Father to son, the land had been held and tilled and tended by men of his name and his blood, and it was probably better to let his unamiable cousin Rodney carry on the tradition than to leave the place to go to wrack and ruin, sold piecemeal for building lots, or as a whole to some rich industrialist who would have no feeling for the land. Someone ought to care for it and keep it, and a Frost could probably be counted upon to do that better than a stranger—if only because his roots would be deep in that particular patch of earth.
As for himself, he had no roots. Unless they were here in this island, in which for the time being he had made himself an outlaw. Yet even when both Colonel Edwards and Dan Larrimore were gone and it might once again be considered safe for him to return to the city, that safety would only last as long as Majid lived—which did not look like being over-long if he continued his present mode of life! And since Majid had no son to succeed him, one day Bargash would return and inherit the throne, and then Zanzibar would cease to be a refuge and a happy hunting-ground for Captain Rory Frost and the Virago, He would have to find somewhere else. Go further East, to Java or Sumatra or the islands of the Coral Sea.
A year ago, even a few months ago, such a prospect would have been alluring enough. But now that strange sensation of having come to the end of the road had brought with it an unfamiliar and disconcerting feeling of uncertainty, and of being no longer free and untrammelled: a vague disinclination to set out in search of new horizons. Perhaps it was the gold lying hidden in The House of Shade that was dragging at him like an unseen anchor; chaining him to possessions and robbing him of the desire to be free. Or perhaps…
Rory shook himself impatiently, and coming to his feet realized that he must have been sitting idle on the parapet for a considerable length of time, for the moon had risen and his shadow lay black on the warm stone of the rooftop.
The night was hot and very quiet, and the sea so still that it lapped against the long curve of the beach in lazy ripples that barely broke into foam, and made a sound no louder than the rustle of the dead palm leaves that stirred in the soft night breeze. The cicadas that had shrilled before moonrise and the frogs that had croaked in the marshy ground beyond the coconut grove had fallen silent and only the drum still beat.
There were always drums beating in Zanzibar, and this one was so far away that the sound was barely more than a vibration in the stillness. But for some reason the faint, insistent beat seemed to hold an odd note of urgency that added to Rory’s sudden feeling of restlessness and dissatisfaction, and he came down from the roof, and walking swiftly across the quiet garden, summoned the dozing caretaker who slept by night in a small brick-built cell to one side of the massive gateway in the outer wall.
Kerbalou shuffled out yawning, and lifting the heavy bar, drew the door open to allow Rory to pass out, wondering sleepily where the white man could be going at this time of night and on foot, since except for a few isolated huts belonging to fishermen there was no village of any size for several miles.
But Rory had only gone out to drown his restlessness and cool his hot body in the placid sea, and though he had not been particularly successful in the first of these objectives, a long swim out towards Tumbatu and back had both refreshed him and made him ready for sleep. The deserted beach was white in the moonlight and the sea a shimmering expanse of watered silk, and he leant against the trunk of a coconut palm that stretched low over the sand, and rested a moment in the shadow of the coral cliffs; looking out towards the steel-grey shadow of Tumbatu while the night breeze breathed coolly on his body.
Something moved in the silver stillness, and he discovered that he was not the only person abroad that night, for there was a small boat flitting down the channel; a thing as ghostly and insubstantial as a moth in the moonlight. It was a fisherman’s kyack, a common enough sight in those waters, and he watched it idly as it tacked and ran into shore barely twenty feet from where he stood among the shadows. He heard the prow grate upon the wet sand and the slap of the sail as it swung idle in the light breeze, and then a man stepped out of it into the shallow water and turned to peer down into the bottom of the boat as though examining his catch.
The night was so still that Rory could hear the newcomer’s hard breathing, and another sound from inside the boat that might have been the flapping of a dying fish. But when the man straightened up he held neither fish nor nets, but only a large tin box and a small bundle that presumably contained food or clothing which he placed on the dry sand out of reach of the tide. Returning to the kyack he lowered the sail, but instead of drawing it further up the beach he waded out, thrusting it strongly before him, and pushed it off into deep water where the current that ran between Tumbatu and the main island took it and drew it out gently, and carried it away from the island. It seemed to be riding low as though it were still weighed, but the man stood waist-deep in the glittering water and watched it drift away down the long moonlit coast. And when at last it vanished he turned and came slowly back to retrieve his possessions, and lifting them, passed within a yard or two of where Rory stood leaning against the palm trunk in the shadows.
The moonlight fell full upon him, and Rory saw that he was a negro, and that he was labouring under some strong emotion that might have been excitement or fear; unless it was only exhaustion, for he had been paddling to increase the kyack’s speed. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead and trickled down his face and neck, and his eyes seemed to protrude unnaturally from their sockets, white-rimmed and staring. Rory concluded that he was probably a runaway slave, who had stolen the kyack from a fishing village further up the coast or on the mainland—and possibly filched some of his master’s goods as well, for the moonlight glinted on a heavy silver thumb-ring set with a flat piece of glass or crystal the size of a Cape dollar: a bright, glittering thing that stood out with startling whiteness on the ebony hand. If this were so, he would have turned the kyack adrift in the hope that it would run aground far down the coast and serve to mislead any pursuit.
Good luck to him! thought Rory idly, watching the dark figure pad on down the white stretch of sand and turn in among a thicket of pandanus and casuarina scrub to be lost to sight in the shadows. He had a fellow feeling for lawbreakers and hunted men, and though he had himself traded in slaves, he saw no reason why he should assist in apprehending any who had sufficient spirit to make a bid for freedom. Or any necessity for making his own presence known.
He straightened up, yawning, and became aware that the light breeze that had brought the kyack to land had died away, and that the far-away drum that he had heard earlier that night was still beating, but more audibly now; as though it had come nearer and been joined by a second or even a third. There were mosquitoes too, droning shrilly in the shadows, and he slapped at them with an impatient hand and rewinding the loin-cloth that was his sole garment, walked up the uneven path to the cliff-top, and through the grass and the grey casuarinas to the house.
He had expected to find its aged custodian asleep, and was surprised to find him not only awake but standing a yard or two outside the gate, facing inland with his head cocked on one side as though he were listening. The moonlight that turned his grey hairs and venerable beard to silver glinted oddly in his staring eyeballs, as it had glinted on the negro’s, and there was that in his face that made Rory say sharply: “What is it? What troubles you?”
“The Drums!” said Kerbalou in a whisper. “Do you not hear the Drums?”
“What of it? They are beating for a wedding, or a feast. There are always drums by night.”
“Not these drums!” The old man shuddered and Rory heard his teeth chatter. “It is the Sacred Drums that are beating. The hidden drums of the Mwenyi Mkuu!”
“That is foolishness,” said Rory shortly. “Dunga is many miles to the southward and even on a night such as this the sound would not carry a tenth of the distance. It is a nagoma in Mkokotoni or Potoa. Or some child beating a tom-tom in one of the fishermen’s huts.”
&nbs
p; “No tom-tom makes such a sound. Those are drums—the Drums of Zanzibar! If you were not a white man you would know it too, but perhaps it is only to us of the Island that they speak. Once before, when I was young—only once in all my life—have I heard them. On the night that the curse of the Great Drought fell upon the Island because of the capture and escape of the Great Lord, the Mwenyi Mkuu. No man laid a hand upon them that night, yet all men heard them sound; for the evil spirits beat upon them, foretelling disaster, and there followed three years of drought and famine. Who knows what they speak of now?”
“Your ears deceive you, my father,” said Rory. “That sound speaks only of dance in some nearby village.”
“Nay,” whispered Kerbalou. “It speaks of death!”
32
A storm broke over the Island shortly after dawn, and Rory awoke fancying that he could still hear drums. But the sound that had aroused him proved to be no more than the monotonous creak and crash of a shutter that had broken loose from its fastening and was banging to and fro in the wind.
He lay and listened to it in mounting irritation, for he had passed a restless night and was feeling tired and bad-tempered. For some unaccountable reason he had been unable to dismiss Kerbalou’s absurd assertion with regard to the drums, and it had stayed with him throughout the hot night, troubling his dreams and haunting his wakeful hours as insistently and urgently as the distant throbbing that had not ceased until the sky began to pale with the dawn.
Even now, lying awake in the grey wetness of the stormy morning and listening to the scream of the wind through the coconut grove and the maddening slam of the shutter, something of that unease remained with him, and he concluded impatiently that his years in the East must, after all, have infected him with superstitions that would be considered fantastic in the bustling modern world of gas-lamps, steam-driven trains and paddle-steamers.
He would not have suspected himself of any such stupidity, and it annoyed him to think that the maunderings of an ancient grey-beard, who was presumably hard of hearing, should have the power to rob him of a night’s sleep and fill him with uncomfortable forebodings. Perhaps it was just as well that he could no longer live in safety in the Island and must find some other base for his operations, because if he could allow himself to be disturbed by the sort of mumbo-jumbo that Kerbalou had talked last night, he would soon be good for nothing!
He rose impatiently and went out to deal with the shutter and get drenched in the warm, flailing rain; and peering out into the liquid greyness where the unseen breakers roared upon a beach that only a few hours ago had stretched still and silent under the tranquil sky, he wondered where the Virago was; and whether Batty was still at large?—presumably he must be, since had he been caught Majid would have sent word. Besides, Batty had too many friends in the city for it to be any easy matter to comer him while he wished to elude pursuit. He would be in touch with Ralub, and as soon as it was safe to do so the Virago would appear in the Tumbatu channel to take her Captain off, and Batty himself would rejoin them with Amrah and Dahili, who had been Zorah’s maid, and they would set sail for Ceylon—or the Celebes.
Batty would be sorry to leave Zanzibar, but as long as he had Amrah he would be happy. It was strange that Batty Potter, who had fathered a brood of children and abandoned them without a qualm to the chilly mercies of orphan asylums and charitable institutions, should in his reprehensible old age have developed such a deep and selfless love for this half-caste baby who was the illegitimate offspring of another man. But there was no accounting for the vagaries of the human heart, and the fact remained that he had done so.
From the day that she had first attempted to speak his name, Amrah’s tiny, grasping fingers had clutched at Batty’s affections and never relaxed their hold. He was her willing and devoted slave, and she ruled him with a rod of iron and gave him in return a love and trust that should by rights have been her father’s. And though Batty was apt to comment caustically on the Captain’s undemonstrative attitude towards his small daughter, Rory was aware that he was secretly grateful for it, in that it allowed him to usurp the lion’s share of the child’s affection.
It was on Amrah’s account more than Hero’s that Batty had protested so strongly against that vengeful kidnapping, because he had known very well where it must lead: as Rory too had known, though at the time he had been too blind with rage to care.
I’ve made my bed, thought Rory, but I’m not the only one who will have to lie on it—more’s the pity! Batty and Amrah and Ralub were only three of those who would have to share it…
The storm blew itself out before midday, and an hour or two later the sky was clear again and the sun blazed down on the drenched earth, drinking the raindrops from the grass and the trees and bringing out the scent of tamarisk and jasmine and crushed leaves. Towards evening, as the air began to cool, Rory went out to the stables and was annoyed to find that the mare, Zafrâne, was still suffering from the effects of a strained tendon acquired through putting her hoof into a rat-hole during a morning canter the previous week.
“The swelling has almost gone,” said Kerbalou, running a gnarled and expert hand across the satiny skin; “but it would be unwise to ride her yet.”
Rory proffered lumps of raw sugar which Zafrâne accepted gratefully, and went out to take his evening exercise on foot, turning south along the coast in the direction of Mkokotoni in preference to the bleaker northern tip of the Island. The wind had dropped, and since the tide was going out and he could see no sign of ships, he left the shelter of the trees to walk along the wet sands of the open shore: and twenty minutes later, where the long, low headlands reach out into the sea and the mangroves creep down in green, tentacled ranks to meet the salt water, he came across a solitary kyack stranded in a shadowed cleft between two rough outcrops of coral rock.
It lay tilted on one side where the sea had flung it; its bows caught and crushed in the vice-like grip of the coral, and a dense cloud of flies buzzing above it. But despite the noise of the flies he might still have passed it without seeing it, had it not been for the obnoxious smell: a sickly and all too familiar scent of corruption that polluted the sweet evening air and brought him over to inspect the broken piece of flotsam that lay half hidden on the reef.
He glanced down at it with a grimace of disgust, and was turning away when he stopped abruptly and stood very still, and then turned back swiftly, and pulling a handkerchief out of the bosom of the Arab robe he wore, held it over his nose and mouth and bent to examine the pitiful thing that lay huddled on the bottom of the stranded kyack. The thing that he had heard move in the boat last night, and that had not been a feebly flapping fish, but a dying man.
The signs were plain upon it and easy enough to read, and presently he straightened up again, and removing his clothes, folded them about the pistol that he had carried day and night for the last month or so, and having cached them in a cleft of the coral, waded out into the inlet to soak his handkerchief in sea water and bind it about his face.
Returning to the kyack he managed by dint of considerable effort to free the prow from the rocks, and having salvaged the remains of the coir rope that had once been attached to the now vanished sail, he lashed it across the quiet occupant to ensure that he should not leave, and dragging the broken boat out into deeper water sank it where even a spring tide would not uncover it After which he swam out to sea for a hundred yards or so, and dived again and again to clean his head.
Landing at length on the narrow headland, he walked back to where he had left his clothes, and removing only the pistol, washed the rest in the sea and spread it out on the hot sand to dry in the long rays of the evening sunlight.
The breeze no longer smelt of corruption, but only of salt water and the mud flats where the crabs scuttled and clicked as the tide drew slowly out, leaving the roots of the mangroves bare. The sky overhead had paled from ultramarine to a cool expanse of palest turquoise, and the west flamed with colour and flaunted long streamers of
molten gold that reflected themselves in the pearly sea and tinged the coral reefs with splendour. But Rory sat with his hands clasped about his knees and noticed none of these things.
He had no doubt at all that the broken kyack that he had just sunk in fifteen feet of water was the one he had seen set adrift last night. And he knew now why it had seemed to be weighted, and also why the unknown negro had abandoned it—and been afraid. The negro would have to be found as soon as possible, which might not be easy, since he had almost a full day’s start, and if he had reached a village it might already be too late. But he had been tired, and so there was just a chance that he had lam hidden among the trees and the casuarina scrub to rest for a while before moving inland.
Rory came to his feet, and finding that the loose cotton robe and waistcloth were at least partially dry, put them on and walked quickly back along the beach towards the spot where he had seen the man turn in among the trees on the previous night.
A last ray of the setting sun pierced the thickets of casuarina, coarse grass and pandanus that choked the cliff edge below the tall ranks of palms. It glinted brightly on something made of metal, and Rory, threading his way through the undergrowth, saw that it was a cheap tin box, lying open and empty outside a dilapidated palm-thatched hut.
The hut was small and roughly constructed, and looked as though it had weathered several monsoons; but because it stood some way back from the beach and was overgrown with wild grape vine, he had not noticed it before. He approached with some caution, but it was not possible to move silently in such surroundings, and he heard a rustle from inside it and the next moment a man crept out of it on all fours and stood up uncertainly, blinking in the last blaze of the sun. It was the negro whom he had last seen by moonlight, and recognizing him, Rory was conscious of an overwhelming relief that seemed to relax every tense nerve and taut muscle in his body. He was in time!