"Get up against the side of Galen's galley to take on his men. It's going to sink. Hurry."
"Keep shooting me, keep shooting." That's what I shout constantly as our galley comes about and I push my way across the deck to where our galley will come up against Galen's.
It is total chaos of our deck with everyone shouting and screaming and jostling about, even some of the archers as they aim and shoot.
As I get to the bow I can see several of our men have had the foresight to grab Swiss pikes off the railing racks and are readying them to hook on to Galen's galley and pull the galleys together. Others are using their bows to pick off the Venetians in the galley that did the ramming.
I grab one of the pikes myself and so do others. Seconds later our the galley hulls crash together and Galen's men begin frantically jumping and diving into our galley. Others are desperately trying to climb up on to the dock against which their galley has been pushed.
"Galen's men get below and clear the deck" I shout it over and over again as I strain to hold our galleys together. The sergeants and others take up the refrain until it becomes a chant.
Not everyone listens. I have to slap one hysterical man in the face before he stops screaming and docilely heads down to the rowing benches with a blank look on his face.
And not everyone makes it. As the crowd coming over the railing begins to tail off I can see bodies and injured men on Galen's deck. Others jump and miss and quickly sink into the water and out of sight. A few brave souls from our galley actually go across to Galen's slowly sinking galley to try to retrieve the wounded - I try to mark them in my mind as men to know.
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All the time we are retrieving survivors from Galen's galley our archers are grunting and shouting as they throw arrow after arrow towards our attackers. It's a damn good thing we brought up the extra bales of arrows before we entered the harbor.
Finally we push off from the sinking galley. It's obviously taken on a huge amount of water from the great gash in its side and is only still afloat because it is being held up by the Venetian galley stuck in its side. A few seconds later they both go down.
I don't have a chance to look at the other Venetian galleys until ours finally begins to drift apart from Galen's and the last rescuer literally dives head first to get across the widening gap.
It seems like it's lasted forever but, in fact, it's only been a couple of minutes. And then I am relieved, greatly relieved, to hear the sergeants pick up the cry "stop launching." ... "stop launching."
What I see astonishes me when I make my way to the railing - the other four Venetian galleys are already out of arrow range and heading for the harbor entrance.
Our Marines are elated and shaking hands and pounding each other's backs and reaching out to shake mine. A red bearded archer standing nearby summed the situation up rather well as I stood with my mouth open watching them go.
"Them bastards got so many fooking arrows in em they look like fooking hedge hogs, don't they?"
Less than a minute later Rolf spins us and we go back to pick up Galen's men who made it on to the dock and are now desperately waving to us - and to take prisoners from the galley that rammed us.
A huge and raucous flock of curious seagulls is circling overhead and a few of local people who had been prowling about in the ruined city are tentatively walking towards the dock. The rest have disappeared as if by magic.
Chapter Twenty
All the rest of the day and that night is spent tending to our wounded, giving last rites and mercies to two of our men who won't make it, and questioning the Venetian sailor we captured from the galley that rammed Galen's and then sank and took its chained slaves down with it.
The Venetian galleys that rushed out of the harbor to avoid our arrows do not return.
According to the Venetian we pulled out of the water the Venetian navy used an old galley rowed by expendable slaves with only three volunteers on board to steer it.
One important thing he tells us is that the Venetians carried the crusaders who had been camped outside the city to Constantinople. Another is that it was more than a week ago, the day before the crusaders left, that he had been offered a large payment to volunteer to be its rudder man.
According to the Venetian sailor he had accepted to get the money because he knew how to swim and because the ramming would occur near to the shore. It was his idea, he said proudly, that the ramming occur at the dock so he could swim to safety.
There is no doubt about it - the Venetians had been warned we were coming and set an ambush. It failed because they hadn't expected two galleys and they had never before confronted ships full of Englishmen armed with longbows.
We've come directly from Rome and made good time - how could the Venetians and crusaders have known a week ago that we'd be coming?
"Father Francisco, how could the Venetians and crusaders known more than a week ago that we would be coming to Zara?"
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The next morning we take on water, retrieve what little we can from Galen's partially submerged galley, turn our prisoner loose to enjoy whatever hospitality the people whose city he'd helped destroy might offer, and set out for Constantinople in a single galley dangerously overloaded with Marines and papal guards.
We never did find Galen.
Chapter Thirteen
It is already dark and many of the exhausted and jammed together Marines are asleep by the time by the time Bishop Thomas calls us together in the little forecastle. We can see each other in the flickering light of the single candle in the lamp that is swinging from the low ceiling. It slowly swings from side to side in response to the swells in the harbor water.
All around us as we talk in low voices is the sound of snoring, whispering talk, and the cries of men having bad dreams. Adding almost two hundred survivors from Galen's crew has seriously overcrowded this one.
Thank God the weather is good. We don't have enough rain skins for everyone to huddle under even using the spare sail.
"We have no choice; we must go to Constantinople to deliver the Holy Father's letter before it is too late."
That's how Father Francisco responds when Rolf raises the question of what he should do next. And, of course, he's right. Bishop Thomas just listens as we sit shoulder to shoulder with our legs folded under us. He seems to be deep in thought and never says a word.
"Can we get there without stopping?" Thomas asks Rolf. "Do you have enough food and water on board to get us there?"
"Well, maybe, just maybe. I think so. We probably can if the weather holds good and we row hard all the way. We've got more than enough rowers and probably enough food if we go on half rations for the last couple of days."
"It's water that will be the problem, that and getting through the Greek islands without a pilot what knows the waters of the Aegean and the Dardanelles."
Suddenly Bishop Thomas sits up straight and announces his decision.
"We have to go to Constantinople so what are we waiting for? Let's go." ...
After a moment he adds, "but let Galen's survivors sleep, Rolf. They've had a hard day."
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We need water so we made a stop in Piraeus, the port of Athens. It's a stop that took much longer than any of us expected. Had we known the difficulty with doing business with the Greeks we'd have made port somewhere further down the coast.
Piraeus has a very large and not very functional harbor with rules and regulations about where galleys must anchor and dock that make no sense. Port sergeant after port sergeant comes on board to conduct various inspections, announce new rules, and ask for bribes.
Rolf got so irked at the delays that were keeping us from going ashore to get water and other supplies that he actually asked the port sergeant who just left if the port has any regulations or fees for neutering its sergeants - and he was only half in jest.
On the other hand Piraeus is a great liberty port for our Marines and sailors with bars and whorehouses everywhere. They need it after their experiences in Zara and then being jammed all together in Rolf's galley.
Before they went ashore I spread the word, only half in jest, that Father Francisco and I would pray for them that they don't get poxed or pick up itchy bugs.
We even discussed moving on to a smaller port. But in the end we decided we had no choice; we must make a port visit to Piraeus because we are out of water and we don't dare go any further without a pilot who knows how to get from here to Constantinople.
Both Peter and Rolf had been to Constantinople with William, of course, but neither has any idea of how to sail through the islands and the Dardanelles.
At least while we're here getting the water and a pilot or two we can get other things as well - flour and oil for bread, a lot of horse or other meat we can slice into strips and fry when the bread is being cooked, and a bonesetter for the two Marines whose legs got mangled when Galen's galley was rammed.
That's exactly what we did as soon as we were able to go ashore. We also recruited a half mad barber with long filthy hair to travel with us to bleed them and our other wounded. He wants to go to Constantinople for some reason.
Rolf suggested that we leave our wounded and some of Galen's crew here and send to Cyprus for an under strength galley to come back and pick them up. I decided against it despite our severe overcrowding - we don't have time to waste making the necessary arrangements.
Besides, we may need them to help row so we get there faster and to help fight if the Venetians are still after us.
Chapter Twenty One
It took two days to get my galley to the Dardanelles and another day to get through the long narrow passage and a fourth day to reach Constantinople.
What bothered me and caused the delay is that our new pilot seemed nervous and unsure of himself. He's so nervous that, after talking it over with Thomas and Peter, I decided that we would neither sail nor row at night unless there is sufficient moonlight.
There wasn't much moonlight so we didn't reach the first of Constantinople's three harbors until late on our fourth day out of Athens.
Ships of all kind are everywhere - except for Venetians. We don't see a single one until we approach the outskirts of Constantinople - and then on the shore opposite the city we find what looks to be the entire Venetian fleet at anchor just off a huge camp with literally thousands of tents.
"Unless he's staying on a ship, Cardinal Capua is probably somewhere in that camp," Father Francisco suggests as we stand at the galley's deck railing and look out at the huge crowd of haphazardly placed tents just beyond the Venetian galleys that are beached all along the shoreline.
Even if we hadn't seen the crusader camp we would have known they were there from the odors that are coming out to us on the light winds coming from the shore and drifting out over the water towards the city.
Unlike the Venetian galleys, we are anchored just off shore where many of the Venetian cogs and other cargo ships are anchored. It's safer out here isn't it? We'll use our dinghy if we have to go ashore.
But are we in the right place?
"Father Francisco, you speak Greek. Please ask the pilot why he stopped here and asked for the anchor to be dropped. Doesn't he know the city has a number of docks and several better harbors?"
A few minutes later I'm fuming when I give the order to raise the anchor and we begin rowing once again towards the city walls we can see in the distance. Our pilot assumed we are crusaders and would want to camp with them.
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It took all day to find Martin Archer and our Constantinople post but here we are. He's in a little house with a wall around it so short it probably wouldn't even slow down a mob of children.
It's a busy place with many dozens of anxious people standing around along with the barrow carts and horses some of them rode to get here. Refugees from the look of them, merchants and priests leaving the city because of the crusaders.
Our arrival at his door certainly surprises Martin and quickly evolves into the warmest of welcomes. And we probably would still be looking for him if a couple of our sailors hadn't recognized one of our galleys up against a dock loading passengers.
Randolph was initially our station sergeant here and held the post until he got captured and held for ransom by one of the emperor's minions. Martin took his place after we got Randolph back after a bit of fighting against the Byzantine army and the cutting out of some of the ships of its fleet - enough of them to convince the emperor of the wisdom of releasing Randolph and his men.