A Call to Arms Page 25

  “What do you think happened?”

  Jamie looked hard at his father seated across from him. “I believe she was approached by enemy vessels as she entered the harbor and that Captain Somers blew her up himself to deny the enemy her powder. He had said he would do that. In any event, he and his crew are dead. There is no possibility that any man was taken alive.”

  “No,” his father agreed, saddened by the sorrow in Jamie’s voice and the pain sketched vividly on his face; nevertheless, the parent in him compelled him to make one final comment before changing the subject. “Thank God you were not on that mission, Jamie.”

  Jamie said nothing in reply.

  In a less somber tone Richard asked, “What is your impression of the new commodore? Permission to speak freely, of course.”

  Jamie shrugged his shoulders. “He’s no Captain Preble, Father. My impression, and the impression of nearly everyone I talk to, is that he got where he is today by doing what he was told, avoiding controversy, and relying on seniority to eventually bob him to the top. He’s ill much of the time. Of what, I’m not certain. Rumor has it that he will step down soon and be replaced by Commodore Rodgers.”

  Richard was not surprised by such speculation. He and John Rodgers had served together aboard Constellation during the war with France, Rodgers as her first lieutenant and Richard as her second. Until Barron’s arrival, Rodgers had been the senior Navy officer in the Mediterranean, senior even to Edward Preble. That had contributed to a serious rift between him and Preble. Secretary Smith resolved the issue by giving Rodgers command of a three-ship squadron based in Gibraltar and bestowing on him the rank of commodore. Rodgers’ orders were to keep a sharp eye on Morocco, always a threat to the United States, and to hamper enemy shipping in the western Mediterranean. The two co-commodores had rarely communicated.

  “Does Barron support Eaton’s expedition?”

  “From what I hear, Commodore Barron supports whatever his superiors in Washington support. Therein lies the problem, you see. No one seems to know to what extent President Jefferson and his cabinet will support Captain Eaton. Secretary Smith apparently favors the expedition, although the American consul general in North Africa, Colonel Lear, considers it a waste of time and money. And since Mr. Lear now has authority to open negotiations with Tripoli if and when conditions warrant, I suspect he is already hard at work trying to create those conditions.”

  “A covert mission? To force his agenda?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Even if that means compromising Eaton’s expedition?”

  Jamie nodded.

  “Do you consider the expedition a waste of time and money?” Richard asked.

  Jamie shook his head. “No, Father, I don’t. I believe that if we are to realize long-term benefits from fighting this war, the solution to it must be a military solution. I well remember the day several years ago when you told Will and me about the raid on Whitehaven during the war with England. Many of your shipmates, including Ranger’s two senior lieutenants, thought that a one-ship invasion force was a ridiculous idea. But you, as a midshipman, supported it. Why? Because as you told Captain Jones, the raid didn’t rely on success. American Marines landing on English soil would have its effect whatever the outcome. Well, we have the same situation here, don’t we? An assault on Derne will have its effect, whatever the outcome. The mere threat of a follow-up attack on Benghazi and Tripoli may be enough to convince the bashaw to sue for peace.”

  As Richard Cutler listened to his son, it was all he could do to refrain from walking over and embracing him. Instead, he maintained a poker face. When Jamie had finished, he asked, “And you believe Captain Eaton is up to the task?”

  “I believe he is, Father.”

  AN INFLUX of more than one hundred Christian mercenaries from Europe, in addition to an encouraging number of Muslim warriors riding in from Cyrenaica, the easternmost province of Tripoli, swelled the ranks of the allied army in Marabout to five hundred strong. Richard Cutler had ample opportunity to assess the character and skill-sets of William Eaton as he waited for the operation to begin. The more he observed, the more impressed he became. Eaton had all the markings of a born leader: courage, discipline, and protocol; his enthusiasm for the project was matched only by his resolve to see it succeed. Among his first actions after disembarking in Egypt was to fashion a formal agreement with Hamet Karamanli in which he pledged the blood and treasure of the United States to restore Hamet to the throne of Tripoli. In return, Hamet pledged to repay the United States by consigning to it the annual tributes of Sweden, Denmark, and the Batavian Republic once he was restored to the throne. In that same document Eaton designated himself “general and commander-in-chief” of the expedition. After Hamet signed his agreement, Eaton countersigned it, using his self-proclaimed rank, and sent it off to Secretary of State James Madison in Washington.

  “Is that legal, Richard?” Agreen asked that evening in the privacy of Portsmouth’s dining alcove. “Is Eaton authorized t’ do such a thing?”

  Richard chuckled. “Your guess is as good as mine, Agee. But from what I’ve observed of the man, it doesn’t matter. If either the president or Congress has the gall to challenge him, I daresay Eaton will convince Mr. Marshall,” referring to John Marshall, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, “to declare it a legally binding document, at the point of a sword if necessary.”

  Agreen chuckled in turn. “Hand me a piece of paper, would you, Richard? I’ve a mind t’ declare myself an admiral. From here on, you’re takin’ orders from me.”

  On the morning of March 6, the expedition was prepared to march. George Farquhar, son of Richard Farquhar and quartermaster of the expedition, announced that a four-week supply of provisions had been secured on the baggage train, which consisted of 107 camels. Hamet similarly confirmed that his 350 Arab horsemen were mounted and assembled behind Sheik Mahomet and Sheik el Tahib, who were resplendent in baggy pants, turbans, and brightly colored vests. In lock formation nearby, 70 well-groomed Christian mercenaries presented a curious blend of French, Neapolitan, Maltese, and Tyrolean soldiers-for-hire beside a separate group of 38 brightly uniformed Greeks led by two Greek officers. Standing at stiff attention in front of them all were Lieutenant O’Bannon, a Marine sergeant named Campbell, five Marine privates, and a Marine drummer boy. Each Marine was dressed in a blue uniform with scarlet facings—except for O’Bannon, whose uniform coat with two long, vertical rows of polished brass buttons identified him as an officer.

  A drum roll sounded. Jamie Cutler saluted his father and mounted his horse. What needed to be said between father and son had been said the night before.

  Under a cloudless sky, the expedition set off westward through the desert for Cyrenaica. Eaton led the procession on a grand white Barbary horse. Hamet, the two sheiks, the two midshipmen, and the Arab cavalry rode behind him. Behind them, afoot, marched the Marines and European mercenaries, with the camel drivers and baggage train bringing up the rear of the caravan. The question probing Richard Cutler’s mind as he and Agreen watched the procession file past was whether General Eaton could impose military discipline long enough and effectively enough to see the allied army to the Bay of Bomba 450 miles to the east, the army’s first rendezvous point with American naval forces. From there it was less than 50 miles to their first military objective: the provincial capital city of Derne, where Hamet had once ruled as governor and where it was assumed he retained strong support for his claim to the throne of Tripoli.

  THE TROUBLES BEGAN two days later, only forty miles into the journey. At first, it seemed nothing more than a petty nuisance. The camel drivers suddenly stopped in their tracks and demanded more money than their agreed-upon fee, threatening to return to Alexandria if it were not paid immediately. It took some doing, but eventually Hamet Karamanli was able to persuade the camel drivers that they would be paid in full what they had been promised, plus a little extra, once they reached their destination. If they turned back
now, they would receive nothing but the curse of Allah.

  “It’s an old trick,” Hamet explained somewhat sheepishly to the Christian officers as the white-robed, black-bearded camel drivers shuffled back to their stations. “They wait until the caravan is on the march and then demand higher wages.”

  Eaton turned away in disgust.

  Each day blended depressingly into the next. A drumroll at daybreak, a quick breakfast of biscuits and rice, and march until sunset. An earlier than usual outbreak of hot desert winds from the southern Sahara swept across the region and hampered their progress. The wind whipped up fierce sandstorms that inundated Christians and Muslims alike with stinging grit that played havoc with eyes and mouths and nostrils and just about everything else, including morale.

  Slowly, although ever more assuredly as one day dragged into another, the army’s food supplies dwindled, augmented only occasionally by the slaughter of a camel, the purchase of sheep and ostriches from local tribesmen, and, on one occasion, the killing of a wildcat by a well-aimed shot from the musket of Marine sergeant Campbell.

  Worse, their water supply was running out. The camels could get by with very little, but the blistering desert sun inspired a continuous and voracious thirst among the Europeans. Most days, Eaton called a temporary halt to allow his soldiers to search for cisterns of fresh water amid fissures of rocks carved out by the brute force of Nature or by the skill of Roman engineers who had passed by centuries ago. Occasionally they stumbled on a deep cistern, and when they did, they drank their fill and squirreled away as much as they could. Most days, when they did not, water was rationed. And so on they marched, at the discouragingly slow rate of fifteen to twenty miles per day, less than half the distance General Eaton had originally predicted and on which the army’s food supply was calculated.

  Each day, the march ended in the cool of dusk. Each evening, by unspoken agreement, Muslims and Christians pitched their tents apart from each other. Most of the men sat quietly before going to sleep, listening to the dulcet tunes of Lieutenant O’Bannon’s fiddle and thinking of hearth and home—and, in Jamie’s case, his friend William Lewis in Constitution, who possessed similar talents with the violin.

  “How far d’ you reckon we’ve come, Jamie?” Pascal Peck, the other midshipman on the expedition, asked one evening in front of the tent they shared. The army had encamped on a high, rocky plain overlooking the Mediterranean near the ruins of a Roman mansion. Behind their tent, their tethered horses grazed on grasswort and wild fennel. A short distance away a Marine private named Owens was stirring a thin gruel of rice, water, and bits of camel flesh in a cauldron hanging from a metal rod set atop a fire between two columns of rocks.

  Jamie grinned. “And how far do you reckon we have to go?” he said, voicing the flip side of a question forever at the tip of every man’s tongue.

  “I dunno,” Peck said quite seriously. “We must be at least halfway.”

  “A bit more than that, according to Sheik Mahomet. He’s been through this area once or twice, so he at least has some idea of where we are. Besides, we’ve been at it for nearly three weeks. Do the math.”

  Peck sighed out loud. “Lord, I’m sick of this place. And I’m sick of rice and beans and stale biscuits. And I’m sick to death of kowtowing to these hot-headed Arabs. Allies? Ha! Any one of them would slit my throat to steal my belt.” He sighed again. “I’d give up sex for life if only I could wake up tomorrow morning to the sound of surf on a New Jersey beach.”

  Jamie grinned. “So this nice Tripolitan beach just won’t do, huh?”

  “There aren’t any beaches around here, least none that I’ve seen. Just the rocks and cliffs along the shore.” In a happier tone he broached another popular subject. “The good news is, this war can’t last much longer. I give it three months, tops. So we should be going home soon, assuming General Eaton can keep these turd-sucking Arabs in line.”

  “That’s a big assumption,” Jamie said.

  The troubles worsened the following morning. Again the camel drivers refused to march, insisting this time that they had contracted with Hamet to go only this far. Sheik el Tahib confirmed to Eaton that the camel drivers spoke the truth and that it would require a minimum of $750 in immediate cash to convince them to proceed. If Eaton refused, the camel drivers would pack up and leave.

  His dander up, Eaton summoned Hamet to his tent and demanded an explanation. None was forthcoming, at least none that satisfied either Eaton or the camel drivers. Desperate to continue the march, Eaton reached deep into his pockets and placed $540 on a table, the last of his cash reserves. “Help me out, would you?” he asked of his officers. A hat passed among the men yielded another $140. As Jamie gave up what he had, Hamet stepped forward, put down the Egyptian equivalent of $100, and promised to do what he could to convince the camel drivers that they would receive a bonus when they arrived at the Bay of Bomba, from funds he understood were being held aboard U.S. Navy vessels for Eaton’s discretionary use.

  “Is such an arrangement acceptable to you?” he asked Eaton.

  Eaton grudgingly agreed to yet another example of what he saw as Arab duplicity and extortion.

  Just as Hamet was about to set off to mollify the camel drivers, a scout galloped into camp with electrifying news. Many Arabs within the province of Cyrenaica were aware of Hamet’s initiative, he reported, and were arming themselves in his name. He also informed the allied commanders that Mustafa Bey, the royal governor of Derne, had barricaded himself inside his palace and was refusing to come out. Best of all, powerful Bedouin tribes camped to the west were preparing to send men to join Eaton’s army.

  The scout’s report elicited shouts of jubilation among Hamet’s soldiers. Many fired off a feu de joie in celebration. The outbursts of joy, however, were quickly tempered by a further report that a considerable force loyal to Yusuf Karamanli had been spotted riding east toward Derne from Benghazi. He did not know their exact number. Perhaps seven or eight hundred men, the scout ventured.

  A hundred yards away, at the rear of the caravan, camel drivers heard the musket shots and mistook them for a Bedouin attack on the column or, worse, the massacre of their Muslim brethren by Christian soldiers. Riled to near panic, they seized several Christians and threatened to kill them with knives and scimitars. Only when Hamet Karamanli came running in, waving cash in both hands, did their blood-curdling screams cease, to be replaced by salaams and praise of Allah once the cash was distributed and Hamet had explained the terms of the expanded contract.

  Hours later, during the dark of night, the bulk of the camel drivers took the money and seventy camels and stole off eastward into the desert gloom. The next morning, the few camel drivers who remained refused to budge. Sheik el Tahib haughtily informed Eaton that he would not order his cavalry forward with what was now a seriously depleted food supply.

  “Bastards, all of them,” O’Bannon snarled when he and his fellow officers received word some time later that an Arab council, to which Eaton had not been invited, had decreed that the Arabs would stay put until riders were sent two hundred miles to the Bay of Bomba to verify that American naval ships were, in fact, there. “It will take a rider a week to get there and back,” he added with disgust. “In another week our provisions will be consumed. What do these Arabs think we’ll live on then?”

  Eaton had an answer. “Mr. Cutler, come with me,” he said, his voice as serious as the stern expression on his face. He gave orders to Lieutenant O’Bannon and then stormed into the tent where the Arab council had just ended. “Sit back down, all of you,” he demanded, “and listen carefully to what I have to say.” He spoke directly to Hamet, who dutifully translated his words into Arabic for the benefit of council members who spoke no English. “From this moment on, American Marines will stand guard over our rations and munitions. Starting at dawn tomorrow, I shall suspend rations for anyone who refuses to march. No Arab shall have access to these supplies. And that includes you, Hamet.” He shifted his gaze to
the two sheiks sitting side-by-side on a blanket. “Sheik el Tahib and Sheik Mahomet,” he scowled, pointing in outrage at the two heavily bearded men, “if you possess a shred of honor, I call on you to chase down the camel drivers who so shamefully deserted this army last night. You may leave immediately.”

  Jamie Cutler realized at that instant that the Arabs could change the dynamics of this showdown in a blink of an eye if they wished to do so. They outnumbered the Europeans four to one. He forced himself to reveal none of his anxiety as he watched the Arab leaders peer past him through the open flaps of the tent at O’Bannon, Campbell, and the five Marine privates standing guard before the last of the provisions.

  Within the hour the two sheiks were galloping eastward.

  Late that evening, sixty camels and their drivers returned to camp.

  At daybreak the next morning, the Marine drummer boy summoned soldiers to rank and file.

  PROVIDENCE SEEMED finally to be smiling on what had become—to the extent possible in this forbidding land of arid plains and sand-filled valleys—a forced march. Jamie Cutler and Pascal Peck clawed their way up a steep, rocky ridge that Sheik Mahomet had told them commanded a sweeping view of a vast valley in the distance, a valley more fertile than any they had come across thus far. When the two midshipmen had grunted and sweated their way to the peak, they stood up and gazed westward. What they beheld was so astounding, so unexpected, that they temporarily forgot their raging hunger and thirst. Stretched out below them was a scene out of the Old Testament: a virtual city of white tents set up in orderly array. Herds of sheep, camels, goats, and horses roamed and grazed the outlying areas. Men and women dressed in flowing white robes tended the herds or prepared food while children darted this way and that, playing games and annoying the animals in the way that young children have done for ages.