“You mean Seyyid Bargash? Yes: I am not unaware that he still cherishes pretensions in that direction. Or that he is being encouraged in them by a colleague of ours. I have sometimes wished—” the Colonel checked himself and gave a small dry cough, and after a short pause said: “We try not to interfere too much with the internal affairs of the Island. And as to Seyyid Bargash, I doubt if Frost would do anything to assist him.”
“Just so. Colonel. Frost is a friend of the Sultan’s, and therefore no friend to the Heir-Apparent. Which is the circumstance I referred to, that puts that theory out of court. From all I hear of Frost, he’d sell his own mother if anyone offered him a good enough price, but since it’s only the Sultan’s favour that has enabled him to stay out of jail, we can be sure that he won’t kill the goose who is laying him golden eggs; or sell arms to any of the Bargash faction, who hate his guts! Unless, of course, he’s been tricked into selling them to some middle-man, and doesn’t know or care who they are for?”
The Colonel shook his head and frowned thoughtfully at the far wall of his office. “No; whatever else he may be he’s no fool, and he knows only too well on which side his bread is buttered—and who butters it He wouldn’t sell that sort of thing to anyone in Zanzibar, or in any of the Sultan’s coastal territories either, without being quite certain who was going to use them and why. So you can rest assured that if arms have been secretly brought into the island, they will not be used against the European community. Frost is, after all’s said and done, a white man himself; and even if he were so far gone in depravity as to connive at the murder of his own kind, he would not forget that any rising against the Europeans would involve violence and massacre, or that rioting mobs are unlikely to distinguish between one white man and another. A mob is not given to discrimination—particularly an Eastern mob.”
“I am glad you realize that,” observed Mr Hollis dryly. “It is precisely that angle that has had me a little worried. I don’t reckon that anyone in this part of the world has any quarrel with America, but if these Injuns once get started on yelling for the blood of the Palefaces, they’re not going to be worried by a little thing like an accent. No, sir! When it’s a case of anti-foreign feeling it’ll be the colour of my skin that’ll count—not my country or my opinions. Or my politics either. And I can tell you right now that I’ve no desire to get a bullet through my belly on account of the colonial ambitions of the British Government.”
“No danger of that,” the Colonel assured him, smiling reluctantly: “We shall probably find that the whole thing is a hum. It’s true that young Larrimore was only after evidence of slaving when he stopped the Virago, but he tells me that he did not neglect to examine the cargo, and that it contained nothing that was not entered on the manifest. He would have had a good many questions to ask had he come across anything in the nature of arms and ammunition, so I think we can be reasonably certain that this gun-running tale is no more than another bazaar rumour, and that your informant was mistaken.”
Mr Hollis would have given a great deal at this point to relate Hero’s story of a mysterious rendezvous with a ship in mid-ocean and the later unloading of a number of oblong packages by night and on an unknown shore. But he knew he could not do so, since to tell that tale to Colonel Edwards would mean disclosing that his niece had actually spent ten days on the Virago. And being only too well aware of what the European community would make of such an entertaining story, he was damned if he was going to make the British Consul a present of it.
Maybe the Colonel was right and Hero was mistaken in imagining that the Virago had landed firearms. After all it was only conjecture. She had no proof, and now that he came to think of it, she did not even know if the moonlit beach she had seen through a hole in the matting was part of the coast of Zanzibar. It could just as well have been the neighbouring island of Pemba—or even somewhere on the mainland; perhaps Dar-es-Salaam, the ‘Haven of Peace’ where the Sultan was building himself a new palace to which he could retire occasionally from the cares of state? And in any case, who could claim to understand the thought processes of an Arab?—or indeed of any member of the Eastern races? Certainly not he, Nathaniel K. Hollis, American citizen. He was free to confess that they baffled him. And equally willing to concede that the Sultan, for the sheer love of secrecy and intrigue, might have preferred to acquire by stealth a consignment of muskets that he was perfectly entitled to import openly. There was no understanding these people, and Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul, George Edwards, who was foolish enough to believe that he at least did so, was probably as ignorant of their motives as any other deluded Westerner!
Mr Hollis collected his hat and rose. “Well, Colonel, I’ll be getting along. You have relieved my mind, for I admit I was a little anxious.
Gun-running is never a pretty business and it generally spells trouble. Big trouble. People don’t buy guns for ornaments—they want ‘em for use. But I guess you’re right and my informant was mistaken. All the same…”
He shook his head, and the Colonel said hastily: “Yes, yes; I agree that one must not be too sanguine, and I am indeed grateful to you for bringing me this—er—story. If I hear anything further I will certainly let you know. May I hope that your niece will soon be fully recovered from her ordeal? Dr Kealey tells me that she is still keeping to her room. Such a harrowing experience must have put a great strain upon her nerves and constitution.”
“Ah—um—yes,” agreed Mr Hollis.’ She does not like to talk about it The shock, you know.”
“Of course, of course. I quite understand. We must all do our best to cheer her spirits once she feels strong enough to venture out of doors; and to see that she forgets it.”
Colonel Edwards accompanied his visitor to the door and watched him walk away through the white sunlight and the salt sea wind, and when he was lost to view, returned thoughtfully to his office to sit for a long while, rubbing his nose with a lean forefinger and staring out of the window at the rustling fronds of a coconut palm, dark against the hot blue sky.
Arms and ammunition…Yes, it was quite possible. In fact only too probable. They would, of course, have been landed somewhere else, and earlier. On Pemba perhaps, from where it would be an easy matter to ferry them across in kyacks. That would account for there being no sign of them when young Larrimore searched the schooner.
Had that renegade, Frost, turned his coat after all, and brought them in for the Heir-Apparent? Or was the Sultan arming himself in secret? The last seemed a more likely solution: and more in keeping with what the Colonel knew of Emory Frost. For if the Bargash faction became aware that the Sultan was strengthening his hand it might give them pause, but as long as they did not know it and imagined him to be unaware of their plotting and unprepared to deal with them, they might be rash enough to attempt another coup d’etat which, this time, could be put down with savage severity. It was exactly the sort of trap that a man like Rory Frost would enjoy setting. And lie Heir-Apparent—rash, fiery, and impatient for the throne—was precisely the sort of man who would fall into it.
There was, of course, always another and more unpleasant possibility. The one that had been causing Mr Hollis some anxiety.
Colonel Edwards had served in India, and he was well aware that the American Consul’s assertion regarding the complacency that had reigned among the British officers and officials stationed in that country in the years preceding the great mutiny of ‘57, was only too true. Those few who had uttered warnings and prophesied disaster had been denounced as scaremongers or poltroons, while the majority had resolutely shut their eyes, refusing to believe any ill of the men under their command; and died for that belief. But then as he had told Mr Hollis, the case here was entirely different. And even if it had not been, the citizens of Zanzibar—for the present at least—were far too busy intriguing against each other to trouble themselves over plotting the downfall of a relatively harmless handful of Europeans. As for Captain Frost, though unscrupulous in the matter of profits he wa
s certainly no fool where his own safety and comfort was concerned!
The British Consul, satisfied as to the correctness of his reasoning, removed his gaze from the palm fronds outside his windows and sat back in his chair. He would send Feruz into the town for news and dispatch a note to Ahmed-bin-Suraj, requesting him to call at the Consulate at his earliest convenience. Feruz had a love of gossip and an infallible nose for news, and as for Ahmed, few things occurred on the Island without his getting wind of them. He was not only a useful ally but a reliable one, and if there was any truth in this tale of smuggled muskets he, if anyone, would probably know of it.
Colonel Edwards reached for the hand-bell that stood beside the file tray on his desk and rang it briskly.
Mr Nathaniel Hollis, keeping to the shady side of the narrow street and holding his hat against the strong tug of the Trade Wind, was feeling considerably less self-satisfied than his British colleague. His earlier apprehension on the score of a possible “anti-white’ rising had, for the moment, left him, giving place to quite another matter that was causing him no small annoyance. The displeasing discovery that Rory Frost, true to Lieutenant Larrimore’s prediction, had put one over on them by that supposedly chivalrous suggestion that the Daffodil and not the Virago should figure as instrumental in rescuing Hero Athena from a watery grave.
Mr Hollis had himself supported that story and seen it accepted without question by his fellow Consuls and the European community: which until a few minutes ago he had considered to be a matter for congratulation. But it had just dawned on him that if he were now to repudiate it, the unpalatable truth would occasion far more unpleasant speculation than it would have done had it been known from the outset.
It was, in fact, going to be impossible for him to do any such thing, and there was no blinking the fact that Captain Frost had scored a point.
Neither Hero nor her uncle could now accuse him of taking on and secretly disembarking cargo that did not appear on the manifest; and without a direct accusation from one or other of them, that complacent ram-rod, the British Consul, would do nothing.
Mr Hollis arrived at his own front door in a bad temper, and removing his wide pith hat in the dim coolness of the hall, tossed it to a negro servant and sent for his niece. But Hero had gone out. Mrs Credwell and Madame Tissot, his wife informed him, had called a short while ago and had taken both Cressy and dear Hero for a drive.
“At this time of day?” demanded Mr Hollis, considerably put out. “They must be mad! Do they want to get heatstroke?”
“Oh, but they won’t be going far,” said Aunt Abby comfortably. “There are so few roads where a carriage may go. In fact hardly any, and I wonder why anyone should trouble to keep one. But Olivia only intends to take Hero to pay a call on some of the Sultan’s sisters.”
“What does she want to do that for?”
“Well, dear, it’s only polite. Being your niece, dear Hero will be expected to call on some of the royal ladies.”
“The ones in Beit-el-Tani Palace, you mean: I might have known it!” said the Consul, exasperated. “That woman Cholé again.”
“The Princess Cholé,” corrected Aunt Abby gently.
“‘Princess’ my left foot!” snorted her husband. “Her mother was no more than one of the old Sultan’s concubines.”
Aunt Abby closed her eyes and shuddered. “Sarari, Nathaniel. Not ‘concubines.’ Sarari—or Suri in the singular, I believe. And their children all rank as Princes and Princesses, dear. Seyyids and Seyyidas, I mean.”
The Consul flapped an impatient hand and said: “Princesses or not, Cressy’s been seeing far too much of those women, and it’s got to stop.”
“Nathaniel!” Aunt Abby’s voice quivered with indignation. “I just do not understand you. Why, you know quite well that it was you yourself who suggested it when we first came here. I remember you telling us how deplorable it was that people who considered themselves entitled to rule over coloured races evidently did not think that they need meet them socially, and that it was not only shockingly ill-mannered but most shortsighted, and—”
“There’s no need to keep telling me what I said!” snapped Mr Hollis irritably. “I remember it quite well, and in general I am still of the same opinion. But circumstances alter cases. For one thing, I didn’t know then that Thérèse Tissot and that Englishwoman had managed to strike up a friendship with a clutch of the Sultan’s sisters and cousins—and for another, I didn’t figure on Cressy living in their pockets!”
“I am sure Cressy wouldn’t dream of living in anyone’s pocket,” stated Aunt Abby tremulously. “It is merely that she is young, so it is only natural that she should like to associate with young people. Thérèse—”
“Is thirty if she’s a day, and a born mischief-maker,” said the Consul, interrupting her. “Look at the way she used to roll her eyes at Clay? Never let the boy alone at one time. Forever riding with him or calling, or taking him sailing—it’s a wonder old Tissot stood for it. I can tell you, I didn’t like it by half, and I was mighty thankful when Clay sheered off. As for Olivia Credwell, she’s nothing but an empty-headed ninny whose husband must have been glad to die and get shut of her gush and chatter. A fine pair of friends for your daughter! Why, it’s got so that Cressy spends more than half her time in their company, while the three of them together spend a sight too much around at Beit-el-Tani. I don’t like it, I tell you. Those Palace women are up to something, and I don’t like it.”
“Up to something? Mr Hollis, what can you mean?”
Mr Hollis avoided his wife’s startled gaze, and scowling instead at a flamboyant arrangement of orange lilies in a large blue pottery jar, said shortly: “I don’t know. I wish I did!”
He turned away from her and began to pace about the room, his hands clasped behind his back and the jerkiness of his stride betraying his inner perturbation, and when at last he came to a stop it was not in front of his wife, but before a framed engraving of Stuart’s portrait of George Washington that hung on the far wall of the room. Mr Hollis stared at it for a moment or two without speaking, and then said heavily and with apparent irrelevance:
“It is not our practice to meddle in the conduct or politics of other countries, or to become involved in their domestic disputes. We should strive to remain neutral; if not in thought then at least in deed. And to avoid any appearance of taking sides, because once we start doing that we shall find ourselves committed all over the globe. Committed, as the British are, to interference and responsibility, oppression and suppression—and war. The founders of our country and a great many of its present citizens were and are men who fled from interference and interminable wars. They wanted peace and freedom, and by God, they got it. But the surest way to lose it is by permitting ourselves to get mixed up in the unsavoury squabbles of foreign nations. It’s none of my business if Henri Tissot and that hee-hawing half-wit, Hubert Platt, permit their womenfolk to engage in intrigue against the Sultan. But I won’t have my daughter getting mixed up in something that’s likely to raise a bad smell. Or my niece either.”
“But Nat!” The words were a protesting squeak, and the Consul swung round to glare at his wife and say loudly:
“Or you either, Mrs Hollis! I won’t have it. Why, the way your daughter has been talking of late anyone would think she was canvassing votes for a Presidential election, with Bargash as her own private candidate. She’s taking sides, and I’ve no doubt she thinks it’s all mighty exciting—like acting a part in a play about a Wicked Sultan and a Noble Heir. But what she’s really doing is getting herself mixed up in the private quarrels of coloured people: primitive, lawless people who don’t understand our ways of thinking or living, and have never balked at murdering their own kin to get what they want. Well, I guess she’ll have to find something else to keep her amused, because I’m not standing for any members of my family sticking their noses into affairs that are nothing to do with them, or helping stir up trouble against the ruler of a territory to which I h
ave been sent as the accredited representative of my country. It’s downright dishonourable foolishness, and by goles, it’s going to stop!”
13
The Seyyida Salmé, daughter of the late great Sultan, Seyyid Saïd, the ‘Lion of Oman,’ sat cross-legged on a silken carpet in an upper room of Beit-el-Tani, one of the royal houses in Zanzibar city, and read aloud from the Chronicles of the Imams and Seyyids of Muscat and Oman…
“Then went Seyyid Sultan-bin-el-Imam-Ahmed-bin-Saïd to Newaz, and ordered certain men to go to el-Matrah, there to lie in wait for Khasif and to send him bound to Muscat where he should be imprisoned in the Western Fort and kept without food and water until he died, and afterwards to take his body in a boat and throw it into the sea a long distance from the land. And this they did, to the great delight of the Sultan, who proceeded next to es-Suwaik, which was then in the hands of his brother Saïd-bin-el-Imam, and captured it…”
Salmé‘s soft voice slowed and stopped, and she let the heavy book slide off her knees on to the carpet where the breeze that crept through the slats of the shutter ruffled its pages with a sharply urgent sound.
Save for the flap and flutter of the parchment the green-shadowed, mirror-hung room was silent, and in that silence Salmé could hear other sounds: the clatter of pots and pans and a shrill clamour of voices from the servants’ quarters on the ground floor, the wash of the sea, the musical cry of a coconut-seller and the beehive hum of the city. All comfortable, familiar noises that made a background to each day, and that had once spelled peace and security. Once, but no longer.