by M. M. Kaye
The morning dawned hot and windless, and in the city the shops were still closed. Nervous citizens kept their doors barred and their shutters bolted, while panic-stricken ones besieged the harbour offering large sums in return for a passage to the mainland. And in his camp near Marseilles, His Highness the Sultan, having again failed to persuade his troops to advance, sent an urgent message to the British Consul asking for the assistance of Her Majesty’s forces.
“Wants us to pull all his chestnuts out of the fire for him,” grumbled Colonel Edwards. “Well, I suppose we shall have to do so, because if we don’t there’s no knowing what sort of mess he’ll end up in.”
“Pretty good mess already,” commented the Commander of the Assaye, “Four of our own men wounded and sixty of his killed or injured—and God alone knows how many losses on the other side. Not bad for a minor skirmish! What assistance do you propose to send him, sir?”
“That’s up to you, Commander. As many of your men as you consider necessary to capture the position.”
“From all I hear, a petty officer and a dozen bluejackets could have done It yesterday evening,” said the Commander disgustedly. “But the rebels will have had well over twenty-four hours in which to pull themselves together and reorganize their defences before we can get out there again. Oh well, I’ll see what we can raise, and with your permission we’ll send ‘em off at first light tomorrow.”
The following dawn had seen another naval contingent setting off for the Sultan’s camp: this time consisting of twelve officers and one hundred petty officers and seamen, armed with rockets and a twelve-pound howitzer and commanded by a senior officer from the Assaye, They found Sultan Majid angry and ashamed and his followers sullen and uneasy, but although the atmosphere had been considerably lightened by the sight of the British contingent, only the Sultan and three of his ministers expressed the intention of accompanying them to the attack. The troops had declined to move, and standing prudently back they watched their ruler and his white reinforcements move off in the direction of Marseilles, and listened anxiously for the sound of firing.
There was no firing. The advancing force halted at the edge of the grove while their commanding officer scanned the ruined buildings through a telescope, but save for a number of lethargic vultures nothing moved, and he could see no sign of any defenders. Suspecting an ambush, he held half his men in reserve and sent the rest forward under cover of the howitzer. But Marseilles was deserted. Not even the dead remained, for kites and crows, vultures and pariah dogs had already feasted a full day off the bodies of those who had been left unburied, while rats, foxes and a leopard had been there by night to finish the work that those earlier scavengers had left undone. A sickening stench of corruption pervaded the hot stillness and the drone of a million flies was loud in the silence.
Majid looked about him and spoke in a whisper, as though he feared to break that stillness. Or perhaps he was only speaking to himself—or to those children whom he had played with as a child; the brother and the sisters who had tried to depose him:
“This used to be such a beautiful house,” whispered Majid. “…so happy. So—so gay.”
He turned to the silent ranks of watching seamen and his voice shot up, high and imperious: “Blow it up! Smash it into dust with your cannon! I do not wish so much as a stone to remain. Let it be destroyed: and then perhaps one day the trees and grass will grow again, and hide it.”
He walked away with his ministers; a small, undistinguished figure in the harsh sunlight, and did not wait to see the bloodstained shell of Marseilles dissolve into fragments in a series of crashing detonations and a darkness that momentarily shadowed the bright day.
In the city Colonel Edwards and Commander Adams of the Assaye who had accompanied the naval contingent as far as Beit-el-Ras before hurrying back to see what measures they could take for the safety of the citizens, had been met by the news that the rebels had evacuated Marseilles under cover of darkness and were now ready to make their submission to the Sultan. Also that the Heir-Apparent, finding himself deserted by the majority of his followers, had returned in secret to his house in the city and was in hiding there.
“You don’t think that’s only a rumour?” suggested Commander Adams.
Colonel Edwards shook his head. “No, Feruz is the best spy I’ve got, and if he says Bargash is back, you may be sure it’s true. Well, there’s only one thing to do, and the sooner it’s done the better.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Put a strong guard of the Sultan’s Baluchis on that house, and get off an urgent message to His Highness asking him to send someone with authority to enter it and take the Heir-Apparent into custody. If you can spare another petty officer and about half-a-dozen of your men, I’d like to put them on night guard so that we don’t have any repetition of that ridiculous nonsense of allowing a covey of women to get into the place under the pretence of paying a social call. I don’t imagine that your men would let anyone in.”
“Or out,” said the Commander grimly. “I’ll get back and see to it at once.”
“Thank you. That will be a weight off my mind. We don’t want to let him slip through our fingers again. I’ll get that letter off immediately and go along to the Palace and wait there for whoever His Highness sends to effect the arrest. It won’t be easy, and I do trust he will have the sense to send someone of sufficient standing to command respect, and not some royal stripling who will be refused admittance.”
Majid did not send a royal stripling, but a near relative. Seyyid Sûd-bin-Hilal,a kindly, middle-aged and much respected man, who arrived towards midnight with an escort of two hundred men and orders from the Sultan to capture his rebellious Heir-Apparent at all costs, but to make the submission as easy as possible for him.
Seyyid Sud had greeted Colonel Edwards with grave courtesy and startled him by the gentle announcement that he proposed to go immediately to Bargash’s house, but alone.
“We must not forget, my dear Colonel, that he is still the heir, and a son of our late great Imam—to whom may God grant the highest reward and admit to heaven without bringing him to account. It is the wish of His Highness that his brother should be given the opportunity of surrendering with honour, and this is why I must go alone and unarmed. We know that Seyyid Bargash and his followers have many guns with them, and if I go to take him with troops he may open fire upon them, which must be avoided at all costs. There has been too much bloodshed already. But I am older than Seyyid Bargash, many years older, and if I go to his house alone and he sees that I have no weapons and no armed guards, he may admit me and listen to what I have to say, and accepting His Highness’s terms, surrender himself to me. That is what we must hope for.”
“He won’t do it,” said Colonel Edwards with curt conviction.
“You think not.” I trust you may be wrong. But I hope you will agree that he must be given the opportunity to do so. It is always better to risk something—in this case no more than an affront to my own pride—in the hope that if an enemy is offered a way of honourable retreat he may accept it in preference to continued violence and the taking of more lives.”
“And if he refuses?”
“Then we shall have no choice but to take him by force. That task I shall place in your hands, but tonight we shall try my way.”
He turned to exchange the coat he had travelled in for a more formal one that was richly embroidered in gold thread, and Colonel Edwards said abruptly: “What terms does His Highness offer to Seyyid Bargash?”
Sûd-bin-Hilal settled the robe on his shoulders, and smoothing his greying beard said gently: “His Highness the Sultan, whom may God preserve, has told me to tell his brother that in spite of all he has done, he will be pardoned if he will foreswear all rebellious plans for the future.”
“Hmm,” grunted the Colonel. “Then all I can hope is that the offer is refused, for a more preposterous one would be hard to conceive. If he accepts those terms he isn’t likely to keep them for
more than a week—possibly not more than an hour. You’d think His Highness would realize as much by now.”
Sud shrugged and smiled a small, tired smile. “His Highness the Sultan,” he murmured, ‘is a man of peace.”
“His Highness the Sultan,” snapped Colonel Edwards, exasperated, “is precisely the kind of man whose desire for peace is an incitement to violence. Any man who owns what others avidly covet should take reasonable precautions to safeguard it, or else give it away. If he will do neither, he cannot complain when he discovers that Allah made thieves as well as honest men!”
Seyyid Sûd-bin-Hilal spread out his hands in a gesture that both deprecated and accepted, and went out into the quiet night to make his appeal to a rash, egotistical and desperate man. It had proved fruitless. The débâcle at Marseilles had taught the Heir-Apparent nothing, and he was still convinced that he could rouse the Island against his brother and seize the throne: Marseilles had been a miscalculation, no more.
He had been excited, boastful and insulting, and Sud was forced to the regretful and humiliating conclusion that his mission had, after all, been a grave mistake, and that he had misjudged both the situation and the Heir-Apparent. For the fact that he had come alone and unarmed, bearing terms that were (as the British Consul had not hesitated to point out) generous to the point of folly, had merely served to convince Bargash that his brother was not only afraid of him, but too uncertain of his own position to attempt strong measures, and that continued defiance would yet win the game.
Tolerance and mercy were things that Bargash had never understood and would always confuse with weakness. And now he was more certain than ever that he had been right, since was not Majid suing for mercy?—begging him to apologize and promise to be good, as though he were some naughty child who could be coaxed with sweets? His brother’s position must be a parlous one indeed if he could afford to take no sterner action than this!
Bargash was not in the least repentant; and now he was no longer afraid. He laughed in Sûd’s face, telling him that he must be as great a fool as Majid if he thought to trick him as easily as that; and the Sultan’s envoy returned sorrowfully to the Palace in the yellow dawn, to report the failure of his mission.
“Told you so,” said Colonel Edwards, who having passed an uncomfortable night dozing fitfully in an ante-room of the Palace was not in the best of tempers. “And I won’t say I’m sorry. The only thing that young man understands or will ever understand is force, and it’s also the only thing he respects. If His Highness had taken a strong line at the start none of this would ever have happened and a good many lives would have been saved. Never pays to go prattling of mercy or turning the other cheek to the Bargashes of this world. They haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, and they’ll write it down as weakness every time. What do you propose to do now? I can’t handle this without a direct order from the Sultan, you know.”
“I have His Highness’s authority to give you that order,” said Sud. “If I should not succeed, I was to place the matter in your hands. I have not succeeded, and now it is for you to do as you think fit.”
Colonel Edwards restrained himself from saying: “And about time too!” and having bowed instead, left the Palace and hurried back to his Consulate to snatch a few hours sleep, eat a late lunch and make arrangements for taking the Heir-Apparent’s house by storm.
The naval contingent had not yet returned from Beit-el-Ras, but the Daffodil and Lieutenant Larrimore were still in harbour, and Colonel Edwards hoped that young Larrimore was by now feeling more the thing and sufficiently stout to take charge of a landing party. He was in the process of addressing a note to the Lieutenant when Mr Nathaniel Hollis called in to enquire as to the fate of the insurgent forces.
“There have been at least half-a-hundred rumours flying round town,” explained Mr Hollis. “All of ‘em different and each one worse than the last. So I figured I’d better check up on ‘em. I understand your Navy boys have been sorting things out a piece?”
He listened attentively while Colonel Edwards gave him a brief résumé of the situation, and having expressed approval of the proposed measures, took his departure with the comfortable feeling that for the first time in several days he would be able to cheer his anxious family with some good news. But though it had certainly cheered his wife, its effect upon his daughter had been entirely unexpected, for Cressy had instantly burst into tears and fled from the room.
“What in thunder’s gotten into the girl?” demanded her father, considerably startled. “She feeling ill, or something?”
“I guess it’s only nerves,” apologized Aunt Abby. “It’s been very upsetting for all of us; what with all that shooting, and not being able to leave the house, and no butter or milk and the servants getting downright hysterical.”
“If you ask me, she wanted that fellow Bargash to win,” observed Clayton. “That’s what’s upsetting her.”
Hero alone had made no comment. She had been markedly silent and distrait ever since the morning that her uncle had told his assembled family of the Heir-Apparent’s dramatic escape to Marseilles, for it had shocked her profoundly to find that she had been duped and deliberately lied to, and that there had never been any question of Bargash escaping from certain death or leaving the Island. It was also far from pleasant to realize that she had been made a fool of. But worst of all was the realization that the “bloodless revolution’ that Thérèse had once spoken of the swift coup d’etat that was to result in a transfer of power in a matter of hours and without a shot being fired—had already led to looting and riot, a complete paralysis of the normal life of the city, and the brutal murder of a respected Hindu merchant.
There had been no reliable news for the past few days, but Hero knew something of the provisioning of Marseilles and of its strength and impregnability, and when the Consulate servants had retailed rumours of widespread support for Bargash and panic among the Sultan’s supporters, it had seemed to her that Majid could not possibly win, and she had expected hourly to hear that he had abdicated.
The news that his reluctant army, having been reinforced by a small detachment of English naval officers, had forced a battle, inflicted severe casualties on the garrison, breached the walls of Marseilles and driven the Heir-Apparent and his supporters to flight, was entirely unexpected, and the recital of it appalled her no less than Cressy. She could not understand how Uncle Nat could sit there and tell it as though it were nothing more than an unfortunate incident; let alone express satisfaction at the measures that Colonel Edwards was planning to take in order to effect the arrest of the fugitive.
Hero might react less emotionally to the news than Cressy, and it was true that she had been feeling a good deal less kindly towards the Prince of late. But she sympathized deeply with her cousin’s distress, and as soon as she could do so, she excused herself and ran upstairs to comfort her. But Cressy’s door had been locked and she had returned no answer when begged to open it.
Hero gave up the attempt and went downstairs again: unaware that the room was empty and her cousin already halfway to the harbour.
20
The sky was pink and green and gold with the sunset, and the streets were very hot, for there had been no wind for the last two days.
Normally, the approach of evening brought people out of their houses to stroll and talk in the cooler air. But today there were few women and children to be seen and no loiterers, and the men all seemed in a hurry: too much of a hurry to spare more than a curious glance at the white woman whose grey, hooded cloak covered her muslin dress and partially concealed her face.
Cressy had never before been out alone and on foot, and at any other time the very thought of walking unaccompanied through those filthy, crowded streets, being jostled and stared at by dark-faced men of a dozen Eastern races, would have horrified her. But she was not thinking of it now. She was thinking only of how she could reach the Daffodil and speak to Dan Larrimore. Which had, after all, proved easy
enough, for the Daffodil’s jolly-boat was waiting at the water-steps, and a startled coxswain, who knew Miss Cressida Hollis by sight, was persuaded without much difficulty to convey her out to the ship.
It was Dan who had been difficult. He had said “Yes, who is it?” when the coxswain tapped on the cabin door, but the tone of his voice had been so forbidding that Cressy had brushed past her hesitant guide for fear that he might actually refuse to admit her.
Dan had been quite as startled as the coxswain, and had taken no pains to conceal it; which Cressy put down to the fact that she had caught him at a disadvantage, for he was in his shirt-sleeves and wearing what she took to be a bathrobe flung hurriedly about his shoulders. But she was too distraught to pay the least heed to such details, and in any case her own unchaperoned appearance at this hour was sufficiently irregular to make Lieutenant Larrimore’s unconventional attire a matter of no account.
The coxswain, taking note of his commanding officer’s stupefied expression, retreated hastily and closed the cabin door behind him, and Cressy said: “I know that I should not have come, but I was so upset when I heard what had happened that I just had to see you.”
Dan continued to stare at her in frowning silence, and something in his face made her say sharply: “Are you all right?”
She saw his expression change with startling suddenness, as though she had said something unbelievably wonderful; something too good to be true.
He said unsteadily: “It isn’t anything. I’m all right. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“How can you say such a thing?” demanded Cressy distractedly. “It may not be anything to you, but it is to me!”
“Is it?” asked Dan gently. “Then it was worth it I didn’t know you’d feel like that. I didn’t know you cared at all.”
“You did know! You’ve always known. That was what we quarrelled about. You knew very well how I felt about it all. And I haven’t changed. That’s why I came here to tell you that you can’t do this. That you mustn’t!”