A Call to Arms (35 page)

“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.

P
ROVIDENCE 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.

“Great God in heaven,” Peck breathed in awe. “There must be three or four thousand people down there.”

“At least,” Jamie said, as enthralled as his shipmate.

“Who
are
they?” Peck asked.

“They are the Eu ed Alli,” Mahomet told them and the other Christian officers after the two midshipmen had climbed down and delivered their astonishing report. “This is their land. At least they claim it to be.”

“The ‘you et alley'?” O'Bannon inquired, struggling with pronunciation. “Is that good or bad?” His questions brought rare smiles to both Eaton and Mahomet.

“It is good, my friend,” the sheik replied. “It is very, very good. This is the Bedouin tribe the scout spoke of two days past. It is the most powerful tribe in all of Cyrenaica. They are great warriors, and they hate Yusuf Karamanli and his tax collectors. Come, you will see. They will welcome you with open arms and open hearts.”

Open their hearts they did. The starving, dirty, discouraged Christians felt as though they had been transported from fiery hell to the lush Garden of Eden. Here there was food and water a-plenty—due, apparently, to the blessing of an underground river—and the Bedouins were pleased to share their bounty with Hamet Karamanli and his Western allies. How to fairly compensate the Bedouins for their generosity became an issue. The only cash in the caravan was in the pockets of the camel drivers, and they were not about to give it up. The matter was settled when the women of the tribe took a fancy to the brass buttons on the officers' uniforms, and tribal elders agreed that these buttons represented fair compensation for goods received. As a black-haired beauty, her face unveiled, carefully cut away the buttons on Jamie Cutler's coat, the coy looks and brief smiles she gave him whenever their eyes met conveyed a sense of frustration that Islamic
law prevented her from offering him something a bit more personal for his buttons.

Although they all hated to leave Eden, General Eaton insisted they press on, his ranks now augmented by 150 mounted Bedouins, each brandishing a musket. These new recruits, Eaton did not fail to remind the Arab officers, had signed on as volunteers. They would be paid nothing, unlike any of the others who marched on this expedition. Except for the five Marine privates who continued to receive their monthly wage of six dollars, a laughable amount, Eaton emphasized, compared with what the lowliest camel driver was now being paid. And unlike the Arabs, Eaton did not fail to add, these Marines had no personal stake in the future of Tripoli. They were doing their duty because their country and their commanding officers expected it of them.

Not long after departing paradise the caravan was once again trudging through hell's fiery pits. Two days later, during the evening of March 26, another scout galloped in to report that an enemy force had been sighted only a day or two away from Derne and would arrive there before Eaton's army. The scout pegged this enemy force at a thousand men.

“God
damn
it!” Eaton cursed, unable to swallow such a bitter pill.

Reaction to the report among the Arabs was as swift as it was adamant. Sheik el Tahib stormed in to where Eaton was conferring with his European officers and informed him in hard language that not only would his cavalry not proceed farther, they would be returning to Egypt. This time, he said, he meant it. This time there would be no Arab council; the matter was settled. And this time, he sniffed, Hamet Karamanli agreed with him.

When he heard that, Eaton's long-suppressed wrath exploded. “You are a liar and a cheat and a coward!” he shouted at el Tahib. “Go, then! Return to Egypt! And take your worthless cavalry with you! I am glad to be rid of you all! I will march on with my foot-soldiers and the Bedouins to Derne!”

Sheik el Tahib, his blood up, ordered his Muslim soldiers to advance on the supply tent.

“
Beat to arms
!” Eaton commanded the Marine drummer.

At the first roll of the staccato tattoo, European soldiers seized their weapons, formed in ranks by companies, and stood at ramrod attention.

“
Officers, to me
!” Eaton shouted. Lieutenant O'Bannon, the European officers, and the two midshipmen rushed to stand beside him. Directly behind them, Sergeant Campbell and his five Marine privates formed a second line before the entrance to the supply tent.

“You may leave whenever you wish,” Eaton informed el Tahib. “But you shall take no provisions with you.”

The sheik hesitated at the prospect of desert travel without food or water, and without the possibility of pay for services rendered to date. He glanced at Sheik Mahomet standing on one side of him, and then at Hamet Karamanli on the other. Neither man returned his gaze. Seconds ticked by. Deep within a gap in time fraught with indecision, Eaton suddenly blurted out, “Lieutenant O'Bannon!”

“Sir!” the Marine replied.

“The manual exercise, if you please!”

“Yes, sir!”

O'Bannon about-faced. “Sergeant, you may drill the men in the manual of arms!”

“Yes, sir!”

To Jamie's surprise, and to the consternation of the Arabs, Sergeant Campbell put his Marines and the European soldiers through the exercise of presenting and shouldering arms. When the soldiers began twirling their muskets, the Arabs ran for their horses, screaming to Allah that they had been betrayed and were about to be slaughtered. Two hundred Arab horsemen armed with scimitars and muskets advanced toward the Europeans standing at attention, muskets held firmly at their sides. The Bedouins looked on, bewildered by this turn of events.

The vanguard of Muslim cavalry reined in close before the Christians' formation and leveled their muskets at its officers.

“I could shoot you down like a dog,” el Tahib sneered down at Eaton.

Eaton kept his lips sealed and his eyes front and center.

“
Do you hear me, Eaton
?” the sheik shrieked.

It was then that Lt. Presley O'Bannon advanced two steps, wheeled smartly to his left, strode in precise parade-ground fashion another six steps, then wheeled to his right and stopped, his sword tip pointing at the ground. He had placed himself between William Eaton and Sheik el Tahib, a human shield before the American general.