by M. M. Kaye
Rory thrust it all back into the hole where it had lain, and having stamped the earth down hard above it, scattered debris over the disturbed ground and once again went down to the sea to strip and bathe and rid himself of any taint that the dead men might have left on their lost riches. But his actions were purely mechanical for his mind was busy filling the hours that the negro had spent on the Island, and he wondered why it had never occurred to him before that others might have visited the hut before he himself had done so, and why that mention of the ring should have passed him by. He should have questioned Kerbalou.
He did so as soon as he returned to the house, and the old man replied placidly that the derelict hut in the thickets was often used by a woman of low class from Marubati, who made a living by collecting coconut fibre and fallen palm fronds from the surrounding plantations, and selling them to be made into baskets, mats and rope. He himself had seen her gleaning a bundle of such debris on the day before the last rains fell, and no doubt she had visited the hut and rested there in the noonday heat.
The day after the kyack’s arrival, thought Rory. She would have found it tenanted by the last survivor of the doomed dhow, and she had probably shared her meal with him, and granted him other favours in exchange for the thumb-ring. He would have to send Kerbalou to her village to find out: and if it were true, the old man must ride to Zanzibar city with a message to Majid, warning him that the cholera might already be loose on the Island and that the village should be isolated at once.
Kerbalou had listened to the tale with a lengthening face and agreed to make enquiries. But he would not take the mare into the village, since it was known that he did not possess such a horse, and some spy of Colonel Edwards’ might remark the fact and ask awkward questions.
“He has spies everywhere,” said Kerbalou, “and it is better to be careful. But if what you suspect is true and the woman met with this man from the dhow, I will take the mare and ride to the city by night.”
He threw a folded blanket over the donkey, and mounting it, plodded off in the hot afternoon sunlight. By nightfall he had not returned, and when Rory heard men beat upon the outer gate and went down, pistol in hand, to see who called at such an hour, it was to find Jumah and Hadir waiting for him outside the wall.
Hajji Ralub had taken advantage of the winds of the previous week to return to the island, and the Virago had been lying becalmed off Pemba for several days. But last night’s breeze had enabled them to reach a secluded anchorage on the east coast of the Island, where they had heard news of such grave import that Ralub would have sailed on by daylight and risked being seen by the Daffodily except that the breeze had failed again and he did not know how long it would take him to reach Tumbatu. Therefore he had sent Jumah and Hadir on foot, and was bringing the Virago as soon as he could—perhaps before sunrise if the breeze were kind—and when he came the Captain must embark at once and they would immediately sail eastward. For the black cholera had reached the Island.
“And once it has gained a foothold here,” said Jumah, “it will spread with the speed of oil thrown upon water. I have seen it strike once before, and it was deadlier than an army with swords and spears. Where is Bwana Potter and the child?”
“In the city,” said Rory; and his face greyed as he thought of the teeming labyrinth of narrow streets that turned and twisted through the capital of Zanzibar, hemmed in by houses so high that they excluded the sunlight and fresh air and held fast the heat and the stench of ordure and garbage. He too had seen what cholera could do in an overcrowded Eastern town.
Jumah said: “Then I will bear the news and bring them here with all speed, for once the sickness reaches the Black Town there will be little hope for any, and there is not one moment to be lost.”
“No,” said Rory, “I will go myself.”
“And be taken prisoner by the white men? Folly!” said Hadir scornfully. “I have heard that the Baluchis and the Bwana Colonel’s spies still watch The Dolphins’ House.”
“In that case, neither you nor Jumah will ever get through the gate, since they know you too.”
“Maybe,” shrugged Jumah. “But if I cannot gain entrance myself I can get word to them. Is there a horse in these stables?”
“Yes. You had better take it.”
Jumah ate a hurried meal, and was saddling up the mare when Kerbalou returned with news that was now of little importance. Rory had been right, and the woman from Marubati had gone to the hut at the cliff edge and found it tenanted by a sleeping negro who had awakened at her entrance. She had shared her food with him and fetched water, and later had lain with him in return for a silver thumb-ring set with a lump of carved crystal. Returning that same evening to her village she had sold the ring to a shopkeeper in the bazaar: explaining how she had come by it, lest he should think that she had stolen it and on that account offer less than it was worth. With the money in her hand she had begged a lift from a carter who was going to Mkokotoni, where there was to be a nagoma on the following day; and according to a report in the village, it was there that she had been attacked by the sickness and died within a few hours. Those who had gathered for the nagoma had heard the news and fled from Mkokotoni in panic, taking the infection with them, and already it had broken out in another village:
“There is no longer any need to send word to His Highness the Sultan—whom God preserve,” said Kerbalou. “For the pestilence is already loose on Zanzibar, and there is nothing that we can do save resign ourselves to the mercy of the All Merciful. Our fate is written, and if we die, we die. But here in this house I think we shall live, because it is only in the towns and villages, where men and houses crowd upon each other, that the sickness strikes hard. And you, my Lord, it may not affect—since it is well known that it steps aside for white men, and smites fiercest at the black.”
“Let us pray then to Allah that it has not yet reached the city!” said Jumah: and mounting Zafrâne he rode off into the starlit darkness.
Rory spent a sleepless night watching for the Virago’s sails, but dawn saw the channel between Tumbatu and the shore as empty and as smooth as the polished chunam that formed the floors of the silent house, and all that day no breath of wind came to ruffle its calm surface.
Towards evening he sent Hadir to watch the track that led southward to the city, and Kerbalou along the cliffs towards Mkokotoni in case Jumah and Batty should have elected to paddle a kyack along the coast in preference to taking to the roads. He himself went down to walk along the shore, though he knew that there was little hope of the Virago rounding the northern point of the Island in a flat calm, and that he was only filling in time in preference to sitting still and doing nothing.
By nightfall there was still no sign of kyack, schooner or horsemen; and no breeze. The starlight seemed almost as hot as the sunlight had been, and again there were no drums. Only the shrill monotonous whine of mosquitoes disturbed the silence as Rory lay naked on the string cot under a blaze of stars, feeling the stored heat of the day beat up from the flat roof and knowing what it must be like in the city.
He lay awake for the greater part of the night listening for the sound of footsteps and voices. But in the early hours of the morning the au: cooled, and he fell asleep at last; and awoke at sunrise to the dry rustle of palm fronds singing in the morning wind. There was still no sign of Jumah or Batty and no word from the city. But the breeze held, and late afternoon brought the Virago, picking her way delicately down the Tumbatu channel.
Hajji Ralub’s normally impassive face had fallen into harsh lines when he heard that Jumah had gone to the city and had not yet returned, but he shrugged fatalistically and busied himself by taking foodstuffs and fresh water on board, and sent a man with a telescope to keep watch on Tumbatu—a precaution that Rory noted with grim amusement, remarking that the Hajji was wasting his time, since Lieutenant Larrimore did not have to rely solely on sail, and if his ship should come upon them they would never out-distance her in these light airs.
&nb
sp; “That is true, but we might do so in the darkness,” said Ralub.
Perhaps. But we cannot leave until Jumah returns with the old one and the child.”
“Do you sleep on board tonight?” asked Ralub.
Rory shook his head: “No, I will wait here for them. Leave a boat and two men on the shore so that we can come aboard at any hour, and be ready to sail at once.”
“And if they do not come?”
“If they are not here by morning I will send Hadir to the city to find out what has happened to them.”
They had not been there by morning, and Hadir had gone, with instructions to buy, borrow or steal a horse, and when he reached the city to keep away from The Dolphins’ House and enquire in the bazaars for news of Batty and Jumah, the doings of Colonel Edwards and his Baluchis, and the whereabouts of Lieutenant Larrimore and the Daffodil.
Once again the sky had been clean of clouds and the day intolerably hot, though the breeze had strengthened and the Virago jerked at her anchor chain as though she were consumed with impatience to leave that beautiful, tainted island and escape to clear water and cleaner air. But they could not leave without the child and the missing members of the crew. And neither could they move the schooner down the coast to a point nearer the city, since by doing so they would only increase their own danger and probably miss Batty’s party, who would make for the house on the cliffs.
They could do nothing but wait, and they had waited with what patience they could muster for two scorching and interminable days: listening to die Trade Wind crooning through the palms and sighing in the casuarinas, and watching the empty track and the emptier sea. And then at last a tired horse trotted under the arch of the gate, and Hadir slid from the saddle and wiped the sweat from his dust-grimed face.
“They cannot come,” said Hadir. “There is a guard at the gate of The Dolphins’ House and the spies of the British Consul keep watch upon it Bwana Potter they captured three weeks ago, as he climbed over the outer wall of the garden in the darkness. But because he has friends in the city and they feared that if he were imprisoned in the Fort the guards would permit him to escape, they took him back to the house and told him he must remain there, but that should he make any attempt to escape he would be put on the English ship and taken far from the Island. None may leave or enter the house except to buy food, and even those are searched and followed. Jumah too was taken and is with them—”
Hadir hesitated, as though there was something else he meant to say, but if so he did not say it. His gaze slid away from Rory’s and he turned to slap the dust of the unmade roads from his robes, making a great business of it.
Rory’s eyes met Ralub’s and saw in them a confirmation of his own thought, and he said quietly: “There is something else, is there not? You had better tell us now.”
Hadir did not speak for a minute. His hands continued to fret mechanically with his dusty clothes while his dark face puckered into an expression of anxiety, and Rory said sharply: “Is it the child?”
Hadir shook his head, still without turning: “The child is well.”
“What then? The old one?” enquired Ralub harsh-voiced.
Hadir’s hands stilled and fell idle, and he turned reluctantly to face them: “No. But there is a tale that the sickness has already broken out in the city.”
He saw the shoulders of the two tall figures, Arab and Englishman, jerk and stiffen, and said quickly: “It was only a tale, and I do not know if it is true. But…”
He did not complete the sentence, and Rory, finishing it for him, said curtly: “But you think it may well be. Where did you hear this?”
“I have a cousin who has a friend in one of the houses in the Malindi quarter, and he says that his friend told him; swearing him to keep it secret, for they are afraid that if it is known they will not be permitted to move abroad to buy food. He said that cholera was brought to the house by a slave who had been sent on some errand to Mungapuani, which is on the coast ten miles beyond the city, and who returned yesterday and died within a few hours. And that now another has sickened, and two more, in terror of it, have run away and hidden themselves in the Black Town, saying nothing. If that last is true—”
“There will be a hundred dead within a week,” finished Ralub grimly. “And within two weeks a thousand!”
The tired horse shifted its weight wearily and snuffed at the sun-dried grass, and Ralub looked again at his Captain and said quietly: “There is nothing to be gained by waiting. Do we sail tonight?”
“No,” said Rory curtly. “You had better stay here until I send word.”
“From where?”
“From the city.”
“Ah!” Ralub smiled crookedly as though he had received an expected answer. “But you cannot go until that animal is rested, and by sea we may reach the harbour before morning.”
“They would hold the ship and imprison you all,” said Rory.
Ralub laughed and made a deprecatory gesture with one lean brown hand. “Never! The white men speak loudly and often of justice, and it is your head only that they require. Once they have that, they will not lay a hand on us.”
Rory shrugged and said: “Maybe. But the pestilence does not concern itself with such things as justice or the colour of a man’s skin, and it may not be so selective! You will be safer here. And once they have laid me by the heels they will permit Batty and the child and the others to leave, and I will send them here with any others from The Dolphins’ House who wish to go, and you may take them away until the sickness has passed.”
Ralub said pensively: “It is in my heart that this time they will surely hang you.”
“Inshallah! (as God wills). ‘What is written is written,’” quoted Rory with a wry smile.
Ralub nodded gravely and spread out his hands in a slow motion that was both assent and acceptance. “That is indeed so. Therefore we will go with you. For are not all things according to God’s wisdom?”
The two men looked at each other for a long, measuring moment; hard pale eyes meeting bland dark ones. Then the Englishman laughed and threw up a hand in a gesture of a swordsman who acknowledges defeat “As you will,” said Captain Rory Frost. “Let us go.”
33
“Well, I’ll be jiggered—!”
Able seaman Albert Weeks of Her Britannic Majesty’s steam sloop Daffodil rubbed his eyes to make sure that he had seen aright, and noting those unmistakable portholes, swore long and profanely.
The pitiless light of another cloudless dawn illuminated the white walls and crowded rooftops of the city, the greasy, rubbish-littered harbour water, and, clearly visible on the far side of a big sea-going dhow, the familiar lines of an anchored schooner that had certainly not been there on the previous evening, but must have slipped in noiselessly at the turn of the tide and under cover of the dark hour before dawn.
Mr Weeks’ disbelieving gaze changed to wrathful certainty, and turning about he pelted aft to awaken his commanding officer, who for greater coolness had taken to sleeping out on the open deck.
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” announced Mr Weeks breathlessly, “but it’s that there schooner, sir. The Virago, sir. She must’a sneaked in on the tide an hour or two back, and she’s a’sittin’ there as bold as brass abaft that dhow.”
“I don’t believe it!” said Lieutenant Larrimore, stumbling to his feet “You must have made a mistake.”
“It’s Gawd’s truth, sir. I’d know the cut of’er jib anywhere, an’—”
Dan hitched up the loose cotton trousers that formed his sleeping attire and ran forward along the dawn-lit deck. It did not need more than a brief glance to confirm the truth of the able seaman’s statement. It was the Virago at last, delivered into his hand. And the very fact she was there argued that her Captain could not be too far away, since Dan did not believe that Rory Frost would abandon his ship, and with it his crew and his livelihood.
He could not imagine why Frost should have come back at this juncture, but it was
enough that he had, and Dan ordered out the jolly-boat and hurried down to the cabin to don his uniform, belt on his sword and see to the priming of his pistol.
The city was reluctantly awakening to another day as he went over the side, and in stiffing, overcrowded houses and narrow, reeking streets, in hot courtyards and cool mosques and on the dew-wet decks of the dhows, men rose to face Mecca and recite the appointed prayers with which all True Believers have saluted the dawn since the Prophet ascended to Paradise. As the jolly-boat rounded the bulk of the dhow Dan could see the Arab seamen high above him kneeling and rising as the ritual demanded, absorbed in their devotions and apparently oblivious of anything around them. But he knew that no movement escaped those devoutly raised eyes, and that they not only marked his passing but were well aware of his errand.
On the forward deck of the Virago the three members of her crew who were engaged in prostrating themselves did not turn their heads or betray any sign of having observed his approach. But neither Hajji Ralub nor Hadir was among them, and there was no sign of Captain Emory Frost.
Dan did not trouble to hail the schooner, and as the jolly-boat shipped oars and came alongside he climbed aboard, and ignoring the worshippers, vanished down the companionway; no man preventing him.
Rory put down his coffee cup and rose courteously as though to an expected guest. “Good morning, Dan. You’re late. I expected to see you alongside a good hour ago. Or didn’t your look-out spot us coming in? Don’t tell me your Officer-of-the-Watch was asleep! You ought to keep better discipline aboard, Danny—what with all these bad characters about Coffee? Or would you prefer something stronger?”
“You must be well aware,” said Dan without heat, “that I would not accept so much as a drink of water from you if I were dying of thirst in a desert. So there is no need for you to waste your time and mine in trying to make me lose my temper. If you succeeded it would only mean saving the hangman trouble. Are you coming with me, or do I have to send for a guard to take you?”