Buy the book here.

Not long afterwards, Janissary Captain Yigit's cap appeared over the gunwale, with Yigit -- and Yigit's wide grin -- under it. They had brought the jali boat alongside the hull without even the slightest bump. With the anchor lines already shortened up, it required only a few turns on the capstan to haul them to the surface.

Captain Hasan gave an almost imperceptible nod, and the sailors began to row. The even slapping of the wavelets against our hull changed its rhythm, and there was the slightest hiss of a bow wave from Akdogan's prow as she began to gather way. I took a deep breath. To be out on the water at night was a special feeling, suspended between the stars in the sky and the reflected stars in the water. It was how I imagine journeying through the sky might feel.

Two hours later as the sun rose, we were east of Karpathas in the strait between the island and the shoals of Saria. A light morning mist on the surface of the water, common at that time of year, hid us for an extra hour, an advantage we made good use of. When it cleared, we could see the Florentine galleys, about three gun ranges ahead of us with no fewer than six corsair galleots in pursuit of them.

"Now that is a glorious sight," Hasan said. "One fifth for the Sultan, the rest for us. The trap is sprung." If Yildirim and Hilal were in position somewhere ahead of us as planned, the trap was indeed sprung. Three of the corsair galleots broke off the chase and turned to meet Akdoganand Bayezidiye, thinking no doubt to outnumber us and add us their spoils while their comrades took care of the Florentines. Puffs of gunsmoke showed at the bow of one of them, but raggedly, not in disciplined sequence. These were hesitant ranging shots, which splashed into the water well short of us.

"That's what I wanted to know," Captan Hasan said. "They aim their guns, not their ship."

I could hear Atakan's snort of derision all the way from the gun platform as he sighted along the Akdogan's beak. He turned and said something to Inanc, his gun captain, who grinned widely before stooping over the breech of the starboard falconetti. No Ottoman ship would have done that. The extra gun crews needed to aim the guns would have crowded each other on the gun platform and gotten in the way of the soldiers, an invitation to chaos. And what would be the point anyway, as the aim changed every time the ship rose to a wave? Much easier, and many times more accurate, to triangulate the guns ever so slightly towards each other so that their aim converged on a point at a fixed distance ahead of the ship.

Akdogancarried five beautifully-cast bronze guns in a row across her bow platform. In the center, because it was the heaviest, was the enormous basilisk -- its muzzle more than a hand span wide -- with a pair of smaller culverins on either side. Akdogan's guns were aimed to converge at a distance of twelve hundred arshin -- about nine hundred European yards -- ahead of her bow.

Not only was the Method of the Triangle more accurate, but it saved us time by not having to re-aim the guns each time they were fired. An Ottoman galley could usually bring her guns to bear first, and could almost always fire a second time before the enemy could aim and fire again. Having already wasted a salvo, it would take the corsair galleot several minutes to cool her guns down enough to reload them. The first meaningful shots would be ours.

Several of the janissaries on the fighting platform gave a cheer. They had seen the flash of sunlight glinting off of moving oars ahead of us. Yildirim's dark hull detached itself from the grey rocky shore against which she had been lurking all but invisible, with Hilal beside her. The corsair ships saw them too and hauled their wind in confusion, attempting to get into some sort of formation to face us.

"Pick one," Hasan said.

"The red-hulled one," I suggested. "After we deal with her, we can go after whichever one Bayezidiye hasn't taken." Which left the three southernmost ones to Yildirim and Hilal, who in any case would reach them first. Atakan signalled to the sterndeck by raising his hand, that his guns were loaded and ready. My task as helmsman now was to sight along Akdogan's two masts to keep her bow perfectly pointed at the enemy ship. A gunner on each of the side guns would raise his hand when the ship got to the exact distance where his gun's point converged on the target. When both their hands were raised along with Atakan's, it meant that all five guns had converged and the aiming point had been reached. The port gun chief's hand went up briefly, then down again, now the starboard. Almost there. I steadied the tiller, compensating for a wave which had lifted Akdogan's stern slightly, and brought her back on course. All three hands were up.

"Shoot!" Captain Hasan commanded, almost softly.

"Shoot," Atakan repeated. The gunners touched their linstocks to the touchholes and Akdogan's foredeck guns fired in a ripple of red and orange moving inboard from the lighter outer guns to the heavier ones in the center.