Skeletons On The Zahara (34 page)

The villagers tried to coax the sailors into helping with carpentry, shoemaking, and smithing, but Riley insisted that he and his men had been raised as sailors since childhood and knew nothing else. Previously, he had asked his men to cooperate to gain the best treatment, but here he reached the same conclusion that Robbins had and warned them that showing aptitude in any of the crafts Christians were known for would only increase the chance of their being kidnapped or sold to a master willing to pay handsomely for skilled labor. When Riley was taken to frame a door at a new house, he pretended he could not understand the instructions for measuring the posts. He hacked at the timbers randomly with an adze, splintering the wood. The Arabs argued over Riley's incompetence. “By far the greater part of them were of opinion that a smart application of the whip would put my mechanical powers into complete operation,” Riley observed. One who was not fooled fetched a cudgel, but Bo-Mohammed had no interest in seeing Riley beaten and stopped him.

At night, the sailors now slept in a dingy cellar, a crawl space beneath the floor of the house, which was supported by a mast, a boom, and other ship's wood. Seid and Bo-Mohammed turned a key in the iron lock behind them and slept outside the door with loaded weapons at their sides.

Riley soon learned how the villagers had acquired the ship's timber that some of them had used in their houses when a villager showed him official papers from the Spanish schooner Maria dated 1812 and 1814. Others produced clothing taken from her crew and repeated Spanish curses they had picked up. From what they told him, Riley pieced together the Maria's story. The schooner had come to the coast to fish and trade. Sneaking alongside her in boats at night, the Arabs had climbed on board and killed her captain and three of her sixteen-man crew. After ransacking the vessel, they ran her on shore and made the crew dismantle her for the wood. One old man told Riley that five more of the sailors had died since that night and that the other eight had been traded off to the desert. Others claimed the survivors had gone to Swearah to be ransomed, but Riley believed the old man.

On the sixth day after Hamet's departure, an unexpected visitor hailed at the gate in the afternoon and demanded to be let in. Seid opened the door hastily, and a dark, six-foot Moor swaggered in on the back of a stout horse. From his saddle, Sheik Ali, Hamet's father-in-law, examined with obvious disgust the squalor around him and the scabby Christians lying about like beasts.

Ali's air of superiority as well as Seid's sudden transformation from sullen brute to obsequious servant indicated to the sailors the degree to which their fortunes had just changed. Ali promptly moved into Sidi Mohammed's house, imposing upon Seid and Bo-Mohammed to an extraordinary degree. His aura of command, Riley observed, surpassed even that of the most domineering sea captain. Sheik Ali was also beguiling and remarkably charismatic.

Ali's reputation was such that the villagers immediately began to seek him out to settle their disputes. His summary decisions were handed down with such authority and grace that neither party dreamed of protesting. He was at times, Riley admitted, the most eloquent man he had ever heard. “Open mouths seemed to inhale his honied sentences,” the captain effused, explaining that Ali spoke with such “perfect emphasis” that the “elegant cadence so much admired in eastern oratory seemed to have acquired new beauties from his manner of delivery; his articulation was so clear and distinct, and his countenance and actions so intelligent and expressive, that I could understand him perfectly, though he spoke in the Arabic language.”

But Ali's moods changed rapidly. Radiant and charming one moment, he was suspicious and conspiratorial the next, and then shouting furiously, terrifying Seid and Bo-Mohammed, who did everything possible to appease him. When he spoke, no one dared move or utter a sound.

It was inevitable that the sheik would turn his attention to Riley and his men, and when he did, looking them over and conferring in low tones with Seid, the captain felt an ominous chill. Ali summoned him and questioned him about his worth, his family, the shipwreck and the dispersal of its contents. He wanted to know how much money and what kind of goods the attackers at Cape Bojador had taken. “What crime was committed to induce these Moslemin to kill one of your men?” he asked.

It was clear that the sheik, to whom Hamet was in debt, was assuming an interest in their future and that his presumption knew no bounds. He examined their bodies carefully as if he were considering buying— or selling— them. Finding the cross tattooed on Clark's arm, Ali pronounced him a Spaniard and declared that he could not be ransomed. Clark, he announced, would go to the mountains and work for him. This was an unsettling verdict, given that, as Riley put it, “every thing that this man said seemed to carry with it a weight that bore down all opposition.”

With Seid and the other Arabs, Ali cleverly began to plant the seeds of a dispute. He let it be known that he thought Riley was an “artful fellow . . . capable of any action either good or bad.” One minute he was sure Riley was lying to Hamet about having a friend in Swearah; the next he was certain that the captain's friends could raise a great deal more money to ransom him than Hamet had demanded. Seid was only too happy to hear this. The calculating Ali decided that he would stay until Hamet returned.

On the seventh day came a new arrival. A dark, fierce-looking stranger, sporting a brace of horse pistols, a pair of knives, and a scimitar, and carrying a long musket, rode up to the wall on horseback. He hailed Seid by name and said, “Open the gate immediately.” When Seid asked him who he was, he replied that he was Ullah Omar and that he had just arrived from Swearah.

As he led his powerful mount into the yard, no executioner could have looked more the part. Riley studied the formidable man, who wore a white turban, a haik, and yellow leather slippers with long iron spurs attached to them. In addition to the weapons, he had two powder horns and a leather pouch with musket balls slung about his neck. Sheik Ali knew him and shook his hand warmly. After greeting the others, Omar inquired which was Riley and approached him.

“I have seen your friend Sidi Hamet one day's ride this side of Swearah,” he reported. “He told me that Allah had prospered his journey because of you. I hope that your friend in Swearah will be as true to you as Hamet is.” Hamet, he suggested, might return as soon as the next day. But Omar had no more news. He addressed the sailors, who could not understand him, but took heart in his attention and, when Riley translated, in the prospect of Hamet's imminent return.

Seid served Omar a bowl of “cous-koo-soo,” as Riley learned the Moroccan dish was called, covered with slices of squash and well peppered. “This dish,” he added, “which is made of small balls of flour, boiled with fowl and vegetables, looked (for I had not the pleasure of tasting it) like a very nice dish.” Ullah Omar, who carried a pipe and tobacco in his shot pouch, gave the sailors a handful of good tobacco, seeming “exceedingly pleased to have it in his power to administer comfort to such miserable beings.” After his meal and prayers, the cryptic messenger departed as suddenly as he had arrived.

Riley could not sleep that night, buffeted by waves of panic. Omar's presence had been reassuring to a degree, but Riley had learned nothing material other than that he had maintained Hamet's goodwill up to the gates of Swearah. The death sentence still stood, and in a literal sense Riley was guilty as charged. He lay awake second-guessing his pledge. It had been an easy decision— he and his men would have traded their lives for a swallow of Connecticut water then— but it did not look so clear now that skin covered his bones again and he had shelter to hide in. On the Sahara, his life had not been worth living. Now he was reminded of his family and former existence.

“My desire to live kept pace with the increase of my comforts,” he lamented. “I longed for the return of my master, and yet I anticipated it with the most fearful and dreadful apprehensions . . . I calculated on the moment of his arrival as decisive of my fate. It would either restore me to liberty, or doom me to instant death.” Each arrival in the village and opening of the gate caused Riley to shudder.

He prayed to God that he had not come so far to suffer death in the animal filth of the courtyard, to widow his wife, to leave his children without prospects, and to have his companions and his adopted son shipped back out onto the hopeless blazing wasteland.

The Captain Has Long Been Dead

Striding in deep thought before the formidable walls and turrets of Swearah with minarets rising behind him, Rais bel Cossim nearly collided with the two dusty but dignified-looking Arabs entering the city's eastern gate. Bel Cossim, a Moorish sea captain and man of affairs, was struck with curiosity. Traders who had just crossed the desolate hills around Swearah would have brought goods, but these two had none. “Salem alikoom,” he addressed the leading man, whom he recognized as an Oulad Bou Sbaa. “Where do you come from, Son of a Lion?”

“Alikoom salem,” Hamet replied to the Moor, who he could see was a man of status and of some perception. “I have come from Souss and before that from the Sahara, a long way. I have come to see Sidi Consul.”

“Tell me your business, friend,” bel Cossim said, swallowing a laugh. “Perhaps I can guide you.” Hamet told him that he had a note to deliver to Sidi Consul from an English captain who had wrecked at Cape Bojador.

“Come, I will take you to the man you wish to see,” bel Cossim said, beckoning him with a wave. Swearah's port, customs house, government buildings, and central road and market were arranged on a neat, businesslike grid, marked by imposing gateways and towers. Beyond lay the mazelike medina where Swearah's commoners— the bulk of its thirty thousand Muslims and six thousand Jews— and the abid al-Bukhari, black Muslim soldiers, lived in segregated quarters. Bel Cossim led the two visitors through wide and relatively sedate and sweet-smelling streets among the four-story homes of the privileged Jewish traders, government administrators, and foreign consuls and merchants.

This was the inner sanctum, the casbah within the walled town, all built since Sultan Muhammad III had established the port in 1765 to tighten his grip on both foreign trade and the southern reaches of his dominion. The sultan had soon closed the port of Agadir to foreign ships and relocated its merchants to Swearah with its stone ramparts and massive turrets manned by two thousand heavily armed abid al-Bukhari. Herethe imperial trade could be better watched, and private trade, where it could be better regulated and taxed. The reward, the sultan had promised all who would settle in this otherwise remote and dusty section of the Haha region, was that “he who comes poor, leaves rich.” Within a decade Swearah, once a Phoenician trading outpost and possibly the lost “Cerne Island,” which the Carthaginian Hanno colonized with thirty thousand people in 450 B.C., had become Morocco's principal maritime port.

Bel Cossim led them to the home of British consul-general William Willshire. Willshire was part of the small cadre of European merchants who, along with the local Jewish merchants employed by the sultan, lived in the casbah and conducted the foreign trade.

The visitors found him in, which came as little surprise to bel Cossim. Willshire, who was James Renshaw's successor and business partner, was a bachelor and a man who never seemed to tire of working. He lived in the British consulate's large— some would say lavish— house, where he had many servants and clerks and where on Sundays he conducted Anglican services for other Christian merchants.

Recognizing bel Cossim, Willshire's servants admitted him and the two Arabs. The young consul, a fastidious man of neatly cropped hair, fine features, and naturally pursed lips, received them in his office. As he examined the two scraps of paper one of the Arabs handed him, he felt his heart sink. Another merchant brig had been lost off the coast of the Sahara and her crew captured by the barbarous wandering Arabs.

Willshire looked up from the note. Rais bel Cossim was one of Willshire's most trusted Moorish intermediaries, a valuable man who spoke fluent Spanish and a smattering of English in addition to Arabic. With him stood two Arabs by the names of Sidi Hamet and Sidi Mohammed, who from their appearance had traveled a long way in a hurry. Willshire looked them over again. Hamet had a handsome, intelligent face, with the lines of wear and sorrow common to the tribal Arab. He stood before him without shame, despite the fact that he was there to ransom shipwrecked sailors.

“What can you tell me of this Captain Riley?” Willshire asked, examining Hamet's expression as bel Cossim translated.

A smile creased Hamet's cheeks. “Captain Riley is an intelligent and courageous man,” he replied. As he spoke, his dark brown eyes seemed to swell a little, in what Willshire believed was a genuine look of affection. “He is an honorable man, with a wife and children. Allah is with him in all he does,” Hamet continued. “My journey has been blessed by Allah for Captain Riley's sake. We faced many difficulties, but we passed safely through dangerous lands. His men, who are sick, have survived too. I have done the best I could for them.”

Willshire reread the end of Captain Riley's note:

My present master, Sidi Hamet, will hand you this, and tell you where we are— he is a worthy man. Worn down to the bones by the most dreadful of all sufferings— naked and a slave, I implore your pity, and trust that such distress will not be suffered to plead in vain. For God's sake, send an interpreter and a guard for us, if that is possible. I speak French and Spanish.

Although he was genuinely alarmed for the writer's sake and for the crew of the brig Commerce, he was also puzzled and a little rankled. As consul-general, if only for a short time, he was already experienced at negotiating and raising funds to ransom shipwrecked sailors from the Sahara. He did not hesitate to make decisions and was willing to risk his reputation and his money. He refused to leave a man in captivity for a minute longer than necessary. This Captain James Riley listed reputable merchants in London, Liverpool, Lisbon, and Gibraltar as references. But several complications jumped out at him immediately. The fact that Riley did not state a nationality— though judging from the names listed, the crew was either British or American— raised questions of who exactly should handle this matter, and Riley had negotiated a larger than desirable sum for his ransom.