by M. M. Kaye
Once again, as on that other night, both portholes had been blocked, and the little cabin was pitch dark and insufferably hot. But although the thick curtains of coir matting effectively prevented the entry of either light or air, they seemed powerless to keep out the hordes of mosquitoes whose shrill, droning song was maddeningly audible above the coming and going of men on deck, the sound of surf and the splash of retreating oars. Hero slapped futilely at them, and eventually crawled out of her berth, and having found the matches, lit a tallow candle and splashed water over her face and down Captain Frost’s shirt that was still doing duty as a nightgown.
Thus cooled, her energy and her curiosity revived, and she remembered the shears with which Batty had chopped off her hair, and which she had seen him put away in a drawer of the desk. They were still there; large and heavy and surprisingly sharp. Hero looked thoughtfully at them, and then at the thick matting that screened the portholes.
Ten minutes later, after a hard struggle, she had succeeded in cutting a ragged slit in the matting and was peering cautiously through it, having first taken the precaution of blowing out the candle. They were riding at anchor near a dark shore that seemed to be thickly wooded, and Hero could make out the white line of surf on a little curving bay, and the ragged shapes of tall coral rocks that formed a natural breakwater on either side of it.
The breeze that blew gently off the land and cooled her hot face smelled deliciously of cloves—a strange, heady fragrance to find on the warm night air. There were other scents too; scents that were less familiar and that she could not place, since she had never known flowers that smelt as strong or as sweet. The odour of salt water and wet sand mingled pleasantly with them, and to the right and left of the bay she could see the tall, graceful heads of innumerable palms, swaying to the night breeze.
The moon had not yet risen but the sky was ablaze with stars, and as Hero’s eyes became accustomed to the uncertain light she saw that there was a house standing among the trees above the bay. A tall, white, flat-roofed house, protected from seaward by what appeared to be a massive, crenellated wall. It was clearly visible in the bright starlight, but either the occupants were asleep or else it was closed and empty, for no gleam of light showed from any window or from among the massed trees or on the surrounding wall. There were, however, men on the curving beach beyond the phosphorescent surf; half-a-dozen dark figures that were barely discernible against the pale expanse of sand, and who seemed to be engaged in either loading or unloading a boat that had been pulled up on the beach. After a time they thrust it off again, and Hero watched it being rowed back to the ship, and when it had passed out of her line of vision heard it bump alongside, fended off by hands and oars.
It was only then that she became aware that there could be no lights on the Virago and that even the riding light had been extinguished, for the water below her reflected only stars and shadows. The schooner must have crept in close to the land in the dark hour before moonrise, with every light extinguished and (why had she not thought of that before?) using the sails that Batty Potter had carefully darkened with a pail of brown dye so that they would be difficult to discern by night and the uncertain starlight, either against the dark sea or the darker land.
The voices and footsteps began again, accompanied by thuds and dragging sounds, and ten minutes later the boat came into view once more, pulling for the shore and riding low in the water as though it was heavily laden. They were not taking on cargo this time, but landing it. And whatever it was, it was certainly not slaves; though Hero had little doubt that it was the same cargo that had been transferred to the Virago in mid-ocean two nights ago.
She watched the boat reach the shore, and saw the dark, unidentifiable figures unload it and carry what appeared to be long and apparently heavy bundles across the white sand of the beach towards the rocks and the shadow of that high curtain wall. And quite suddenly a thought struck her that for a horrible moment seemed to check the beating of her heart Bodies! Was that what they were carrying? Had there, after all, been slaves on board the Virago, and were the crew now getting rid of those who had died in the airless hold—burying black corpses somewhere in the tree-filled garden of that shuttered house, where the graves would not be found and no one would ever know?
It was a full five minutes before sanity and commonsense told her that Captain Frost was not the man to waste time and effort digging graves for bodies that could be far more effectively disposed of by simply throwing them into the sea. But could those oblong bundles possibly be living people, and was she watching some gruesome method of smuggling human wares into the island?
Hero was aware that any British or British-Indian subject caught trading in or owning slaves was liable to a very heavy fine or imprisonment, though by the terms of what she could only consider to be a callous and scandalous treaty, the Sultan and his subjects were still permitted to continue the practice within the strict limits of His Highness’s territorial possessions. Yet in this respect Captain Frost, whatever his assertions to the contrary, would presumably count as a British subject, and could therefore be visited with the full penalties of the law if convicted of slaving—which could account for the secrecy with which this particular cargo was being landed.
Straining her eyes in the bright starlight, she tried to gauge the size and length of those bundles. But though she was unable to arrive at any reliable estimate, the casualness with which they were being handled did not support the theory that they contained living people, since no human freight could have escaped injury from being tilted out so roughly onto the sandy shore. Unless of course the Captain’s men simply did not care?
Once again the boat returned, riding high and light, and this time Hero could hear it being drawn up and swung aboard, and shortly afterwards there came the squeak of the windlass and the rattle of the chain as the anchor was weighed. Water gurgled under the prow and the dark outlines of the land began to slide away as though the shore and not the ship was moving, and presently the Virago’s bows swung seaward and there was no more land, but only the wide expanse of ocean.
Hero turned from the portholes and groped her way back to the bunk to sit cross-legged in the darkness, slapping absent-mindedly at the mosquitoes and brooding on Captain Frost’s sinister and secretive behaviour, and she was still meditating this vexed problem when the matting was drawn up and out of sight, and once again the sea breeze blew through the cabin and she could see the stars and the night sky. They were heading south, and it occurred to her then that they must have by-passed Zanzibar and “fetched’ the Sultan’s neighbouring island of Pemba, and were now going back on their tracks and in the right direction after all. Comforted by this thought, and by the fact that the cool current of air had at last dispersed the mosquitoes, she fell asleep at last: and woke to find Jumah knocking at her door with a breakfast tray and the news that they would reach Zanzibar harbour within the hour.
A glance through the porthole disclosed that they were already in sight of the Island, and Hero scalded her tongue gulping hot coffee, ate half a banana, and having washed hurriedly and dressed in frantic haste, picked up the brush and comb and went to the looking-glass; to be confronted by a reflection that reduced her to tears for the first time since Barclay had died…
“Oh no!” wailed Hero, speaking aloud into the silent cabin. “Oh, no!”
She did not hear the knock on the door or know that it had opened, and only realized that someone had entered the cabin when a hand gripped her shoulder and swung her round, and she found herself looking with streaming eyes at a tear-blurred vision of the Virago’s Captain.
“Go away!” said Hero furiously.
Captain Frost made no attempt to do so. He shook her instead and enquired impatiently if she had hurt herself.
“No, I haven’t!” wept Hero. “C-can’t you see I haven’t?—go away!”
Captain Frost relaxed his grip on her shoulder and producing a handkerchief, attempted to staunch the flow and spoke in a voi
ce that despite its peremptoriness was a good deal pleasanter than any she had heard him use before: “My good girl, you can’t be shedding all those tears for nothing. What’s the matter?”
“Mosquitoes—Clay…I look hideous! sobbed Hero incoherently.
She snatched the handkerchief from him and burying her face in it spoke in a muffled wail: “As if it wasn’t bad enough already! Just look what those horrible insects have done to my face. I m-might as well have m-measles. And if you dare laugh, I’ll—I’ll—”
Captain Frost pushed the handkerchief aside and taking her chin in his hand turned her face to the light. It was indeed a sorry sight, for in addition to tear-stains and the fading but still evident blemishes incurred in the course of her rescue, there were now a liberal sprinkling of angry-looking mosquito bites. But though his lips twitched he did not laugh. Instead, and entirely unexpectedly, he bent his head and kissed her.
It was a fleeting and completely sexless gesture that held no more emotional content than a pat bestowed by an adult on a weeping child. But no man had ever done such a thing to Hero Hollis before. Barclay had not been a demonstrative man and his only daughter had not been at all the kind of little girl who invited caresses: there had never been anything sweet or winsome about his Hero, and on the rare occasions that he had kissed her it had been on the cheek or the forehead. Even Clayton had never achieved more than that, but Emory Frost had kissed her casually on the lips, and to Hero the brief caress was more shocking than a blow.
She wrenched herself free and stepped back swiftly, one hand to her mouth and her eyes wide and horrified. But Captain Frost appeared entirely unaware of her perturbation. He said encouragingly: “Don’t worry, it doesn’t look any worse than freckles, and they won’t last In any case, your relatives are going to be so pleased to find that you are alive that they won’t care about anything else. And neither will Clayton Mayo if he really means to marry you. Does he?”
The sudden change of subject disconcerted Hero, and she scrubbed her eyes with the crumpled handkerchief, and having blown her nose, said with quivering hostility: “I cannot see that it is any affair of yours, and I might with more justification ask you what you were doing last night I know you were landing something.”
“Was I? What makes you think so?”
“Because I’ve got ears,” retorted Hero. “And eyes.”
“And also a pair of scissors,” grinned Captain Frost, not a whit disconcerted.” I admit I’d forgotten the scissors until I saw the gash you’d made in that piece of matting.”
“Were you smuggling slaves?”
“What a persistent young woman you are! No, I was not.”
“I didn’t think you were, but…Where were we last night? Was that Pemba or Africa?” Captain Frost shrugged and said: “You’ll have to ask Hajji Ralub. He’s our navigator.”
“You must know perfectly well where we—” began Hero hotly, and then realizing the futility of such a conversation, abandoned the subject and said instead: “What did you come in here to see me about?”
“Nothing. I merely wanted a clean shirt to land in, and they happen to be in that cupboard. Do you mind if I get one?”
He did not wait for her permission, but walked past her, selected a shirt and left: leaving Hero still clutching his crumpled handkerchief in one hand and staring after him with compressed lips.
After a moment or two she raised the handkerchief and rubbed it back and forth across her mouth, her gaze still on the closed door, and then suddenly realizing what she held, dropped it quickly and ran to the basin where she scrubbed her lips with soap as though they had been in contact with something unclean. The narrow oblong of cheap looking-glass that hung above it reflected her reddened eyes and tear-stained cheeks, and she splashed her face again and again with the tepid, soapy water, and having dried it, turned away from the glass without a second look, and went up on to the deck with a laggard step and none of the happy anticipation that she had once imagined herself feeling at the sight of Zanzibar. But the scene that met her eyes was enchanting enough to banish the deepest despondency, and forgetting both her recent humiliation and her lost good looks, she ran to the rail to take her first look at the lovely island.
The morning sun was shining on a coast that was more beautiful than anything she had ever visualized, and looking at it she could well believe the tale Captain Frost had told her of the Arab Sultan who had fallen in love with Zanzibar. It was not surprising that a man born and bred among the harsh, sun-baked sands of Arabia should have been caught by the beauty of this green and gracious island and left his heart, and at the last his body, on that lovely shore. The young Frenchman, Jules Dubail, had been right when he had described it as a ‘Paradise on earth, colourful and exotic and of a beauty inconceivable.’ And so had those long-ago Arabs who had named it ‘Zayn za’l barr’—‘Fair is this land.’
The schooner was moving gently along the inside of a long coral reef that protected the coast from the worst of the monsoon storms, and the water between ship and shore was glass-clear and streaked with every imaginable colour from amethyst to veridian: clear blue where the sand lay fathoms deep below the slow shadows of the sails, and milky jade where the shoals neared the surface. A line of foam creamed on a long beach of dazzling white sand fringed by shallow coral cliffs and sand dunes sculptured by the Trade Winds, and behind these arose stately ranks of coconut palms and the dense, metallic green of innumerable trees.
There seemed to be no hard lines in the island, and no mountains. Only gently swelling hills, curving bays and beaches, and the rounded greenery of massed foliage. The warm breezes smelled of flowers and cloves and the rustling fronds of the palms waved and swayed in unison, as though they had been some graceful Eastern corps-de-ballet performing an ancient and traditional dance of welcome. And gazing at that lovely shore. Hero was no longer surprised that Cressy had written so ecstatically of Zanzibar. For a moment she felt tempted to fall into similar raptures, but a recollection of the heat and mosquitoes of the previous night, together with the fact that this was one of the greatest centres of the slave trade, restored her sense of proportion and reminded her in time of the danger of judging by appearances. The island might seem on the surface to be a paradise, but she must be prepared to find it far otherwise and not permit any hazy and deceptive veil of romance to blind her to its harsher aspects.
“Well, miss, ‘ow do you like the look of it?” enquired Batty Potter, pausing beside her. “Nice little place, ain’t it?”
“It looks very pretty,” agreed Hero cautiously.
“It do—if you likes palm trees and such. Some does and some don’t.”
Batty sighed deeply and spat a dark stream of tobacco juice into the pellucid water as the Virago, rounding a rocky point, brought into view a business-like steam-sloop that flew the white ensign of the Royal Navy and lay half a mile ahead, slantwise across the narrow channel that divided the reef from the palm-fringed shore.
A peremptory signal fluttered from the sloop’s yards, and Captain Frost, joining Hero at the rail, said: “Ah! I thought so. Here’s the Reception Committee. That’s the Daffodily and here comes Dan. Hi, Ralub! heave to. Look lively there!”
The Virago’s crew leapt into activity and the schooner lost way and glided gently forwards, the glassy water clucking and chuckling along her salt-caked and sun-blistered sides until the splash of the heavy sea anchor brought her to a stop a bare hundred yards from the waiting sloop.
Captain Frost shaded his eyes against the sun-glare and watched while a small white-painted boat was lowered and rowed briskly towards them, its bow occupied by a man who signalled authoritatively with an uplifted arm.
“Going to let ‘im come aboard?” enquired Batty with mild interest.
“Why not? Lower a ladder for ‘em and roll out the red carpet, Batty. What have we got to worry about?”
“You’re right, there. Narry a thing! Wonder if ‘e nabbed Fernandez? You might ask ‘im while ‘e’s o
ver.”
“If he didn’t it’s high time he went home and took up farming. We practically handed him the bastard in wrapping paper and blue ribbons. He’ll have got him all right. Suliman said he was smack on his tail and going so hard that he swears he could have sailed half-a-dozen dhows out in his wake without being seen—let alone one! Very pretty shooting, Uncle. Two beautiful birds with one stone. Stand by: here he comes—”
The jolly-boat closed in, shipping its oars, and a man wearing the uniform of a British naval officer swung himself up the swaying rope ladder and came over the side.
He was a slight man, and not much above medium height; but with a personality that made itself instantly felt and had the effect of convincing others that he was considerably taller than his inches warranted. Dark hair and a deeply sunburnt face combined to make him look as swarthy as an Arab, but the square cut of his features and a pair of startlingly blue eyes were unmistakably and uncompromisingly Anglo-Saxon.
“Well, well!” said Captain Frost cordially. “If it isn’t Danny-boy! Nice of you to call on us, Dan. To what do we owe this signal honour?”
The slight suggestion of a drawl in Captain Frost’s voice was suddenly more than a suggestion and nicely calculated to annoy; but Lieutenant Daniel Larrimore had learned many lessons in a hard school, and one of them was when and when not to lose his temper. A muscle twitched at the comer of his jaw, but he spoke politely and without heat: “Good morning, Frost. I want to take a look at your cargo. That is, if you have no objection?”
“If I had, it wouldn’t make any difference, would it?”
“Not in the least. But I’d prefer to do it without interference from your crew, so just call them off will you. And you can tell Ralub to stop fingering his knife in that offensive manner and stay away from that hatch.”