Lydia bailey, p.53
Lydia Bailey, page 53
* * *
We found no army camped outside the city, as there would have been if Joseph Karamanli’s cavalry, troops, and caravan had arrived; so we went to work at once to ascertain where they were—no easy task, since there are three caravan routes from Bengazi to Derna, and Joseph’s army might be using any one of the three. All of them must therefore be reconnoitered.
So the whole troop gathered in a tight circle around Abdul Rahim and Moraja as they described to us the Bengazi-Derna routes. One—the route along the coast—required the crossing of many wadis, or the following of indentations wearying to men, horses, and camels alike, as well as the constant climbing to and descending from the escarpment. This route, they said, needn’t be considered, for it would be followed only by express riders traveling light on fast horses. The second and longest route went straight southward from Derna, as if starting back to Jalo; then bore westward to Bengazi. The third, lying between the coast road and the extreme inland road, divided into three tracks halfway to Bengazi. It would therefore be necessary to send four patrols to the westward. They talked and talked and talked about those four roads, naming every well, every wadi, every Marabout’s tomb, every mountain, every cross-path to Tolmita, Merj, Cyrene, Marsa Susa. Here, they said, are Roman baths; here, cisterns; here, Arab cemeteries. They knew where there would be gardens, where large cedars in a valley, or barren olive trees; where there was a spring, a Roman fort beside a reservoir, remains of ancient vine terraces; where herds of numerous goats would be found feeding; where there were fruit trees and good pasture.
It was hard to believe that these men were talking about Africa and the desert, for they mentioned gardens of maize and vines, and large five-acre gardens with fig, almond, and apple trees; spoke of valley after valley where there would be flocks of sheep, cattle, and camels; of large areas of low forest; of heavily turfed hills.
Without having these things set down clearly on a map, I myself could no more have remembered them than I could have recalled a random page out of Hariri. But every one of these black cavalrymen nodded his head and moved his lips and made marks with his forefinger on the palm of his hand, and seemed to drop every word he heard into a different slot in his brain, to be pulled out and used when the need arose. And when Abdul Rahim designated the four patrols who were to go to the westward, they left us with all the assurance of a Portland man setting out from his home to go to the custom house.
The getting of information as to the whereabouts of Eaton and Hamet was easier; for there was only one road, the Jalo men agreed, that Eaton and Hamet could take to Derna: the coast road through Sollum and Bomba.
* * *
While we awaited the return of our patrols, King Dick and I, two innocent-appearing travelers, made our way down off the escarpment, onto the coast road, and to the main gate of the city. We found it well guarded; but when the captain of the guard learned that we were from Jalo with a message to Hadji ben Idriss’s Derna agent, he sent off a messenger readily enough; and in half an hour the agent, Sidi Abzell—a foppish gentleman with scented whiskers, a striped silk burnoose, and a flower behind his ear—came out accompanied by three servants loaded down with a roast turkey, a kettle of rice, a skin of date wine, and a teapot.
So we sat down in the shadow of that monstrous great escarpment, on the edge of the deep gash in the green meadow above Derna, that steep-walled ravine into and out of which anyone entering the main part of the town would have to clamber, and looked down contemplatively upon the feathery palms, minarets, and flat roofs of that desired city while we stuffed ourselves with turkey, date wine, and tea.
We first captured Sidi Abzell’s interest with talk about the large amount of ivory and feathers that Hadji ben Idriss and Ibrahim Bishari had received from Kufra, thus leading him to think that our sole concern was to find out from him whether it would be more advisable for Hadji ben Idriss to send a caravan to Derna or to Bengazi.
Sidi Abzell swore by the very God that if all this damnable talk of war, and running to and fro of messengers, and threats of violence by sea and by land could be over, he would guarantee a larger profit in Derna than could be guaranteed in Bengazi. He would swear it, by God, and the Devil take this Joseph Karamanli and his rotten tax-gatherers, sucking the blood of honest men and reducing their profits to such a point that a man might as well cut his throat as to try to make a profit, since, when one does make a profit, by God, by my God, by the very God, the profit is taken from him by Joseph Karamanli, and he is no better off than he was before. Indeed, he is worse off, because he may have invested a little of his profit before discovering that it is no profit—bought himself a slave, perhaps; and as a result he has even less than he started with.
“What do they say in the town?” we asked Sidi Abzell. “Will Hamet return, do they think?”
He stroked his scented beard. “God knows,” he said. “The city is strong! Strong, strong, strong!”
King Dick said it didn’t look strong to him: if he stood yonder—and he pointed to the crest of the dark escarpment behind us—he could toss cannon balls into any part of Derna he wanted to take.
Sidi Abzell smiled. “Cannon balls! But to have cannon balls you must have cannon, and nobody can drag cannon across the desert! It is here in Derna that there are cannon—oh, many! In the water battery”—he pointed to a brick-walled fort on the opposite side of the city, close to the water’s edge—“there are eight guns! Oh big, by the very God! Then at the corner of the city, where the road comes in from the south, the walls of the buildings are solid, like a fort, with gun-slits in them—a difficult place.”
We looked politely amazed; but I knew as well as King Dick what havoc the batteries of twenty-four-pounders in two or three American vessels would wreak on that fort of mud-bricks and on those mud-walled houses, loop-holed though they were.
“How many in the city will fight?” King Dick asked.
Sidi Abzell shrugged. “If the people could be sure Hamet would pay them for not fighting, nobody would fight except the Bey.”
He leaned forward and spoke violently. “Nobody in this city except those who govern it, and those who fire the guns and receive money for so doing, has any desire to see this place remain under the rule of Joseph Karamanli! All the rest want Hamet back. All, all, all! We know him! He was a good governor, and kind. But if any army of Joseph Bashaw gets into this city, every man in it will be robbed. Our food supplies will be seized. All the crops will be harvested by Joseph’s soldiers; all the flocks and herds you see on these meadows will be seized. Yes, by God, all! But Hamet, if he should get here first—he would let nothing be touched! Nothing, nothing, nothing! You tell Hadji ben Idriss that if Hamet takes this city and becomes Bashaw of Tripoli once more, I can obtain prices for Hadji ben Idriss that will be the talk of Jalo—yes, and of Siwa, Kufra, and Giarabub!”
* * *
Encamped on the top of the escarpment, we impatiently waited for reports from the patrols.
Our eastward patrol were back in a day’s time with word that they’d sighted Eaton’s army from the cedar forest east of Derna, marching rapidly through the cultivated fields near Cape Razatin, cavalry in front, about two hundred, then foot soldiers, then a supply caravan of more than a hundred camels. At the rate they were going, the patrol leader said, they would reach Derna in four days.
If we had tried to sit still while waiting the return of the westward patrols, I think we’d have burst. We scoured the ragged, barren valley between the two ranges of hills until we knew every rock on it, every depression, every zigzag path down the face of the escarpment, every twist of the great wadi that carried the water of Derna’s sparkling springs into the town; made ourselves familiar, too, with the smaller wadis, until we could have found our way down to Derna on the darkest night.
When an express rider at last came galloping in from the west, we learned that Joseph Karamanli’s army had been sighted one day’s march out from Bengazi, moving slowly along the middle road; that it was slow, with two thousand men and a caravan of four hundred slow camels; and that, at the rate at which it was marching it would be seven days in reaching Derna—unless it cut loose from its camels. If it did this and rode at night, it could conceivably arrive in Derna before Eaton got there.
“They won’t leave their food and they won’t ride by night,” King Dick predicted. “Things not that important to Arabs.”
But he was climbing into the saddle as he said it. We had to get to Eaton and Hamet, and quickly, in order to let them know they must devise a way to reach Derna in a hurry if they didn’t want to fight their way through a force too large for comfort. So, leaving a squad camped above Derna to intercept the patrols who hadn’t yet returned, we set off as fast as we could go toward Hamet and Eaton.
* * *
East of Derna there’s an expanse of mountainous ground, covered with pasture lands and herbage of all sorts growing among large and beautiful red cedars; and as we came out of the cedar growth onto the cultivated fields beyond, we saw Eaton’s army moving toward us up the slope. It was late afternoon of a bright windy day, and the throng approaching us looked more like a helter-skelter caravan than an army.
We lined up our troop in a double rank, and a mighty impressive troop it looked to be, all in gray with black veils, and as level-fronted as though the horses stood with their breasts against an invisible barrier.
That army of Eaton’s and Hamet’s must have been a mile long, for behind the few blue-clad men on horseback who rode at the head of the line there were two small companies of men in uniforms I didn’t recognize, led by a handsome mounted officer with a hooded falcon on his wrist and a long-haired, topknotted greyhound loping along beside him, almost under his horse’s belly. Behind the two companies marched the main body of the army: two sprawling troops of Arab cavalry; then a mass of foot soldiers, all desert tribesmen with guns as long as pitchforks, in groups that put me in mind of shipworkers leaving the shipyards at the end of a day’s work; then scores on scores of lumbering loaded camels; and behind all these a long straggling tail of Bedouin men, women, children, dogs, donkeys.
When the foremost blue-clad riders were a pistol-shot away, King Dick nodded to Abdul Rahim, who spoke to Moraja, who let fly with that blue-heron’s squawk of his. Our troop’s sabers came out raspingly, flashed in a half-circle, and stopped rigid, slanted upward before all those black veils, a beautiful double hedge of steel. As King Dick and I sheathed our own sabers and rode out to meet the oncoming column, the double row of sabers came down against our men’s right shoulders, as pretty as a picture.
One of the blue-clad men, accompanied by Leitensdorfer in baggy Arab pantaloons, burnoose, and headcloth, pulled his horse away from the head of the line and came over to us. He had a long, ruddy face, side-whiskers, pale blue eyes, and—as we saw when he took off his plumed hat—one of the queerest heads I’d ever seen: just above his eyebrows there was a shelf, a recession of almost an inch, and from that shelf his forehead rose to thinning hair.
“These are the gentlemen, General,” Leitensdorfer said, and to us he added, “General Eaton.”
“Good!” Eaton said, in an orotund voice like a preacher’s or an actor’s. “Colonel Leitensdorfer has kept me informed from time to time. A splendid body of men! Ah—say a word to the Bashaw, will you, Colonel?”
Leitensdorfer winked at us delightedly, wheeled his horse, and went scuttling off in Hamet’s direction. The blue-clad men, eyeing us curiously, came plodding on. Behind the leaders, among whom was an American lieutenant of marines, were six American marines, headed by a marine sergeant. There was something strange about them, something that eluded me at first, though later I realized that the jackets of all of them lacked buttons.
“God help any man who has to deal with these sons of Sapphira,” Eaton said, half-humorously and half-bitterly. “We’ll delay formalities till we’re camped. Did you find out anything?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “We sent patrols to the westward, and Joseph Karamanli’s army’s now a couple of days this side of Bengazi: two thousand men.”
“I’ve kept telling ’em,” Eaton said. “You can’t hurry ’em! I knew damned well we’d have trouble; but no, by God! At the drop of a hat they’d knock off five days to buy dates; then talk about going home because Joseph’s army’s too close!”
“It’s moving slowly,” I told him. “Our men know their business, and they don’t think it can reach Derna for another seven days.”
“But it might get there sooner?”
“Yes, sir,” I said; “it could if it made a dash. It might even get there ahead of you—if it made a dash.”
“It won’t,” King Dick said.
Eaton’s expression was sour. “What these people need,” he said, “is a dose of turpentine on their tails! Of all the backers and fillers, of all the yes-ers and no-ers, of all the Oh Gods and By Gods, of all the——”
He broke off as an Arab charged full tilt at us and at the last moment reined his dapple-gray stallion back on its haunches. He was brilliantly handsome. Over his white burnoose he wore a short blue cloak, and his headcloth was blue, bound by a gold cord. His face, so softly rounded that it was saved from prettiness only by a little U-shaped beard that outlined his chin, bore a worried frown.
Eaton saluted him and said to us, “My friends, this is Hamet Karamanli, rightful Bashaw of Tripoli.” To Hamet he said, “Your Highness”—and he spoke in Arabic—“these friends of ours came to Derna from Jalo. They sent out patrols toward Bengazi and sighted Joseph Karamanli’s army.”
“On which road?” Hamet asked quickly. “How many?”
“Merj road,” King Dick answered. “Two thousand men and four hundred camels. If they press ahead without camels, just cavalry alone, then five hundred.”
Eaton wagged his finger at Hamet. “There’s no ‘if’ about it! If they know enough to do it, they can put five hundred cavalrymen in front of Derna in three days! Tell your sheiks, and tell ’em nothing else! If they think we have seven days’ leeway, there’ll be talk and more talk, and God knows what’ll happen! We’ve got to get to Derna before they get there. That means we have just three days to reach Derna! They’ll whine and they’ll squirm and they’ll haggle, but there’s only one answer: we’ve got to be in Derna in three days.”
Hamet bowed to Eaton, somehow contriving to include the two of us in his bow. “You are my friend and protector,” he told Eaton. “You know what they’ll say. They’ll say there is no way of knowing whether the ships will be there to help us. They’ll say there’s no way of knowing whether they’ll be paid. They’ll say——”
“Oh, my God,” Eaton cried, “I’m sick of their yap! I won’t listen to another damned word! I won’t even come to talk to ’em tonight! It’s your throne! This is your town we’ve got to take! We’ve come five hundred miles, and we’re only five hours from our first goal! If the bastards want to ride off into the desert, let ’em ride! I say we’ve got to be in Derna in three days, with ’em or without ’em!”
He turned abruptly to King Dick and me. “Get your men settled and come to my tent.” To Leitensdorfer he added, “Stay with ’em and show ’em how we lay out the camp.” Then he raked his horse with a spur and went galloping off towards the head of the column, with Hamet close behind him.
CHAPTER LV
* * *
We went back with Leitensdorfer to stand at the right of our troop; and as he named each detachment of the bedraggled army that slouched past us, our double line of troopers raised their sabers in salute. Behind the handful of American marines—six and a sergeant—were a company of forty swarthy men in long baggy trousers, all carrying muskets—Greek soldiers, Leitensdorfer said, who had been shipwrecked in Egypt and gone to soldiering for a living. Behind them were a company of thirty cannoneers without a cannon. The Greeks and the cannoneers did their best to look military when our sabers saluted them, but they made hard going of it—for which I couldn’t blame them when Leitensdorfer told us that before they reached Bomba, a week earlier, they had been almost foodless for a month.
Behind the cannoneers were the headquarters troop and Hamet’s attendants, nearly a hundred, all mounted; then a troop of Arab cavalry led by two sheiks who glowered at us and made no move to return our salute—at which Leitensdorfer muttered curses under his breath in half a dozen languages. “Sons of whores!” he called them. “Servants of Shaitan! Husbands of one-eyed mules! Eaters of dirt! Wash-pots! Wearers of the horns of he-goats! Kissers of pigs!” and other terms even less savory. Behind the cavalry were Bedouin foot soldiers, a motley rabble that seemed to have no leader; and far, far behind them stretched the surging and weaving heads of the camel train.
I was willing to stand there saluting until even the camels had passed, but Leitensdorfer protested that we must skirt around the column before darkness fell; so we went back through the cedar grove and on the far side found Eaton’s tent in a fertile valley near a little rivulet that trickled down through a barley field—a rivulet in which scores of men were already splashing.
Eaton had made himself comfortable in yellow Arab slippers, and was scribbling in a diary when we came in, using his saddle for a writing desk. There was a rug on the ground, and his saddlebags, sword, rifle, and pistols were stacked in a corner. He motioned us to the rug, said, “I’ll be with you in a minute—take off those veils so I can see what you look like,” and went on writing after he had added to Leitensdorfer, “Keep an eye on that cook, Colonel, and make sure nobody steals the supper. I’m damned near starved.”
