Trade Wind (25 page)

The Colonel’s leathery features set in rigid lines and his pale English eyes became frostily remote. “My dear sir, I know these people—”

“I take leave to doubt that,” said Mr Hollis, cutting across the sentence: “You may think you know ‘em, but it wasn’t so long ago that your officers and administrators in India were saying precisely the same thing about the Bengal Army. And what happened there? A bloody insurrection that went near to losing you the country.”

“The situation in India,” said Colonel Edwards frigidly, ‘is in no way comparable with that which prevails here. We have no power in Zanzibar; nor any wish to assume it.”

“Fudge!” retorted Mr Hollis brusquely. “The last Sultan ruled an Empire of which Zanzibar and Pemba and the territories on the coast were merely a part, but now one son rules Muscat and Oman and another governs Loher, while a third holds the East Africa possessions. And who had the last word on
that
dandy little arrangement? The Government of India! the
British
Government.”

“My dear sir, the matter was submitted—
voluntarily
submitted—by the rival Seyyids to arbitration by the Government of India, whose verdict merely upheld the late Sultan’s will and was undoubtedly a wise one. It was quite time the inheritance was divided up into more manageable proportions, since half the troubles of the last reign were a direct result of the Sultan’s long and frequent absences in Zanzibar, which led to a weakening of his authority in Muscat and Oman.”

Mr Hollis shrugged, and said: “Well, I won’t argue with you on that account. And I guess Majid’s claim was sound enough even without the Indian Government’s verdict. But there are other angles: you British have already managed to reduce the Sultanate’s most profitable source of income by restricting the slave trade. You’ve also intervened to prevent a war between Majid and his eldest brother, and you are behaving in a high-handed and dictatorial manner in Mombasa and the coastal strip. And since I reckon even the Arabs and the Africans are not so unlettered that they can’t read the writing on the wall, I don’t feel any too happy when I come across a rumour that firearms are being smuggled into this Island. If it’s true, then I’d like to know just what goes on and who wants ‘em that bad—and why.”

A tinge of red darkened the mahogany suntan on the Colonel’s cheekbones, and once again his lips thinned to a narrow line. It was obvious that he was making a strong effort to curb his temper, and it was some appreciable seconds before he could trust himself to speak:

“We have as yet no evidence,” said Colonel Edwards in a strictly controlled voice, “that any such arms have been landed. But I will certainly make enquiries. However, as you know only too well, the island suffers sorely from the raids of these northern Arab pirates who descend on it every year when the monsoon breaks, and terrorize the population. If there should prove to be any truth in this gun-running rumour, I think you will find that the weapons were consigned to His Highness, who has probably got tired of paying the raiders to go away and prefers to try driving them off with bullets—which he has every right to do.”

“Exactly! You are repeating my own argument, Colonel. He has every right to import arms. But if this rumour is true, they were not imported. They were smuggled.
Ergo
—they were not intended for His Highness, or for any purpose that would bear investigation. And if it wasn’t for one circumstance, I’d have been inclined, myself, to say that the buyer was someone who meant to stage an armed revolt and take over the throne himself.”

“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 was 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.