sound of cheering brought his attention back to the harbour. On the seaward side of the fortress a curtain wall had been built to protect an anchorage. This curtain wall, some thirty feet high and built along the crest of a reef, was also topped with battlements and cannon platforms. The rampart was lined with citizens who had come out to greet them. They were shouting and waving, and a small band of musicians – three drummers and a man with some sort of flute – had struck up a wild skirling tune. Those spectators who were nearest the musicians were clapping in time and a few of them were whirling and dancing with delight.
    A shove on his shoulder from one of the crew pushed him into line so that he stood side by side with the other captives at the rail of the ship, facing across to the crowd of onlookers. Hector realised that he and the other prisoners were being put on show. They were the spoils of the corsair’s cruise.
    A few moments more and their ship was rounding the far end of the harbour wall, with the anchorage opening ahead of them. Moored in the middle of the roadstead were four sailing vessels similar to the one Hakim Reis commanded. But what caught his eye were the dozen vessels deep inside the harbour, their bows tied to the mole itself. Without being told, he knew what they were. Low and sleek and dangerous, they reminded him of the greyhounds his father and his friends had used to course hares in the countryside. He was about to ask Dunton if he was right in thinking they were corsair galleys, when the villager standing beside him said in anguished tones, ‘Where’s the other ship? The one with our womenfolk and the children?’
    Shocked, Hector turned to look. Nowhere could he see the vessel that had accompanied them. She was gone.

 
FOUR

     
    S AMUEL M ARTIN , the English consul in Algiers, heard the salvoes of gunfire and walked to the window of his office. From long experience he knew the reason for the commotion. Squinting down into the harbour he recognised Hakim Reis’s ship and sighed. The corsair’s arrival meant there was work for him, and it was not a task he relished. By inclination and preference Martin was a trader. He would much rather have looked out of his window and seen merchant ships arriving and departing, laden with the honest merchandise from which he had hoped to make his living when he had first arrived in Algiers a decade ago. But it had not turned out that way. Legitimate trade between England and Algiers was on the increase but the Algerines much preferred to make their money by seizing captives for ransom or selling stolen goods, often back to their original owners. Hence the joyous reception being given by the populace to Hakim Reis and his ruffians down at the harbour.
    Consul Martin, a small and active man, often wondered if the government in London had any inkling of the complications of being England’s representative to a Barbary regency. For a start he never quite knew whom he should be dealing with. Officially the city ruler was the Pasha appointed by the Turkish Sultan in Istanbul. But the Sublime Porte was far away, and ultimately the Pasha was really nothing more than a figurehead. Effective power apparently lay with the Dey and his cabinet of advisers, the divan. But that too was a deception. The Dey was elected by the janissaries, the city’s Turkish-born military elite. Known locally as the odjaks, the janissaries were professional warriors, but it was normal that they also followed a second occupation, usually as merchants or landlords. Certainly they devoted more energy to political intrigues than to soldiering. They made and unmade their Deys at an alarming rate, and their favoured method of getting rid of the current officeholder was by assassination. In Consul Martin’s time three Deys had been killed, two by poison and one with the garrotte. The Consul was aware that the divan only paid him any attention when it suited them, but he