by Wilbur Smith
work. Your column is syndicated in the Observer." She looked at him
without expression, remarkably immune to the celebrated Swales smile.
Her eyes, he noticed, were serious and level, sage green in colour, but
shot with speckles of tawny gold.
Jake's match burned his fingers and he swore. She turned to him and he
stood up quickly.
"I didn't expect a woman."
"You don't like women?" Her voice was pitched low and had a husky tone
that raised goose bumps on Jake's forearms.
"Some of my favourite people are women." He saw that she was tall,
reaching almost to his shoulder, and that her body had a poised
athletic carriage. She held her head at a haughty angle which
emphasized the strong independent line of mouth and jaw.
"In fact, I can't think of anyone I like more." And she smiled for the
first time. It had surprising warmth, and Jake saw that her front
teeth were slightly uneven one pushed out of line with the other. He
stared at it fascinated for a moment, then he looked up into the
appraising green eyes.
"Do you drive a car?" he asked seriously, and her smile turned to
surprised laughter.
"I do." said Vicky, laughing. "I also ride a horse and a bicycle,
I can ski, pilot an aeroplane, play snooker and bridge, sing, dance and
play the piano."
"That will do," Jake laughed with her. "That will do just fine." Vicky
turned back to the Prince. "What is all this about,
Lij Mikhael?" she asked. "Just what do these two gentlemen have to do
with our plans?" The towering purple hull of the Dunnottar Castle
swung slowly across the back-drop of palm trees and the high sun-gilded
ranges of cumulus cloud, as she pulled her anchors and came around for
the harbour entrance.
At the rail of the upper deck, the tall figure of the Prince was
flanked by the white-robed figures of his staff, and as the ship
increased speed and kicked up a white sparkling bow wave, he lifted an
arm in a gesture of farewell.
Swiftly, the shape of the liner dwindled away into the limitless
eastern ocean as she made her offing before turning northwards once
more.
The four figures on the wharf lingered after it had disappeared,
staring out at the horizon whose long sweep was uninterrupted except by
the tiny white triangular sails of the fishing fleet coming in off the
banks.
Jake spoke first. "We'll have to find digs for Miss Camberwell. And
at the thought, both he and Gareth made a grab for her single battered
portmanteau and the typewriter in its leather case.
"Spin you for it," suggested Gareth, and an East African shilling
appeared in his hand.
"Tails,"decided Jake.
"Rough luck, old son," Gareth commiserated, and returned the coin to
his pocket. "I'll take care of Miss Camberwell-" he went on, " then
I'll start looking for a ship to take us up coast. In the meantime, I
suggest you have another look at those cars." As he spoke,
he hailed a ricksha from the row which waited at the head of the
wharf.
"Remember, Jake, it was one thing driving them down to the harbour but
an altogether different matter driving them through two hundred miles
of desert. You'd best make sure we don't have to walk home, he
advised, and handed Vicky Camberwell into the ricksha. "Driver,
advance!" he called, and with a cheery wave they jogged away up
town.
"It looks as though we are on our own, sir," said Gregorius, and
Jake grunted, still staring after the departing ricksha. "I think I
should also find accommodation," and Jake roused himself.
"Come along, lad. You can doss down in my tent for the few days before
we leave." And then he grinned. "I hope you won't be offended if I
wish it was Miss Camberwell rather than you, Greg." The boy laughed
delightedly. "I understand your feelings but perhaps she snores,
sir."
"No girl who looks like that could possibly snore," Jake told him. "And
another thing don't call me "sir", it makes me nervous. My name's
Jake." He picked up one of Greg's bags. "We'll walk," he said. "I
have a horrible hollow feeling that it's going to be a long weary wait
until next the eagle screams." They set off along the dusty unpaved
verge of the road.
"You said you own a Morgan? "Jake asked.
"That's right, Jake." you know what makes it move?"
"The internal combustion engine."
"Oh brother," applauded Jake. "That is a flying start. You have just
been appointed second engineer get your sleeves rolled up." Gareth
Swales had a theory about seduction which in twenty years he had never
had reason to revise.
ladies liked the company of aristocrats, they were all of them
basically snobs and a coat of arms usually made the coldest of them
swoon. No sooner had they settled into the padded seats of the
ricksha, than he turned upon Vicky Camberwell the full dazzling beam of
his wit and charm.
No one who had built up an international reputation in the hard field
of journalism by the age of twenty-nine could be expected to lack
perception, or be naive in the wicked ways of the world. Vicky
Camberwell had made a preliminary judgement of Gareth within minutes of
meeting him.
She had known others with the same urbane good looks and meticulous
grooming, the light bantering tone and the steely glint in the eye.
Rogue, she had decided and every second in his company confirmed the
initial judgement but damned good-looking rogue, and very funny rogue
with the exaggerated accent and turn of speech which she had recognized
immediately as a huge put-on. She listened with amusement as he set
out to impress with his lineage.
"As the colonel used to say we always referred to my old man as the
colonel." Gareth's father had indeed died a colonel, but not in an
illustrious regiment, as the rank suggested. He had worked his way up
from the lowly rank of constable in the Indian police.
"Of course, the family estates were from my mother's side-" His mother.
had been the only daughter of an unsuccessful baker, and the family
estate had comprised the mortgaged premises in Swansea.
"The colonel was always a bit of a rogue, and moved with a wild crowd,
you know. Fast ladies and slow horses. The estates went to the block,
I'm afraid." Victims themselves of the grinding injustices of the
British class system, mother and father had devoted themselves to
lifting their only son beyond that invisible barrier that divides the
middle from the upper classes.
"Of course, I was at Eton and he was mostly on foreign service.
Wish I'd got to know the old devil better. He must have been a
wonderful character-" Entrance to the school had been assisted by the
Commissioner of Police, himself an old Etonian. The mother's small
inheritance and the greater part of the father's salary went into the
costly business of turning the son into a gentleman.
"Killed in a duel, would you believe it. Pistols at dawn.
He was a romantic, too much fire
in his veins." When the cholera took
the mother, the father's salary was insufficient to meet the bills that
a young man casually ran up when he mixed sociably with the sons of
dukes. In India, bribery was a convention, a way of living but the
colonel was found out. It was indeed pistols at dawn. The colonel
rode out into the dark Indian forest with his Webley service pistol,
and his bay mare trotted back to the stables an hour later with an
empty saddle and the reins trailing.
"Had to leave Eton, naturally." Under considerable duress.
It was coincidence that Gareth's friendship with the house master's
daughter took place at the same time as the colonel's last ride, but at
least it allowed Gareth to leave in a blaze of glory, as
Lij Mikhael remarked, rather than as a nobody whose fees had not been
met.
He went out into the world with the speech, the manners and the tastes
of a gentleman but without the means to support them.
"Luckily they were having this war at the time " and even a regiment
like the Duke's were not enquiring too deeply into the private means of
their new officers. Eton was sufficient recommendation, and,
with the help of the German machine guns, promotion was swift.
However, after the armistice, things were back to normal and it
required three thousand a year for an officer to support himself in the
style the regiment expected. Gareth moved on, and had kept moving ever
since.
Vicky Camberwell listened to him, fascinated despite herself She knew
that this was the cobra dance before the chicken, she knew herself well
enough to realize that part of the attraction he held for her was the
very devilry and roguishness she had so readily recognized.
There had been others like this one. Her job took her to the trouble
spots of the world, and men of this breed were attracted to the same
hot spots. With these men there was always the excitement and danger,
the thrill and the fun but inevitably there was also the sting and the
pain in the end.
She tried not to respond, wishing the ride would end, but Gareth's
sallies were too much for her and as the ricksha drew up in front of
the Royal Hotel entrance, she could not resist the almost suffocating
urge to laugh. She threw back her head, shaking her shining pale hair
in the wind as she let it ring out.
Gareth had learned also to use the calibre of a woman's laughter as a
yardstick. Vicky laughed with an unaffected gaiety, a straightforward
physical response that he found reassuring, and he took her arm
possessively as he helped her out of the ricksha.
He showed her through the royal suite with a proprietorial air.
"Only one suite in the place. Balcony looks out over the gardens, and
you get the sea breeze in the evening." And, "Only private loo in the
building, even one of those French jobs for sluicing the old
privates,
you know." And, "The bed is quite extraordinary, like sleeping on a
cloud and all that rot. Never experienced anything like it."
"Is this where I am to stay?" Vicky asked, with a small-girl
innocence.
"Well, I thought we could make some sort of arrangement, old girl." And
she was left with no doubts as to the type of arrangement Gareth Swales
had in mind.
"You are very kind, major," she murmured, and crossed to the handset of
the telephone.
"This is Miss Camberwell. Major Swales is vacating the royal suite for
me. Please have a servant move his clothes to alternative
accommodation."
"I say-" gasped Gareth, and she covered the mouthpiece and smiled at
him. "It's so sweet of you." Then she listened to the manager's
voice. "Oh dear," she said. "Well, if that's the only room you have
vacant, it will just have to do then, I am sure the major has
experienced more uncomfortable billets." When Gareth saw the room that
was now his, he tried honestly to remember humbler and less comfortable
billets.
The Chinese prison in Mukden had been cooler and not placed directly
over the boisterous uproar of the public bar, and the front line dugout
during the winter of 1917 at Arras had been more spacious and better
furnished.
The next three days Gareth Swales spent at the harbour, drinking tea
and whisky in the office of the harbour master, riding out with the
pilot to meet every new vessel as it crossed the bar, jogging in a
ricksha along the wharf to speak with the skippers of dhows and
Tuggers, rusty old coal-burners and neater, newer oil, burners, or
rowing about the harbour in a hired ferry to hail the vessels that lay
at anchor in the roads.
His evenings he spent plying Victoria Camberwell with charm,
flattery and vintage champagne for all of which she seemed to have an
insatiable appetite and complete immunity. She listened to him,
laughed with him and drank his champagne, and at midnight excused
herself prettily, and nimbly side-stepped his efforts to press her to
his snowy shirt-front or get a foot in the door of the royal suite.
By the morning of the fourth day, Gareth was understandably becoming a
little discouraged. He thought of taking a bucket of Tusker out to
Jake's camp and cheering himself up with a little of the American's
genial company.
However, he did not relish having to admit failure to Jake, SO he
fought off the temptation and took his usual ricksha ride down to the
harbour.
During the night a new vessel had anchored in the outer roads and
Gareth examined her through his binoculars. She was salt-fir ned and
dirty, (Id and scarred with a dark nondescript hull and a ragged
crew,
but Gareth saw that her rigging was sound and that although she was
schooner rigged with masts which could spread a mass of canvas, yet she
had propeller drive at the stern probably she had been converted to
take a diesel engine under the high poop. She looked the most likely
prospect he had yet seen in the harbour and Gareth ran down the steps
to the ferry and exuberantly tipped the oarsman a shilling over his
usual fare.
At closer range the vessel seemed even more disreputable than she had
at a distance. The paintwork proved to be a mottled patchwork of layer
peeling from layer, and it was clear what the sanitary arrangements
were aboard. The sides were zebra-striped with human excrement.
Yet closer still, Gareth noticed that the planking was tight and sound
beneath the execrable paint cover, and her bottom, seen through the
clear water, was clean copper and free of the usual fuzzy green beard
of weed. Also her rigging was well set up and all sheets had the
bright yellow colour and resilient took of new hemp. The name on her
stern was in Arabic and French, HirondeUe, and she was Seychelles
registered.
Gareth wondered at her purpose, for she was certainly a ringer,
a thoroughbred masquerading as a cart horse. That big bronze propeller
would drive her handily, and the hull itself looked fast and
sea-kindly.
Then as he c
ame alongside he smelled her, and knew precisely what she
was. He had smelled that peculiar odour of polluted bilges and
suffering humanity before in the China Sea. He had heard it said that
it was an odour that could never be scoured from a hull, not even sheep
dip and boiling salt water would cleanse it. They said that on a dark
night, the patrol boats could smell a slaver from over the horizon.
A man who made his daily bread buying and selling slaves would be
unlikely to baulk at a mere trifle like gun running decided Gareth, and
hailed her.
"Ahoy, HirondeLle!" The response was hostile, the closed dark faces of
the ragged crew stared down at the ferry. They were a mixed batch,
Arab, Indian, Chinese, Negro and there was no answer to his hail.
Standing in the ferry, Gareth cupped his hands to his mouth and,
with the Englishman's unconscious arrogance that assumes all the world
speaks English, called again.
"I want to speak to your captain." Now there was a stir under the poop
and a white man came to the rail. He was swarthy, darkly sunburned and
so short that his head barely showed above the gunwale.
"What you want? You police, hey?" Gareth guessed he was Greek or
Armenian. he wore a dark patch over one eye, and the effect was
theatrical. The good eye was bright and stony as water-washed agate.
"No police!" Gareth assured him. "No trouble," and produced the
whisky bottle from his coat pocket and waved it airily.
The Captain leaned out over the rail and peered closely at Gareth.
Perhaps he recognized the twinkle in the eye and the jaunty piratical
smile that Gareth flashed up at him. It often takes one to know one.
Anyway, he seemed to reach a decision and he snapped an order in
Arabic. A rope ladder tumbled down the side.
"Come," invited the Captain. He had nothing to hide.
On this leg of his voyage he carried only a cargo of baled cotton goods
from Bombay. He would discharge this here at Dares Salaam before
continuing northwards to make a nocturnal landfall on the great horn of
Africa, there to take on his more lucrative cargo of human wares.
As long as the merchants of Arabia, India and the East still offered
huge sums for the slender black girls of the Danakil and Galla,
men like this would brave the British warships and patrol boats to
supply them.
"I thought we might drink a little whisky together and talk about