“What a world!” Jack hollered.
Most everyone looked at him.
“Year after year at home, chopping wood and drawing water and going to church, nothing to divert us save the odd hailstorm or famine-and yet all a man need do is board ship and ride the wind for a few days, and what’ve you got? Barbary Corsairs and pirate-galleys off the coast of Morocco! Now, Mr. Vliet, he has no taste for adventure. But as for myself, I would rather cross swords with corsairs than pull oars for them-so I’m for fighting!” Jack pulled out the Janissary-sword, which, compared to Mr. Foot’s pitted relics, burnt and glittered beneath the African sun. Then he flung the scabbard away. It fup-fup-fupped off to port and then stopped in midair and dove vertically into the waves. “ Thisis the only thing they’re going to get from Half-Cocked Jack!”
This actually wrung a cheer from the approximately half of the crew who’d made up their minds to fight anyway. The other half only looked embarrassed on Jack’s behalf. “Easy for you to say-everyone knows you’re dying,” said one of the latter group, one Henry Flatt, who until this moment had been on easy terms with Jack.
“And yet I’ll live longer’n you, ” Jack said, then jumped down from the pilot-house and began to approach Flatt-who stood and watched dumbly at first, perhaps not aware that all of his fellows had fled to other parts of the ship. When Jack drew closer, and turned sideways, and bent his knees, and showed Flatt the edge of his blade, Flatt went en garde for just a moment, then seemed to come to his senses, backpedaled several yards, then simply turned and ran. Jack could hear men laughing-satisfying in a way, but, on second thought, vexing. This was serious work, not play-acting. The only way to make these half-wits understand that weighty matters were at stake was probably to kill someone. So Jack cornered Flatt up at the bow, and pursued him, actually, out onto the very bowsprit, weaving and dodging around the points of the inner jib, the outer jib, and the flying jib, all of which were quivering and snapping in the wind as no one was paying attention to keeping them trimmed. Finally the wretch Flatt was perched on the tip of the bowsprit, gripping the last available line*to keep from being tossed away by the routine pitching of the ship. With the other hand he raised a cutlass in a feeble threat. “Be killed now by a Christian or in ten minutes by a heathen-it’s all one to me-but if you choose to be a slave, your life is worthless, and I’ll flick you into the ocean like a turd,” Jack said.
“I’ll fight,” Flatt said. Jack could see plainly that he was lying. But everyone was watching now-not just the crew of God’s Wounds, but a startlingly large crowd of armed men who had emerged onto the decks of the galleys. Jack had to observe proper form. So he made a great show of turning his back on Henry Flatt, and began to work his way back down the bowsprit, with the intent of whirling around and striking Flatt down when Flatt inevitably came after him. In fact, he was just about to do so when he saw Mr. Foot swinging his cutlass at a taut line that had been made fast to a pinrail at the bow: the sheet that held the obtuse corner of the flying jib, and transferred all of its power into the frame of the ship. The jib went slack above him. Jack dove, and grabbed at a line. He heard a sort of immense metallic fart as the shivering canvas wrapped around Flatt like a shroud, held him for a moment, and then dropped him into the sea, where he was immediately driven under by the onrushing hull.
Jack nearly fell overboard himself, as he ended up dangling by a rope with one hand, maintaining a grip on the sword with the other-but Yevgeny’s big hand seized his forearm and hauled him up to safety.
That is, if this could be considered safety: the two galleys, which until now had been idling along in single file, had, during the dispute with Flatt, forked apart so that they could come up on both flanks of God’s Wounds at the same time. For some minutes it had been possible to hear, from those galleys, a faint musick: an eerie chaunt sung by many voices, in a strange keening melody, that, somewhat like an Irish tune, struck Jack’s English ears as being Not from Around Here. Though, come to think of it, it probably was from around here. Anyway, it was a strange alien melody sung in some barbarous tongue. And until very recently, it had been sung slowly, as the crashing of the galleys’ many oar-blades into the brine had served as the drum-beat marking the time.
But now that the galleys had got themselves sorted out into parallel courses, they emitted a sudden fusillade of snapping noises-Jack thought, some sort of outlandish gunfire. Immediately the singing grew louder. Jack could just make out the heathen syllables:
Havah nagilah, Havah nagilah, Havah nagilah, v’nism’chah!
Havah nagilah, Havah nagilah, Havah nagilah, v’nism’chah.
“It is like the bagpipes of the Scots,” he announced, “a sort of shrill noise that they make before battle, to cover the sound of their knees knocking together.”
One or two men laughed. But even these were shushed by others, who were now listening intently to the song of the corsairs. Rather than proceeding to a steady beat, as good Christian music always did, it seemed to be getting faster.
Uru, uru achim
Uru achim b’lev sa me ach!
Uru achim b’lev sa me ach!
Uru achim b’lev sa me ach!
Uru achim b’lev sa me ach!
Havah nagilah…
It was most certainly getting faster; and as the oars bit into the water on each beat of the song, this meant that they were now rowing as well as singing faster. And indeed the gap between the bow of the foremost galley, and the stern of God’s Wounds, was getting rapidly narrower.
Uru, uru achim
Uru achim b’lev sa me ach!
Uru achim b’lev sa me ach!
Uru achim b’lev sa me ach!
Uru achim b’lev sa me ach!
Havah nagilah.
Havah nagilah, Havah nagilah, Havah nagilah, v’nism’chah!
Havah nagilah, Havah nagilah, Havah nagilah, v’nism’chah.
The corsairs were singing and rowing with abandon now, easily coming up along both flanks, maintaining just enough distance to give their oars the freedom to claw at the waves. Even not counting the unseen oar-slaves, the number of men aboard was insane, reckless, as if a whole pirate-city had crowded into each galley.
The one to port came alongside soonest, its sails and rigging struck and furled for the attack, its rail, and the poop deck, crowded with corsairs, many of them swinging grappling-hooks on the ends of ropes, others brandishing boarding-ladders with vicious curved spikes on the ends. Jack-and all of the others aboard God’s Wounds -saw, and understood, the same thing at the same time. They saw that almost none of the fighting men were Arabs except for the agha shouting the orders. They were, instead, white men, black Africans, even a few Indians. They understood that all of them were Janissaries, which is to say non-Turks who did the Turks’ fighting for them.
Having understood that, they would not be slow to grasp that becoming a Barbary Corsair might, for men such as them, constitute a fine opportunity.
Jack, being half a step quicker than the average sea-scum, understood this a moment sooner than anyone else, and decided that he would blurt it out, so that everyone would think it had been his idea. He picked up a grappling-hook and coil of rope that had been rattling around in the bottom of the weapons-chest, and returned to his former podium atop the pilot-house, and hollered, “All right! Who’s for turning Turk?”
A lusty cheer came up from the crew. It seemed to be unanimous, with the single exception of Yevgeny, who as usual had no idea what was being said. While the others were all shaking hands and congratulating one another, Jack clenched his sword in his teeth, tossed the rope-coil over his shoulder, and began ascending the ladderlike web of rigging-the fore shrouds, so called-that converged on the fore-top: a platform about halfway up the mast. Reaching it, he jammed the point of the sword into the planking, and regarded the galleys from above. The singing had sped up into a frenzy now, and the movements of the oars were beginning to get into disarray, as not all of the slaves could move their implements fast enough!