“Crash-oom!” went a gun. “Crash-oom!” went a second, a third and a fourth.
“They’re firing at us!” said Ortho.
Puddicombe snorted. “Aye—powder! That’s rejoicements, that is. You don’t know these Arabs; when the cow calves they fire a gun; that’s their way o’ laughing. Why, I’ve seen the corsairs come home to Algiers with all the forts blazin’ like as if there was a bombardment on. You wait, we’ll open up in a minute. Ah, there you are!”
“Crash-oom!” bellowed the flagship ahead. “Zang! Zang!” thundered their own bow-chasers. “Crash-oom!” roared the ship astern, and the forts on either hand replied with deafening volleys. “Crack-wang! Crack-wang!” sang the little swivels. “Pop-pop-pop!” snapped the muskets ashore. In the lull came the noise of far cheering and the throb of drums and then the stunning explosions of the guns again.
“They’ve dowsed the mizzen,” said Puddicombe. “Foresail next and let go. We’m most there, son; see what I mean?”
They were taken off at dusk in a ferry float. The three ships were moored head and stern in a small river with walled towns on either hand, a town built upon red cliffs to the south, a town built upon a flat shore to the north. To the east lay marshes and low hills beyond, with the full moon rising over them.
The xebecs were surrounded by a mob of skiffs full of natives, all yelling and laughing and occasionally letting off a musket. One grossly overloaded boat, suddenly feeling its burden too great to bear, sank with all hands.
Its occupants did not mind in the least; they splashed about, bubbling with laughter, baled the craft out and climbed in again. The ferry deposited its freight of captives on the spit to the north, where they were joined by the prisoners from the other ships, including some women taken on the Dutch Indiaman. They were then marched over the sand flats towards the town, and all the way the native women alternately shrieked for joy or cursed them. They lined the track up to the town, shapeless bundles of white drapery, and hurled sand and abuse. One old hag left her long nail marks down Ortho’s cheek, another lifted her veil for a second and sprayed him with spittle.
“Kafir-b-Illah was rasool!” they screamed at the hated Christians. Then: “Zahrit! Zahrit! Zahrit!” would go the shrill joy cries.
Small boys with shorn heads and pigtails gamboled alongside, poking them with canes and egging their curs on to bite them, and in front of the procession a naked black wild man of the mountains went leaping, shaking his long hair, whooping and banging a goat-skin tambourine.