by Wilbur Smith
‘Aim!’ Gordon’s voice carried, clear as a trumpet call. ‘One round. Fire!’
The volley smashed into the mob at point-blank range, they went down before it and lay squealing like pigs in the abattoir. Those still on their feet wavered, and the ringleaders tried to rally them.
‘Bayonets!’ Gordon called. ‘Forward!’ They stepped out briskly, the bright blades levelled and the mob shrank back, then turned on itself and broke. They dropped their stones and bricks, threw aside their dishes and ran back into the alleys.
Gordon halted his men and marched them back into the arsenal. As the gates closed behind them, the survivors crept out from their hiding-places in the warren of slums. They came to find their dead, their wounded and their lost children. At first they were timid and terrified, but then one woman picked up a fist-sized stone and flung it against the barred gates of the arsenal. ‘The soldiers are fat, their bellies stuffed full. When we beg for food they shoot us down like dogs.’ She was a tall bony harridan, dressed all in black. She stood before the gates and raised both skinny arms towards the sky. ‘I call on Allah to smite them with the pestilence and the cholera. Let them eat the flesh of toads and vultures, as we are forced to do!’ Her voice was a high-pitched shriek.
The other women thronged to her. They began to ululate again, rolling their tongues so that their spittle flew as they emitted that terrible keening sound.
‘The Franks also have food,’ screeched the woman in black. ‘They gorge like pashas in their palaces.’
‘The compound of al-Sakhawi, the infidel, is filled with fat beasts. His storerooms are piled high with sacks of grain.’
‘Give us food for our babies!’
‘Shaitan is the ally of al-Sakhawi. He has taught him witchcraft. From grass and thorn he has taught him to make the Devil’s manna. His people feast upon it.’
‘Destroy the nest of Shaitan!’
‘We are the children of Allah. Why should the infidel feast while our babies starve and die?’
The crowd wavered uncertainly, and the black-clad woman took charge. She ran to the head of the street that led to the hospital and beyond it to the compound of Ryder Courtney. ‘Follow me! I will show you where to find food.’ She broke into a shuffling dance, bobbing and ululating, and the crowd streamed after her, filling the narrow street from side to side with a dancing, keening flood of humanity.
The men heard the uproar and came out of their hiding-places among the ruins. The ululating of the women maddened them. Those who carried weapons brandished them. They joined the turbulent dancing procession, and burst into the war songs of the fighting tribes.
Ryder and Jock McCrump were in the main workshop. They had suffered many setbacks. This was the third time in as many months that they had been forced to remove the Ibis’s engine from the hull and painstakingly reweld the steam lines. Then they had discovered that the main drive-shaft bearings had also been damaged, and were knocking noisily at even moderate revolutions. Jock had made replacements: from a solid block of metal he had forged and filed the half-shells by hand. It was a monumental exhibition of skill and patience. At long last, after all these months of meticulous labour, the repairs were complete. Now they were putting it all together for a final check before they transported it to the harbour for installation in the steamer’s engine room.
‘Well, now, skipper, I think this time we’ve got it right.’ Jock stood back with black grease to the elbows and his few remaining hairs plastered to his scalp with sweat. ‘This time I think the old Ibis will be able to carry us out of this God-forsaken hell-hole. There is a shebeen in Aswan run by a lass from Glasgow, a lady of my acquaintance. She sells genuine malt from the Isle of Islay. I would fain have the taste of it on my tongue again. It is the true nectar of the Almighty, and that’s no blasphemy, mind.’
‘I will buy the first round,’ Ryder promised.
‘And the rest,’ Jock told him. ‘You havenae paid me this year past.’
Ryder was about to protest the injustice of this accusation but he heard racing footsteps coming across the compound and Saffron’s breathless squeaks: ‘Ryder! Come quickly.’
Ryder stepped to the doorway. ‘What is it, Saffron?’
She was holding her skirts high and her hat was hanging down her back on its ribbon. Her face was flushed scarlet. ‘Something terrible is happening. Rebecca has sent me to call you. Hurry!’ She grabbed his hand and pulled him with her. They ran towards the cauldron yard.
‘Can you hear it?’ Saffron stopped and held up her hand. ‘Now, can you hear?’ It was faint babble and murmur, like wind in trees or a distant waterfall.
‘Yes, but what is it?’
‘Our women say it’s a huge crowd of the people. They are coming from the arsenal. Our women say that the grain rations have been cut again, and there is going to be terrible trouble. They are terrified, and they are running away.’
‘Saffron, go and fetch Rebecca and Amber.’
‘Amber is not here. She is sulking in the palace. She has not come back since she heard that Captain Ballantyne had gone away.’
‘Good. She will be safe there. Let the women go if they want to. Bring Rebecca, Nazeera and any others who want to stay to the blockhouse. You know how to shutter the windows and bar the doors. You also know where the rifles are kept. You and Rebecca arm yourselves. Wait for me there.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To call the men. That’s enough questions. Now, run!’
It was for just this sort of trouble that Ryder had fortified the compound. The walls were high and solid and the tops were lined with shards of broken glass. He had designed the interior of the compound as a series of courtyards, each of which could be defended, but when one was overrun they could fall back into the next. In the centre, the blockhouse comprised his private quarters, treasury and arsenal. All the windows and doors could be covered with heavy shuttering. The walls were pierced with loopholes for rifle fire and the reed roof was heavily plastered with river clay to render it fireproof.
The first line of defence was the outer wall with its heavy gates at front and rear. He sent Jock with three men to barricade the rear gates, and stand guard there. Then Ryder took Bacheet and five of his most reliable men to the front gates, which opened on to the narrow street. They were all armed with long wooden staves. Ryder made certain the gates were bolted and the heavy timber bars were in their slots. It would take a battering-ram to break them down. There was a low wicket gate in the wall to one side, wide enough to admit one man at a time. Ryder stepped through it. The city street was empty, except for a few of the women from the green-cake kitchens. They were scurrying away like frightened chickens, and within seconds the last had disappeared.
Ryder waited. He was deliberately carrying nothing more provocative than the wooden staff. A rifle was worse than useless against a mob. A single shot might drop one person, but would merely infuriate the rest, and they would be on him before he could reload. A certain way to get yourself torn to pieces, he thought, and leant casually on the staff, assuming a calm, relaxed pose. The noise of the crowd was nearer now, becoming louder as he listened. He knew what that keening chorus of women’s voices meant. They were whipping themselves and their menfolk into a frenzy.
He stood alone in front of the gates, and the sound built up into a muted roar, coming down on him like the wild waters of a river in flash flood. Suddenly the front rank of the mob burst into view two hundred paces down the narrow street from where he stood. They saw him and faltered. The hubbub subsided gradually, and a strange hush fell over them. They knew him well and his reputation was formidable.
Damn me, if I don’t do a Gordon on them. Ryder smiled inwardly. Chinese Gordon was famous for the hypnotic power he could wield over a tribe of hostile savages. It was said he could calm and control them by the sheer power of his personality and the gaze of his steely blue eyes.
Ryder straightened until he stood tall, and glowered at them with all the
ferocity he could command. He knew that they looked upon green or blue eyes as those of the Devil. The hush became silence. For the moment it was a standoff. It needed but a small push to topple it one way or the other.
He started to walk towards them. Now he held the stave threateningly, and paced with calculated menace. They backed off slowly before his approach. One looked back over his shoulder. They were on the point of breaking.
Suddenly a tall, gangling female figure bounded into the alley. Her features were withered with starvation. Her lips had shrunk back to expose bone-white teeth, too large for her pale pink gums, which were studded with open ulcers. She was the harpy of mythology, swathed in black cloth. As she danced towards him, her shanks beneath the black skirts were thin as the legs of a heron, and her enormous feet flapped like the carcasses of stranded black catfish. She threw back her head and emitted the cry of a banshee. The mob behind her roared and poured after her, filling the alley.
Ryder held up his right hand in a placatory gesture. ‘I will give you whatever you want,’ he shouted. ‘Stop.’
His voice was drowned by the wild shrieks of the harpy: ‘We have come to take what we want, and we will kill all who stand in our way!’
Slowly Ryder lifted his left hand and made the sign of the evil eye. He pointed at the woman’s face, and saw her eyelids flutter as she recognized the sign. She stumbled and checked, but then she gathered herself and leapt forward again. He saw the madness in her gaze and knew she was too far gone to respond even to the most dire witchcraft.
Still he stood his ground until she was almost upon him. Then he stepped forward to meet her and drove the point of his staff into her midriff just below the ribcage. The spleens of most river-dwellers were swollen with malaria. A blow like that could burst the organ and kill or maim. The harpy dropped like a bundle of black rags, but the leading ranks of the mob leapt over her body. The man in the forefront swung a broadsword at Ryder’s head. He ducked and darted back through the wicket gate. Bacheet slammed and bolted it behind him. They heard and felt the impact as the mob crashed into it on the far side.
‘We will let them through the gate one at a time, and we can crack their skulls as they come through,’ Bacheet suggested.
‘Too many.’ Ryder shook his head. ‘I will climb to the top of the gate and try to reason with them.’
‘You cannot reason with a pack of rabid dogs.’
Somebody was tugging insistently at his coattails and Ryder tried to pull away. Then he looked back. ‘I thought I told you to stay in the blockhouse,’ he exclaimed angrily.
‘I brought you this.’ Saffron held up his gunbelt with the holstered revolver dangling from it and the rows of brass cartridges in their loops.
‘Good girl!’ He strapped it on. ‘But now get back to the blockhouse and stay there.’ He did not watch her to make sure she had gone but turned back to Bacheet. ‘Fetch the long ladder from the workshop.’
They placed it against the wall. Hand over hand Ryder shot to the top and looked down into the street. The length and breadth of it was filled with humanity. He picked out the harpy he had felled: she was on her feet again, doubled over and hobbling with pain, but her voice was as shrill and strident as before. She was directing the crowd to gather anything that would burn from the buildings that lined the street. They were dragging out baulks of timber, dried palm fronds, old furniture, rubbish, and piling it against the outside of the compound gates.
‘Hear me, citizens of Khartoum,’ Ryder shouted in Arabic. ‘Let the peace and wisdom of God guide you. There is nothing within these walls that I will not give you gladly.’
They looked up him uncertainly as he balanced at the top of the ladder.
‘There is the disciple of Shaitan!’ the harpy screamed. ‘The infidel! Look at him, the pork-eater! The brewer of the green manna from hell!’ She shuffled into a painful dance, and behind her the crowd growled. They threw stones and sticks at him, but the wall was high and the range was long. The missiles hit the wall and bounced back, clattering in the dusty street.
‘What you call the Devil’s manna, is cooked grass and reeds. If you will feed them with it, your children will thrive and regain their health.’
‘He lies! These are the falsehoods that the Devil has placed in his mouth. We know you are eating bread and meat, not grass. Within these walls you have dhurra and meat. Give it to us. Give us your animals. Give us the dhurra you have in your warehouse.’
‘I have no dhurra.’
‘He lies!’ screeched the harpy. ‘Bring fire! We will burn him out of this nest of evil and sacrilege.’
‘Wait!’ Ryder shouted. ‘Hear me!’
But the roar of the crowd drowned his voice. One of the women ran up the crowded street. She was carrying a lighted torch, a bundle of rags soaked in pitch tied to a broomstick. A thick black tarry smoke billowed from the flames. She handed the torch to one of the men, who ran with it to the gate. Ryder glanced down in alarm as he realized how high the rubbish had been piled against the main gates. The man threw the smoking torch on top of the bonfire. It rolled half-way down, then stuck. In the dry desert air the flames caught at once and licked upwards. The gates had stood in the sun for many years. Even though Ryder had his people paint them regularly, the wood dried out and cracked faster than they could repair it, and now the dried paint flared, and the flames shot high. They were almost colourless in the bright sunlight. Ryder considered ordering Bacheet and his men to form a bucket chain to douse the flames before they could burn through the gates, then realized that there were neither enough men nor buckets, that the river and the well were too far, and the flames were already leaping higher than the top of the wall. The heat was intense and drove him off the ladder.
‘Bacheet, we could fight them here, but I don’t want any shooting. I don’t want to kill anybody.’
‘It is me that I am worried about, Effendi. I don’t want to be killed either,’ Bacheet replied. ‘These are animals, mad animals.’
‘They are starving and they have been driven to this.’
‘Should I send one of the men with a message to Gordon to bring the soldiers to drive them away?’ Bacheet asked hopefully.
Ryder smiled grimly. ‘Gordon Pasha is not our friend. He values us only for our dhurra and our camels. If you send one of our men out there the mob will tear him to pieces. I think we will be forced to save ourselves without the help of Gordon Pasha.’
‘How will we do that?’ Bacheet asked simply.
‘We must fall back to the main compound. They will not be able to burn that gate. The fire hose will reach it.’ He had to raise his voice above the howls and shouts of the crowd in the street outside and the crackle of the flames. ‘Come! Follow me!’ The paint on the inside of the gate was already charring.
He ran back to the inner gate, and gave orders to have the water pump and fire hose rigged. There was a firing platform along the top of the inner wall, and reluctantly Ryder issued Martini-Henry rifles to those who could handle them. Apart from Rebecca and Jock, he had trained only five of his men, including Bacheet. The Arabs took little interest in musketry and showed even less aptitude for it. Rebecca could outshoot most of them. He left the women and Jock in the blockhouse, guarding the loopholes.
From the firing parapet he watched the main gates sag slowly inwards, then crash to the dusty earth in a final burst of sparks and burning fragments. The mob poured through, leaping and pushing each other over the still flaming remnants of the gates. One of the older women lost her footing and fell into the flames. They caught at once in her voluminous robe. The rest of the crowd ignored her agonized shriek, and within seconds she lay still. The smell of her roasting flesh floated sickeningly to where Ryder stood on the parapet of the inner wall.
Once the leaders were inside, they came up short. They were in unfamiliar territory and they looked about curiously. Then they caught sight of the row of heads above the parapet of the inner wall, and the hunting chorus went up again. Th
ey charged straight at the inner gate like a pack of savage hounds. Ryder let them get half-way across, then fired into the hard-packed clay in front of the leaders. The bullet kicked up a spray of dust and gravel, then ricocheted away over their heads. It stopped them short, and they milled indecisively.
‘Don’t come closer!’ he shouted. ‘I will kill the next one who comes.’ Some turned, and started to creep away. Then the harpy hobbled through to the front. She broke once more into her grotesque dance. From somewhere she had armed herself with a cowtail fly switch. She brandished this as she screeched her threats and curses at the men on the parapet.
‘You foul and stupid old woman,’ Ryder muttered, in frustration and despair, ‘don’t force me to kill you.’ He fired at her feet, and when the bullet kicked up dirt under her, she leapt into the air, flapping the black wings of her robe like an ancient crow taking flight. The crowd howled again. She hit the ground and came straight on towards the inner wall. Ryder levered another round into the breech and fired. Again she jumped high, and the men behind her imitated her, laughing. The sound had a deranged, obscene quality that was as menacing as the shouts of rage had been.
‘Stop!’ Ryder muttered. ‘Please stop, you old bitch.’ He shot again, but now the mob had realized he would not shoot to kill and lost all fear. They came on after the prancing figure in a swarm. They reached the gate and beat against it with the weapons they carried and their bare hands.
‘Wood!’ shouted the harpy. ‘Bring more wood!’ They ran to fetch it, and came back to pile it against the gate as they had before.
‘Get the pump started!’ Ryder shouted, and two men seized the handles and swung them up and down. The empty canvas hose, laid out across the yard, swelled and hardened as the pressure built up and a powerful stream of river water spurted from the nozzle. Two men on the parapet pointed it down on to the kindling below. It struck with such force that the pile tumbled over.
‘Aim at her.’ Ryder pointed out the harpy. The stream hit her full in the chest and knocked her backwards. She struck the ground on her shoulder-blades and rolled. The hose stream followed her. Every time she regained her feet, it knocked her down again. At last she crawled out of range on hands and knees. Ryder turned the hose on the men in the front of the crowd and they scattered. Then they spread out to search the other buildings of the compound, which lay outside the inner fortifications. Within minutes Ryder heard hammering and banging coming from the direction of his warehouses.