Trade Wind

by M. M. Kaye

  “I didn’t!—I never touched…It wasn’t arms!” Hero’s indignation led her into passionate incoherence: “It was votes!—I mean people. I mean—”

  “You mean,” interrupted Captain Frost scathingly, “that you expect me to believe that you helped to smuggle ballots into Beit-el-Tani—or bodies?”

  “I don’t expect you to believe anything!” said Hero hotly.’ And I don’t care what you believe. Of course if wasn’t bodies or It was money.

  To pay for food and to get people to support the Prince—the ones who couldn’t afford to do it for nothing—so that there needn’t be any fighting. It was your people—your bullying Navy and your tiresome Consul who started all the shooting and killing. If it hadn’t been for them—”

  She stopped abruptly, disconcerted by the expression on Captain Frost’s face and conscious of a dreadful sinking of the heart and a frantic desire to put her hands over her ears and refuse to listen to anything else.

  Rory said softly: “You really believe that, don’t you? What a gullible little cat’s-paw it isl Do you mean to say that it never even occurred to you to open one of the chests that you helped to smuggle into Beit-el-Tani? Not even one?”

  “They were locked; and—” Hero caught her breath and her eyes were suddenly wide and appalled. She said in a whisper, and as though she had to convince herself rather than him: “It was money!”

  “It was rifles,” said Rory Frost.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I think you do,” said Rory grimly.

  “No,” said Hero in a choked voice. “No! Oh no!”

  “What story did they tell you to keep you from opening the boxes?”

  “They said that the Arabs might think—” she stopped again, remembering that it was Thérèse who had said that: Clayton had warned her against Thérèse…and against Cholé too; and the others…

  Rory said: “That you might have stolen part of the contents? And you swallowed that, and helped them to put two hundred rifles into the hands of a man who needed only that encouragement to start an armed rising!

  And now I suppose you are going to say ‘Please, I didn’t know,’ and forget the tiresome maxim that says, ‘Ignorance of the law excuses nobody.’

  “I wasn’t—it was money. It must have been!”

  “In chests that size? Don’t be silly! They were rifles all right. And as if that wasn’t enough, you actually took a hand in helping Bargash to escape to his followers and touch off a rebellion in which a hell of a lot of men died. And then you prate to me of the brutal behaviour of that old fool Edwards and a handful of callow young officers, who had the unenviable task of preventing half the island going up in flames and putting a stop to what you and your friends had done their best to start. If you’d known the first thing about the el Harth you’d know that they don’t give a curse for any son of Sultan Saïd, and were only out to get rid of his entire family and grab power for themselves, while half the rest of Bargash’s followers were merely hoping for loot.”

  Hero’s face was painfully white and she did not appear to be listening to him. She said in an almost inaudible whisper: “No. No, of course it isn’t true. Thérèse would never…She promised!

  Rory’s laugh was as curt and brutal as an ugly expletive. “Dear Thérèse! she’s an intriguing creature in both senses of the word. She is also—in addition to being hard-headed and unsentimental—an intensely practical and patriotic Frenchwoman, whose husband’s firm has a large stake in sugar and would therefore dearly like to remove Majid, because Majid has the support of the British, and the British have set themselves to put an end to slavery. That is why Monsieur Tissot and his friends (and incidentally, his Government!) elected to support the eldest son, Thuwani, when he tried to claim the whole of his late father’s territories instead of being content with his own lion’s share of the inheritance. And why, when Britain’s East India Company stepped in and sent Thuwani’s warships back to port, they turned their attention to Bargash instead.”

  “Because he would have been a better Sultan,” declared Hero defiantly. “He would have done something for his subjects and started reforms and—and been strong where his brother is weak, and been a progressive ruler instead of a backward and medieval one!”

  “Is that what they told you? Poor Miss Hollis! That’s what you get for being innocent and credulous.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be true?” demanded Hero passionately. “Why should you be so sure you are right just because you took care to make friends with Majid so that you couldn’t be run out of the island? The Prince would have made a better Sultan!”

  “From the Arab point of view, yes,” agreed Rory. “They’ve always been in favour of ruthlessness and cunning. But the other attributes with which you have endowed him are purely imaginary, and Thérèse knows that even if you don’t. There is one reason, and only one, why her husband’s firm would prefer to see either the Seyyid Thuwani or Bargash, whom they regard as Thuwani’s deputy, in Majid’s place as ruler of Zanzibar and the mainland territories. Because either would permit, for a consideration, the shipping of African slaves to work the sugar plantations on Bourbon and La Reunion. Now do you understand?”

  “No…’ Once again Hero’s voice was a whisper. “You can’t know that. You are making it up. I’ve never heard of Reunion, and it’s probably only something that you ” her voice failed her.

  “There would appear to be a great many things you haven’t heard of,” said Rory unkindly. “But for your information, the islands of Bourbon and La Reunion are French possessions, and His Imperial Majesty Louis Napoleon—or his Government if you prefer—have permitted the importation of negro slaves under the pleasing title of ‘Libres engagés’; which is supposed to mean that they have freely volunteered their services, though the results are precisely the same as before. The negroes are purchased by native agents all along the Mozambique coast, and herded aboard French ships, where they are asked if they are willing to engage themselves for a term of ten years. And since they do not understand a word that is spoken to them and have been ordered by the dealers to nod when spoken to—which normally means “no’ to an African and not “yes’ as it does to us—this is taken for consent. They are thereupon registered and numbered, and forwarded in shiploads to the plantations; where they do not survive for long. Do you know how many slaves are needed to work the plantations of La Reunion alone? A hundred thousand! And as they reckon the average life of a slave there as five years, they need twenty thousand new ones every year. They need them so badly that they send French men-of-war to escort the slave ships safely to port, and intrigue against Sultan Majid because England supported his nomination. And they have created such a demand for slaves that the prices have risen to a point where the tribes have found it more profitable to hunt and kidnap their neighbours than to bother with more normal methods of earning a livelihood. That, my public-spirited young woman, is what you and your friends have been doing your damnedest to assist. It’s an entertaining thought, isn’t it?”

  “I…’ began Hero, and found that she could not continue.

  Captain Frost laughed. “Yes, ironically enough, you. Miss Hollis. Your enthusiastic and uninstructed meddling in the Bargash plot helped to bring a good many men to their deaths, and had it succeeded you would have had a share—admittedly a very small one, but still a share—in the capture and disposal of a vastly increased number of negro slaves for the French Colonies (and I daresay for a great many other places as well) by anyone who cared to join in.”

  “Such as yourself!” said Hero in a shaking voice.

  “Such as myself,” agreed Captain Frost affably.

  Horror and disbelief had assailed Hero in turn and served for a brief space to submerge her anger. But now it returned again as she recalled that the man who stood there lecturing her as though she had been a guilty schoolgirl was, by his own admission, a thief, a slave trader and a libertine, and for all she knew, a pirate as well! Yet he dared to take
her to task for becoming innocently involved in something that he himself had knowingly engaged in for years—and for profit.

  The colour flooded back to her white face and she said furiously: “You have had a great deal to say in my dispraise, but at least I intended no harm, while you! How did you know that there were muskets in those boxes? If there were (which I do not have to believe) it could only be because they were the ones that you yourself had smuggled into Zanzibar and carried up to this very house. Your house! And yet you dare suggest that I had a share in the death of men who could only have been armed with muskets that you yourself must have sold to Bargash.”

  “Not to Bargash,” corrected Rory equably. “To an agent who I believe re-sold them to Seyyid Bargash at a nice profit.”

  “Then you admit it!”

  “Why not? I can’t see that because you prefer to shirk your share of the responsibility for their transfer to Beit-el-Tani, I should do the same over my part in the transaction.”

  Hero gave a scornful and triumphant laugh and said: “There—! I thought you were lying and now I know it. Those boxes were not the ones I saw you landing here.”

  “Of course they weren’t. But their contents were. And don’t say ‘I don’t believe it’ again, because that remark is getting a little monotonous. I assure you I know who bought them and who re-sold them and to whom. And also that it was you who devised a way of getting them to Bargash.”

  “And you can admit that, and still have the—the audacity to accuse me of responsibility for the deaths of men to whom you sold muskets, for money?”

  “Ah, but you see,” said Rory, “they weren’t muskets. They were rifles.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with it!”

  “You wouldn’t. But it happens to have a great deal to do with it I was asked if I would be willing to supply, secretly, a certain number of firearms for a purpose that was not named, but which was nevertheless perfectly clear to me.”

  “So you knew—you knew all the time!”

  “My good girl, not being a credulous spinster, of course I knew. It needed no great intelligence. But a handsome sum of money was mentioned, and I have made it a rule never to refuse a good offer.”

  “Even though you pretend to be a friend of the Sultan’s? Even though you say you knew that the muskets would be used against him?”

  “Rifles,” corrected Captain Frost blandly.

  “Why do you keep saying that? They can still kill people.”

  “Not these ones. At least, not until someone can collect a reasonable supply of fulminate of mercury and get down to manufacturing some caps. You see. Miss Hollis, I was not asked to supply the necessary ammunition; only ‘firearms.’ Two hundred of them, to be precise. An acquaintance of mine undertook to provide the ammunition, but owing to a—er—misunderstanding, and the fact that a rifle is still something of a novelty in these parts, he supplied ammunition that was suitable for muskets but not for rifles. You see the point?”

  Hero stared at him in incredulous disgust; the classic curve of her lips pressed into a tight line and her grey eyes stony. She said: “Clearly! It was, in fact, a deliberate fraud, designed to cheat your buyer into paying this ‘handsome sum’ you say he was offering, for goods that were entirely worthless.”

  “Not entirely—a rifle is still worth its own weight in Cape dollars, and they were in perfectly good condition. It was merely unfortunate, from the viewpoint of the final purchaser, that they could not be used until the proper caps and the correct ammunition were available.”

  “But you—”

  “I, Miss Hollis, carried out my part of the bargain and delivered two hundred firearms to my client They were then sold again: and but for your unlooked-for interference the whole transaction would have been as harmless as it was lucrative. A large part of the money sent by Thuwani for the purpose of financing a rebellion—Oh yes, he sent funds!—would have been uselessly frittered away. For when old Abdullah-bin-Salim and the chiefs of the el Harth laid eyes on those rifles, they would have discovered that they couldn’t be used with the ammunition they had recently collected and paid for, and they would have held their hands until they could get or manufacture the right variety. Which, believe me, would have taken a considerable time, and provided enough delay to take the heart out of a very large number of Bargash’s supporters, who had been getting noticeably restive and were almost ready to throw their hands in or go over to the other side. However, thanks to you and your fellow heroines, the rifles got into the hands of those silly women at Beit-el-Tani, where Bargash was shown them by night All two hundred of them piled up in a beautiful, martial heap.”

  Hero said helplessly: “I don’t see what difference that could make. If he saw them, he’d have known…”

  “He hadn’t seen the ammunition—for the simple reason that it had been delivered separately to one of his civilian supporters at a house outside the city. Anyway, he apparently didn’t take the trouble to examine the rifles. One look at them seems to have been enough to send him tipsy with confidence. And since they were removed almost at once to be distributed by ones and twos, not to the chiefs but to the rank and file—who probably imagined that one or other of their leaders would show them how to use these magical new weapons—it isn’t difficult to understand why the mere fact that they got their hands on no less than two hundred of the things was just what the rebels needed to galvanize them into hauling up the anchor.”

  Hero drew a deep breath, and after a long pause said unsteadily: “I can understand one thing, at least. That you are entirely unprincipled and prepared to take any risk or perpetrate any fraud in order to enrich yourself But I cannot see how you have the effrontery to take me to task when your own behaviour is wholly indefensible.”

  “‘Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor’,” quoted Rory with mock regret.

  “If I knew what that meant, I might agree with you.”

  “I apologize. I imagined that with a name like yours you would have received a classical education. It means ‘I see the better course and approve it: I follow the worst.’ But at least I do it with my eyes open! And now, if you will forgive me, I shall have to leave you to find your own way back to your aunt. The door is over there and I should be grateful if you would close it as you go out—just in case any other members of your party should find it an inducement to trespassing. Good day. Miss Hollis.”

  He sketched the briefest of bows, and turning on his heel walked away down the flower-bordered path and up the short flight of steps that led to the terrace, leaving Hero standing among the shadows with her skirts still entangled in the trails of yellow briar and feeling like a dismissed kitchen-maid.

  The sound of his footsteps echoed under an unseen archway and were gone, and Hero tore at the roses, pricked her fingers and ripped another long tear in the frail muslin of her petticoat, and gathering up her skirts, fled from the garden: slamming the door behind her and stumbling down the rocky path to the beach, her mind a turmoil of anger and shock and her lips moving in foolish, sobbing whispers: ‘I don’t believe it…I won’t believe it…I don’t believe it…’

  23

  “I don’t believe it!” insisted Hero stubbornly. But in the end she had to believe it. Or at least some part of it, for Uncle Nat, appealed to that same evening, had supported a good deal of what Captain Frost had said:

  “Why yes,” said Uncle Nat, “I guess that’s so. The French have always wanted a footing on the mainland around these parts, and there’s nothing they’d like better than to dethrone the Sultan and put an end to British influence here. After the old man died they hoped to get rid of Majid in favour of Thuwani, and see Zanzibar and her East African territories declared a dependency of Muscat again, so that they’d get the secession of a port from the new and grateful ruler—with the right to ship slaves from it. In fact they’ve been a blame nuisance, one way and another.”

  “But—but the French were the first to try and stop the slave trade!” prote
sted Hero, dismayed. “You know that’s so, Uncle Nat. I remember Miss Penbury telling me that they made the very first anti-slave laws in Europe, when the National Convention abolished negro slavery back in the seventeen-hundreds. You can read about it!”

  “Well, you know how it is with these things,” said Uncle Nat easily. “It’s all a question of politics. I guess it seemed a great idea to abolish slavery when they were cooking up a revolution: ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ and all that. But it got put back on the books a few years later by the Consulate; and you can read about that too! Conformément aux lois et règlements antérieurs. It’s been an ‘On again, off again’ arrangement ever since, because the Republic officially abolished it again, but there’s no blinking the fact that this ‘engagés‘ system of theirs is just another name for the same thing. They need negro slaves for their colonies and they’re going to get ‘em, come hell or high water! But they’d get ‘em a sight easier if they could get a foothold on the coast, which they won’t manage to do as long as Majid is on the throne, on account of him leaning towards the English.”

  Hero said in a stifled voice: “Why did you never tell me this before, Uncle Nat?”

  “I guess you never asked. And how is it you’re so interested all of a sudden, anyway?”

  “I’m not…I mean, I’ve always been interested. People have to be, if it’s ever going to end. This selling human beings like—like cattle and not caring if they live or die. You have to care about cruelty; you have to! But I didn’t know about the engagés and Reunion and—and…’ Her voice wavered on the verge of tears.