Trade Wind (64 page)

On first sight Colonel Edwards had suspected the Captain of being more than a little drunk, for he smelled strongly of spirits and walked with the deliberation of a man who is giving his attention to keeping on a straight line. But he appeared to be in full possession of his faculties, and observed insolently that it was a signal honour to receive a pressing invitation to call upon so distinguished an official as the British Consul.

“It was not intended as such,” said the Colonel dryly.

“No? I am disappointed. Though I rather thought it could not be a mere social gesture. What is it you want, then?”

“I have heard,” said the Colonel carefully, “that you have a friend—or should I say an ally—among the captains of the dhows who have anchored in the harbour. Sheikh Omar-bin-Omar.”

“I am acquainted with him, yes.”

“So I realized when I saw you talking to him in the town this morning. If I had not seen that I might not have placed any credence in a report that was brought to me this afternoon. A report that you, for reasons of your own of which I know nothing, but can guess, are in league with this man and encouraging the unprecedented outbreaks of violence that have occurred ever since the arrival of the dhows. If this is true, I must ask you to use your influence to put a stop to it before more harm is done and the situation gets out of hand.”

“And if l will not?”

“So it is true! I had not wished to believe it—I had hoped…”

“Had you? Now why, may I ask.”

“Because,” said the Consul heavily, “whatever you may have become, you were born an Englishman. And because my father was acquainted with yours.”

He saw the Captain’s face change and knew that he had made a mistake and wasted his words. And his time, Rory laughed: a laugh that was, for all its mirth, as bitter and mocking a sound as Colonel Edwards had ever heard, and he said derisively: ”’
Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks, on Thee our hopes we fix—God save us all
!’ That, my dear sir, if it is in any way typified by my departed father, is what I think of your country. So let us dispense with appeals to sentiment. I have none.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I thought you said you could guess.”

“I can. For a percentage of the profits and a share of the plunder. There can be no other reason. Except—” He paused, frowning, and then said slowly: “Except revenge. And that I cannot credit.”

“Revenge for what?” asked Rory softly.

“Feruz says…’ The Colonel did not finish the sentence, because it occurred to him that if there was any truth in that bazaar rumour that Feruz had brought him, he would do well to walk carefully. Possibly Frost had been fond of that woman, Zorah. If so, one could be sorry for him…It was almost a quarter of a century since a girl called Lucy Frobisher had died of a fever only ten days before her wedding to young Ensign George Edwards, but he had never forgotten her, or the blow that her death had dealt him. And although she should not, of course, be considered in the same breath with an Arab concubine, the memory of all that he had suffered then made him chary of mentioning Captain Frost’s dead mistress. He said instead:

“I do not think it is a matter that we need discuss. But even if you should have grounds for—for resentment, it must surely be directed against one person only, and to visit the consequences upon the heads of all is not only unjust but vicious.”

“Supposing I did not know the identity of that one person?”

“Then you should make it your business to find out, before penalizing the innocent.”

“I have found out,” said Rory grimly.

The Colonel’s eyes narrowed and his thin lips twitched and drew in at the comers. “Indeed? Then may I hope that you will deal directly with the individual concerned, and call off your rascally friends from intimidating the town. I will give you twenty-four hours, and if by then there has been no noticeable improvement in the situation, I shall be compelled to take action. Drastic action!”

Rory laughed again, but this time in amusement only. “Single-handed, sir? I hardly think you would achieve much with a dozen or so of the Sultan’s Baluchis, whose loyalty at the best of times is apt to be in doubt Or do you propose to bring pressure to bear on His Highness to support you with troops? I fear you are not likely to find him cooperative.”

The British Consul regarded him with cold and unemotional eyes, and said deliberately: “I am aware of it So I will tell you just what I propose to do. Unless you persuade this Sheikh Omar and his pirates to mend their manners, I shall send an armed party from the next British naval vessel to arrive in this port to arrest you, and I shall have you hung without trial the minute they bring you in. And if I am broken for it I shall not care—and neither will you, by that time! I hope you believe that I mean it?”

“Oh, I believe you, all right,” grinned Captain Frost. “In fact I’m quite willing to believe that you’d do the hanging with your own hands, if necessary.”

“I should.”

“Don’t worry; Danny will do it for you. He wouldn’t dream of letting anyone else deprive him of the pleasure. I will wish you good afternoon, sir. It’s been interesting to meet you, but I cannot honestly say that I hope to see you again.”

He bowed briefly and strolled out of the office, collected Mr Potter and Hajji Ralub who had been waiting in the hall, and went out into the wet evening, whistling ‘God Save the Queen’ very softly between his teeth.

28

The arrival of the dhows had put an end to any further prospect of walks on the
maidan
or shopping expeditions in the town, but Hero saw no reason why they should interfere with her morning rides on those occasions when the weather permitted such exercise.

She could not agree that a stroll in the garden provided an adequate substitute, and argued that there could be little danger in riding along unfrequented byways at an hour when almost all the unwelcome visitors were either still asleep, or too lethargic after their nightly brawls, raids and revels to be a menace to anyone. Besides, she would not be alone, since Clay and two of the grooms, armed with pistols and carbines, would accompany her, and could be trusted to protect her from any number of marauding pirates—who would in any case be on foot, and quite unable to stop or pursue a party on horseback.

Uncle Nat had allowed himself to be persuaded, and the early morning rides had been continued. They had done much to mitigate the tedium of being confined behind closed doors and drawn shutters for the remainder of the day, and at first they had been pleasant and uneventful, for as Hero had so rightly observed, the crews of the dhows were not to be met with in the hour of dawn, and it was easy enough to keep out of the way of any group of men on foot. But the morning following the British Consul’s unsatisfactory interview with Captain Emory Frost had dawned clear and bright, and the riding party had left at an early hour—to return without Hero and bringing with them an ugly and almost unbelievable story.

It seemed that they had ridden out as usual, keeping to the open country, and turned back shortly before the sun rose, in order to reach the safety of the Consulate while the streets were still comparatively empty. Riding down a narrow lane they had found their way blocked by a
homali
cart that had been drawn across the road and had got wedged against the door of a house, and the two grooms had dismounted and gone forward to help the owner remove it. As they did so, half-a-dozen men who had been lying in wait behind the door leapt upon them and disarmed them, and in the same instant Clayton himself had been dragged from his horse by a loop of rope flung over his shoulders from behind and jerked tight. A moment later the lane had been full of horsemen, one of whom had thrown a blanket over Hero’s head and lifting her from the saddle, blanket and all, had ridden off with her…

“It was Frost!“raved Clayton, his face a queer greyish-white with rage and his hands shaking as though he had the ague: “It was that swindling slaver Frost—Goddamn his soul to Hell!”

“You’re sure of that?” snapped the Consul, disregarding his wife’s hysterics.

“D’you suppose I don’t know him? The bastard sat there and watched while two of his filthy cut-throats pulled me up on my feet, and when I asked him what in hades he thought he was doing he said he was merely giving me a taste of my own…Hell, I don’t know what he said! The man’s crazy!—I thought he was going to murder me. And now he’s got Hero. What are we going to do?”

“Get her back,” said the Consul harshly. “He can’t have gone far. We’ll get Edwards and Kealey and Platt and a dozen of the other Europeans, and break his house down if necessary. You’d better go get Lynch and Dubail and some of the younger ones.”

But it was already too late, for by the time they had collected shot guns and revolvers they could neither leave the Consulate nor send for assistance, because the riff-raff from the dhows were fifty deep outside the house. And when four panic-stricken house-servants escaped by the garden door they were caught and badly beaten by the mob, who imagined them to be fetching help.

Mr Hollis had gone out on to the front steps and courageously faced the rabble, protesting against their behaviour and asking to be allowed to speak to their leaders. But he had not been able to make himself heard, and in the end had been forced to retreat when the crowd rushed the house, blocking the hastily barred door and brandishing swords and knives before the ground-floor windows, yelling that they would kill him.

Clayton would have followed the servants’ disastrous example and attempted to escape to one of the other consulates, carrying the news of Hero’s abduction and a request for men to break into The Dolphins’ House; but his mother had clung to him weeping and screaming, and his stepfather had told him sharply that to commit what amounted to suicide would not only kill his mother but do his betrothed no good. His death could only serve to acerbate the situation and possibly even lead to a general massacre of all Europeans, and they would have to find some other way of sending for help. But they had found no other way; and did not know that even if they had been able to smuggle a message out of the house it would have done no good, since a similar rabble was already demonstrating before every Consulate and European-occupied house in Zanzibar city.

In the Palace the Sultan had withdrawn to his private apartments on the upper storey, where he remained in seclusion; impervious alike to the tumult that raged outside and the agitated pleas and protests that poured in from the German and French consulates, the nobles and the rich merchants of the town.

“I can do nothing,” repeated the Sultan to a frantic deputation of Arab landowners and prosperous Banyan shopkeepers who had finally been admitted to the Presence. “These evil men greatly outnumber my guards, and it would require a very large sum of money to bribe them to go away. And this year, alas! my Treasury is empty and I have nothing with which to pay them. So what is there left for me to do but endure their insults and pray to Allah to deliver me from their knaveries? If we could but offer them sufficient money…”

The landowners and the shopkeepers had retired to discuss the problem, and had returned that same evening bringing with them a thousand rupees which subsequently proved to be only the first small installment of a very substantial bribe. The money had been sent immediately to the mob seething about the consulates, with a polite request that they would accept it and return peacefully to their dhows; and the mob, considering it inadequate, pocketed it and continued to demonstrate with unabated frenzy.

The night that followed had been a nerve-racking one, not only for the foreigners beseiged in the consulates, but for all Zanzibar. More than a dozen shops and houses in the city had been broken into and looted, and several country mansions of well-to-do sheikhs and noblemen had been attacked, their slaves kidnapped and their valuables stolen.

With the morning a further deputation called upon the Sultan to discuss what sum would be considered adequate to buy off the pirates, and by the late afternoon it had been raised: though whether it ever reached Omar-bin-Omar and the masters of the dhows, or stayed to swell the Sultan’s coffers, remained in doubt, since there was very little slackening of tension in the succeeding hours, and after another uneasy night dawn found the city still terrorized by the invaders. But help was at last at hand, for as the day broke greyly in a sky full of clouds, it brought with it Her Majesty’s steam-sloop
Daffodil
; and half an hour later Lieutenant Daniel Larrimore and a file of armed bluejackets were marching through the streets, while the shouting men who had been besieging die consulates melted away down the lanes and side-alleys of the city and fell silent.

Dan had gone straight to the British Consulate, where he had found Colonel Edwards breakfasting finally on an orange and a cup of black coffee (it had been impossible to obtain eggs or fresh food during the past two days) and had received a warm welcome. The Colonel had as yet received no information as to how the other consulates had fared, and giving orders that the
Daffodil
’s guns were to be trained on the anchored fleet of dhows, he set off, accompanied by the Lieutenant, to see if any of his colleagues were in need of assistance.

Every Arab on the coast knew Lieutenant Larrimore and the
Daffodil
, and the news of their arrival spread through the city with the speed of a cloud shadow on a windy day, so that by the time Colonel Edwards and his escort reached Mr Hollis’s house the last of the rioters were vanishing in the direction of the bazaars or the harbour, and the few who remained stood back sullenly and made no attempt to bar their way.

The servants were still cowering in the back of the house, and it was Mr Hollis himself who admitted them. He looked as though he had aged ten years in two days and even Colonel Edwards was startled at his appearance, while Dan, whose own face had been grim with anxiety, felt his heart jerk and stop with the sudden presage of calamity, and said hoarsely: “Is she all right?”

“She hasn’t come back,” said the Consul, his voice as hoarse as Dan’s, but flat from exhaustion: “We tried every way to get out and get word to you, but they wouldn’t let us through. It’s been two days and we’ve heard nothing.”