Tradescant spent a sleepless night, with the taste of fear like cold sweat on his lips, and in the morning showed a white face on deck at the head of his landing party. He checked them over. They all had muskets primed and ready, they all had brightly glowing fuses palmed confidently in their hands. One man had the scaling ladder and he was wearing a helmet Tradescant had managed to scrounge in Majorca. Tradescant nodded to his troop with affected confidence and was irritated to see, by the hidden smile one from another, that they saw and understood his pallor.

“Soon be over, sir,” one of them said cheerfully. “And you’re either dead or safe in minutes.”

“Thank you,” John said repressively, and went to the ship’s rail to watch the fireboats go in.

They failed again, and the next day too. By day four Tradescant ate a hearty breakfast and was at the rail to watch the fireboats try once more and felt as nonchalant as his men. Boredom and disappointment had driven out fear and now he wanted the battle to be joined. What he could not tolerate was the waiting and the immense irritation when the winds dropped and the fireboats burned harmlessly in the middle of the bay and then exploded with a loud crack that made the pirates cheer.

It was dawn; the tide suited them high at dawn. The weather suited them at last, a gray mist on the water which would make the pirate muskets uncertain of their aim shooting into grayness, and a brisk onshore wind which should blow the fireboats inward to the harbor.

“But hardly a surprise attack,” Tradescant grumbled, at the pinnace rail. The wind blowing steadily onshore lifted the brim of his hat.

“The principle is right,” someone said behind him.

Tradescant thought of his old master’s preference for sound practice over principle, but held his peace. They all watched together as the two barges were rowed to the harbor mouth. The sailors on board lit the fuses to the explosives, burning twists of rope dipped in pitch. No one could tell how long they would take to burn with any accuracy. It was a brave man who stayed on board a barge that would blow up at any moment to steer it closer and ever closer to enemy shipping.

The two sailors did well. “Jump!” Tradescant muttered under his breath as they went through the harbor mouth and drifted toward the ships, while the waiting English ships could see the sparks at the foot of the powder kegs. Then there were two dark shadows leaping and two splashes in the water, and then an almighty roar as the first barge went up in flames and drifted toward the trapped corsair ships.

But just as it should have collided with the wooden rowing ship there was a sudden lull.

“The wind!” Captain Pett yelled in anguish. “What the devil has happened to the wind?”

It was nothing, a lull before a storm, but it was enough to ruin the English plans. The fireboats exploded and burned as they should have done as two little torches afloat on the dark water of Algiers harbor, the corsair ships remained moored safe in its lee and the pirate crews came out on deck with toasting forks and made as if they were frying their bacon for breakfast on the English attack.

“What do we do now?” someone asked. “Stand down again?”

“Today we attack,” Captain Pett said. “We follow orders.”

John found his feet were strangely heavy in his boots. There was nothing for him to do until the Mercury was close enough either to shore or to a ship, and then he was to lead a boarding party.

“There will be no smoke,” he said shortly. “No cover. And they are ready and waiting and confident.”

“My orders are to attack whatever the success of the fireboats,” Captain Pett declared.

He called for the sails to be crowded on and the Mercury moved slowly toward the mouth of the harbor. There was another pinnace before her, and one behind; all the English captains were staying within the letter of their orders though the chances of the attack succeeding with the wind down and the fireboats sputtering into darkness was remote. The Turkish guns, expertly manned from the high harbor walls, bombarded the incoming ships. “Like ducks on a moat,” John said angrily.

The Mercury sailed in, obeying orders.

“Please God he does not put us ashore and expect us to scale the walls,” Tradescant muttered into his neckerchief. He looked back at his men. They were waiting grim-faced for Tradescant to lead them; ahead of them were the high walls of the fort with the sharply etched windows where a dozen muskets waited for the English to come into range, clearly visible on the water which was brightening with the morning light and shielded neither by mist nor smoke.

Captain Pett sailed inward, obeying his orders to the letter, but with a man at his elbow with a telescope trained on the commander’s ship, waiting for a signal. At last the flag reluctantly fluttered out.

“Retreat ordered,” shouted the man with the telescope.

“Retreat!” Captain Pett bawled. At once the drum began to beat and the other English ships wheeled around and started forcing their way, against the prevailing wind, back out of the harbor mouth.

The rest of the fleet sent in barges and took the ships in tow. It was an ignominious end to an attack, but John caught a rope and made it fast, feeling as lighthearted as a lad. The desire for battle had been replaced completely with a profound longing for the safety and comfort of his home.

Elizabeth greeted John home with a touch of coolness. She had been painfully aware that he had left despite her wishes, and she had prayed every night that he would be spared so that he could come home and they could start again, start as friends and lovers again. But when he walked into the Canterbury cottage, not a scratch on him, his face tanned and smiling, and a small wagon of plants waiting outside in the lane, her most powerful feeling was deep irritation.

John sent the wagon on to Lord Wootton’s garden with orders to see that the plants were unloaded and watered, and came into the house asking for a bath and that his linen be burned on the kitchen fire.

“It’s lousy,” he said. “It has driven me mad for days.”

Elizabeth set water to heat, pulled out the big wooden washtub and set it on the stone flags of the floor. John stripped off his clothes and left them at a heap near the door.

“God be praised, I am glad to be home,” he said and gave her a smile. She did not smile back at him, nor did she come into his arms and put her face against his warm bare chest. John did not hold out his arms. He was afraid he might smell and he knew his head and his beard harbored lice. But he would have been glad of a greeting which was passionate, or even affectionate. Elizabeth pouring hot water into the tub offered a dutiful welcome, not an exciting one.

“I am glad to see you safe home,” she said calmly, and put on another pot of water to heat.

John tested the water with his foot and then stepped in. Elizabeth handed him the washball of herbs tied in cotton, and a bowl of sludgy soap.

“I was afraid you might be fired on, sailing past the Spanish coast,” she said. “There were rumors that the fleet would go against Spain.”

“I would have thought you would have been glad to see me put a cannonball into the heart of papistry,” John observed, sitting in a bath of soapy water and sponging the salty grime of several months’ voyage off his neck.

“Not if they fired back,” she said. “And anyway, I thought your quarrel was with the infidels.”

John splashed water into his face and puffed out like a grampus whale. “We had orders which could be read any way you wanted,” he said. “It makes no sense to me. When I leave the garden for any length of time I say to the gardeners, take care of this, and when this flowers do this. I don’t say to them, use your judgment, do as you wish. And that way, when I come home again, I know if they have done well or badly, and they know it too.”