Corsair

FOUR

SAMUEL MARTIN, 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 nursed a hope that one day he would be able to influence the current Dey, an elderly odjak, directly through his favourite wife who was reputed to be an Englishwoman. She was a slave girl who had taken the old man’s fancy and borne him two children. Unfortunately Martin had yet to meet the lady, and rumour had it that she was as avaricious and corrupt as anyone else in the palace.

The consul sighed again. Had the incoming vessel been a galley returning from a short cruise in the Mediterranean, the prisoners on board were likely to be French or Genoese, Greeks or Spaniards, and therefore not his concern. But Hakim Reis was known to range as far as the English Channel on his man-catching cruises. Recently Martin had helped negotiate a treaty between London and Algiers whereby the Algerines had promised not to molest English ships, or vessels sailing under English passes. But the consul was not sure that Hakim Reis would have honoured the pact. So it was best if His Majesty’s consul established just who was on the corsair’s roster of captives. And should any of his captives prove to be subjects of the King, then Martin’s duty was to find out their identities and what price was expected for them. The best moment to do that was when the prisoners were first landed, before they were distributed among various owners or vanished into any one of the eight bagnios, the slave barracks.

Indoors, the consul liked to wear the loose cotton kaftans and slippers which the Moors of Algiers favoured, and he thought the dress very sensible in the heat. But in public he was expected to dress according to his rank and dignity. So now he called for his manservant, a Hampshire man awaiting the final instalment of an agreed ransom, and told him to lay out his street clothes – a three-piece suit of heavy cloth with a waistcoat and knee breeches, a starched linen shirt with a frilled front and ruffles at the wrist, and a cravat.

Half an hour later, sweating in this turnout, Martin descended to the street. His office and living quarters were in the coolest part of the building, the topmost of the three floors which served as the consulate as well as his residence and place of business. On the way downstairs he passed the rooms where his servants ate and slept, the dormitories occupied by several dozen captives whose ransoms were expected soon or who were part-paid, and finally on the ground floor the storerooms for the commodities he traded – mostly skins and ostrich feathers from the interior. His doorkeeper, a burly and necessary functionary who intercepted unwelcome callers at the house, pulled back the heavy nail-studded door. Martin adjusted his newly brushed periwig and, a little unsteady on the two-inch-high heels of his buckled shoes, he stepped out into the narrow street.

The noise and heat made a double blow. The consulate was situated halfway up the hill of Algiers, and its front door gave directly on to the main street which ran the length of the city, from the docks to the Kasbah at the upper end of the town. Never more than a few yards wide, with high flat-fronted houses on each side, the street was like a sultry ravine. Paved with worn stone slabs, it climbed so steeply that it had to be broken by occasional short flights of steps. The street also served as the main bazaar and emporium of the city, so walking along it meant stepping around stalls and dodging pavement vendors selling everything from vegetables to metalwork. Asses laden with panniers plodded up and down the slope, hawkers yelled, water carriers clattered tin cups against the brass flagons strapped to their backs. As the consul made his way slowly through the press of the crowd he wondered, not for the first time, whether he should retire and return to England. For years he had suffered the noise and heat of Algiers, and the roguery of its inhabitants. Yet he told himself once again that it was too soon to abandon the city. Property prices in England were rising so fast that he would not be able to afford the country estate on which he had set his heart.

On the quayside, Martin found the Dey’s scribes already seated at the table where they would enter the new intake of captives in the city register. Martin knew the chief registrar slightly and bowed to him, a gesture of politeness which would do no harm as the Algerines, for all their villainy, valued good manners. The usual crowd of idlers had assembled to observe the landing of the prisoners and pass comments on their potential worth as slaves, while the first boatload of the captives had already been ferried ashore. Martin noted how bewildered and frightened the poor wretches looked as they gazed about them at the strange world into which they were being inducted. Glumly the consul concluded that the new arrivals were too fair-skinned to be Italians or Spanish, and he supposed they must be Dutch or English. The only prisoner taking an intelligent interest in his surroundings was a handsome, black-haired young man in his late teens. He was looking this way and that, apparently searching for someone. He seemed agitated. Beyond him was a short, pudgy man wearing a wig. He was standing slightly apart from his fellow captives and trying to look as though he was too superior to be in their company. Martin wondered if the man knew that his every action was telling his captors that he was worth a larger ransom.

The consul moved closer to the table. The registrar’s assistant – a Greek slave who, to Martin’s knowledge, spoke at least eight languages – was asking each prisoner the same questions: his name, age, place of origin, and profession. Martin found it difficult to hear their answers over the chatter of the onlookers until, all of a sudden, there was a respectful hush and they turned to look towards the harbour. The captain of the corsair ship was himself coming ashore. The consul was intrigued. To get such a close glimpse of Hakim Reis was unusual. Hakim operated from whichever base suited him so he might as easily have brought his captives to Tunis, Sallee or Tripoli to sell. He was welcome wherever he landed on the coast of Barbary for he was acknowledged to be the most successful corsair captain of them all.

Hakim Reis was dressed in an immaculate white gown edged with gold braid, and a scarlet turban decorated with a large ostrich feather. In his hand he held a light gold-headed ceremonial cane. He came up the landing steps with the brisk tread of a man half his age, though Martin knew the corsair must be at least in his late fifties. The consul watched as the corsair captain approached the registrar and stood beside the desk for a few moments. Martin guessed that he wanted to make his presence felt, so there was no false accounting. At that moment Martin heard someone calling out to him.

‘You, sir, you there!’ It was the portly man in the wig. He must have recognised the consul by his foreign dress. ‘If you please. My name is Josiah Newland. I am a mercer, from London. I need to speak with the King of England’s representative at once.’

‘I am the English consul.’

‘A fortunate encounter, then,’ said Newland, puffing slightly in the heat and instantly adopting a self-important tone. ‘Would you be so good as to send word by your most competent commission agent that Josiah Newland is taken and wishes to contact Mr Sewell of Change Alley in London, so that matters can be speedily resolved.’

‘There is nothing I can do at this time, Mr Newland,’ the consul replied calmly. ‘I am here merely as an observer. The Turks have a well-established routine which must be followed. Perhaps later, when the Dey has made his choice, I may be of assistance.’

‘The Dey? What has he got to do with it?’

‘The Dey, Mr Newland, is the ruler of Algiers and has the right to his penjic or portion. He takes every eighth slave, plus other benefits such as the bare hulls of all captured vessels. Tomorrow or perhaps the day afterwards when he has made his selection, I will see you again.’

‘One moment . . .’ the mercer was about to continue, but Martin’s attention had again been distracted. The registrar’s Greek slave wanted a word with him. ‘Your honour,’ began the slave, ‘my master asks me to inform you that most of the captives are from Ireland, one or two are English. He wishes to know whether you will accept their charge.’

‘Please tell your master that I will consider the matter, if he would be so good as to provide me with a list of names and other relevant details. I look forward to giving him my reply tomorrow.’

A burst of angry shouts and the sound of blows interrupted him. Farther along the quay, a gang of slaves had been manoeuvring a great block of quarry stone preparatory to fitting it into a gap in the causeway which led to the island fortress. The massive stone had been balanced on a crude sledge with the men harnessed to it like draught horses. The stone had slipped and toppled sideways, and the overseer had lost his temper. Now he was cursing and laying about him with a whip. As the slaves were still fastened to the sledge, they were unable to avoid the lash. They scrabbled and ducked, trying to avoid the blows. It was some minutes before the overseer had vented his anger, and in that time the majority of the men received a thorough thrashing. Martin had witnessed many scenes like it. The great mole at Algiers constantly needed repairs, and its maintenance was the responsibility of the Dey. There was a very good chance that those slaves who were unlucky enough to be taken in his penjic would be assigned to this dangerous and backbreaking chore.

Civilly Martin bowed again to the registrar and started walking back up the hill towards the consulate. He was already considering how best to arrange the fat mercer’s ransom. That transaction should not be difficult. The man exuded the selfconfidence of someone with access to ready funds, so a well-placed bribe would ensure that Newland was not sent to the bagnios. Instead he would be released into the consul’s care for the three or four months that the ransom negotiations would take. The Irish captives were a different matter. If they were Protestants, he could assist them in some small way as he did with their fellow unfortunates who were English or Scots. He could provide them with pocket money which, spread in judicious bribes to their goalers, might ease their life in the bagnio. Later he would reclaim the sum from London.

But if the Irish were Papists, he would be throwing away his own cash. The tight-fisted bureaucrats in London would be sure to query his accounts, and he would never be reimbursed. Sourly he reflected that his own consular salary was three years in arrears. Still, he was in a better position than his colleague and sometime rival, the unfortunate consul for Spain. After four years he was still trying to negotiate the ransom of a Spanish nobleman being held prisoner in the most vile conditions. The captive was a Chevalier of the noble Order of the Knights of St John in Malta, whose ships were fighting an implacable holy war against the Muslims. The Barbary corsairs loathed the Knights, and the feeling was mutual. The Algerines wanted such a huge sum for the Chevalier that there was little prospect of him being released for several more years, if ever. In the meantime the Dey and his divan were stepping up the pressure on the Spanish consul. Recently the Spaniard and his local interpreter had been set upon in the street and beaten up. Now, for fear of their lives, they hardly dared leave their consulate.

Martin tripped on a loose paving stone. The mishap made him uncomfortably aware that his feet, in his fashionable high-heeled shoes, were beginning to swell in the heat. He found himself looking forward to the moment when he could change back into his kaftan and slippers. Setting aside any further thoughts about the corsair’s captives, the consul concentrated on the steep climb back up the hill of Algiers.