Treason's Harbour (18 page)

'Wittles is up,' said Killick, appearing in the doorway together with the homely reek of boiled cabbage.

'And now I come to think of it,' went on Jack, emptying his glass, 'perhaps you may be mistaken about tropes and parallels too. I caught the allusion directly, and I said toAllen, "He means the thunder, I believe." "Yes," says Allen, "I smoked it at once." Smoked it at once,' repeated Jack, smiling pleasantly as the possibility of a brilliant play on the words cannon and smoke hovered in his mind. Yet even as he turned the matter over it was eclipsed by an even better thing. 'But perhaps Rowan is a second Bossuet,' he said. His deep, fruity, intensely amused laugh filled the cabin, filled the after part of the Dromedary and echoed forward; he went scarlet in the face, and redder still. Killick and Stephen stood looking at him, grinning in spite of themselves, until his breath was gone; and reduced to a wheeze he wiped his eyes and stood up, still murmuring 'A second Bossuet. Oh Lord...'

During the course of dinner the smell of cabbage and boiled mutton changed abruptly to that of rotting mud, for the transport, standing in, had crossed the invisible frontier where the westerly breeze reached her not from the open sea but from the Nile delta and the great Pelusian marsh itself. Mr Martin had been rather silent hitherto, in spite of having been invited to drink wine with Captain Aubrey, Mr Adams, Mr Rowan, Dr. Maturin and even, most surprisingly, with the melancholy and extremely abstemious Mr Gill; but now his face lightened. He darted a look of intelligence at Stephen, and as soon as he decently could he left the table.

Stephen had some doses to put up for those invalids who would have to be left behind, but when this was done and the physic and powders entrusted to the Dromedary's first mate, a discreet middle-aged Scotchman, he too hurried on deck. The shore was much closer than he had expected, a long flat shore with a shallow beach of a rufous ochre that made the sea an even more surprising blue: dunes behind it, and beyond the dunes a mound with a fort on top and something in the nature of a village on its flanks: some two miles away on the left hand another mound, and through the shimmering heat there seemed to be ruins scattered over it. A very few palms dotted here and there. Otherwise nothing but an infinity of sand, pale sand, the Desert of Sin.

Mr. Allen had taken everything in but the foretopsail and the ship was gliding in with little more than steerage-way upon her, anchor ready to be dropped and a leadsman in the channels calling the depths in steady sequence. 'By the deep twenty; by the deep eighteen; by the mark seventeen..." Almost every soul aboard was on deck, gazing earnestly at the shore: and gazing, as was usual upon such delicate occasions, in profound silence. It was with some surprise, therefore, that Stephen heard a cheerful hooting from over the side, and when he reached the rail it was with far greater surprise that he saw Hairabedian gambolling in the sea. He had understood that the dragoman often bathed in the Bosphorus, and he had heard him lament that the ship was never becalmed so that he might make a dip; but he had supposed that if the Armenian ever really went out of his depth it was only for a few galvanic, convulsive strokes like his own, certainly nothing like this boisterous amphibian sporting among the billows. Hairabedian easily kept pace with the ship, sometimes flinging his short thick body half out of the water and sometimes diving under her and merging the other side, spouting water like a Triton. But his hallooing and bubbling vexed Mr. Allen, who did not always hear his leadsman's cry: seeing this, Jack leant over the rail and called out 'Mr Hairabedian, pray come aboard at once.

Mr Hairabedian did so and stood there in a pair of black calico drawers tied at the knee and waist with white tapes which gave him a somewhat whimsical appearance: water dripped from his squat, shaggy, barrel-shaped person and from the fringe of black hair round his bald pate, but he had caught the air of disapproval and his broad frog-like grin of delight was gone, replaced by a look of profound submission. His embarrassment did not last, however: Mr. Allen gave the word to let go, the anchor splashed down, the cable ran out, the ship swung head to wind, and the gunner began his eleven-gun salute, this number having been agreed to be given and received long since.

But the gunfire seemed to stun the Turks; or perhaps it had never roused them from their torpor. In any event there was no reply. During the long waiting silence Jack swelled with indignation. For himself he would put up with a good deal of offhand treatment or downright incivility, but he found the least slight to the Royal Navy perfectly intolerable: and this was not the least of slights by any means- the returning of salutes was a very serious matter indeed. Staring at the fort through his telescope he saw that what he had thought to be a village was in fact no more than a collection of tents with a number of asses and camels among them, together with a few depressed, unmilitary figures sitting in the shade - the whole thing was like some dismal, somnolent fair. In the fort itself there was no movement of any kind. 'Mr Hairabedian,' he said, 'jump into your clothes directly. Mr Mowett, go ashore and desire Mr Hairabedian to ask them what they are about - what they are thinking of. Bonden, my gig as quick as you like.'

Hairabedian plunged below, reappeared some moments later in a loose white garment and an embroidered skullcap, and was handed down into the gig by two powerful seamen, as monumentally displeased as their captain. The gig pulled for the shore at racing speed and ran well up the beach with its impetus; but before Mowett and Hairabedian had gone far into the dunes a gun began to utter weakly in the fort and a small party was seen coming down the path to meet them.

Jack did not wish to appear concerned, so passing his telescope to Calamy he began pacing the starboard side of the quarterdeck, his hands behind his back. Dr Maturin, however, had no such scruples; he was not there to uphold King George's dignity nor anyone else's, and he took the telescope from the reefer, training it on the group ashore. They had now reached the boat, and Hairabedian and three or four of the others were arguing in an oriental manner, waving their arms; but before Stephen could make out the nature of their disagreement (if disagreement it was) Martin drew his attention to a very high-flying bird away up in the pure bowl of the sky, planing against the wind on snowy wings, an almost certain spoonbill, and they watched it until the boat returned, bringing with it an Egyptian official, a civilian, worried, pale and drawn. Jack took them below and called for coffee. 'Oh, sir, if you please,' said Hairebedian in a low discreet tone, 'the Effendi may not eat or drink until the sun has set. It is Ramadan.'

'In that case we must not tempt him, nor torment him by drinking it ourselves,' said Jack. 'Killick. Killick, there. Scrub the coffee. Well, now, Mr Hairabedian, what is afoot on shore? Is this gentleman come to invite us to land, or must I blow the fort about his ears?' Hairabedian looked alarmed, but then realizing that this was only Captain Aubrey's wit he gave a dutiful simper: the trouble was that the Dromedary had arrived too soon. She had not been expected until after the fast, and although the civilians had collected the pack animals- it was they that gave the hillside the appearance of a fair - the military officers were by no means ready. In these last days of Ramadan many Moslems retired to pray: Murad Bey was in the mosque at Katia, an hour or two away, and his second-in-command had accompanied a holy man to his retreat along the coast, taking the key of the magazine with them, which accounted for the delay in answering the Dromedary's, salute - the only remaining officer, an odabashi, had been obliged to use what was in the men's powder-horns.

'Is this gentleman the odabashi?' asked Jack.

'Oh no, sir. He is a learned man, an effendi, who writes poetical Arabic letters and speaks Greek. The odabashi is only a brutal soldier, a janissary of about the rank of a boatswain: he dare not leave his post to come aboard without orders, for Murad is a testy, and irascible, and would have him flayed and stuffed and sent to headquarters. But Abbas Effendi, - bowing towards the Egyptian - 'the administrative official, is of quite a different kind: he has come to pay his respects, to assure you that everything in the civilian line - camels, tents, food- has been prepared, and to say that should you find anything wanting he would be happy to supply it. He also wishes to state that the day after tomorrow a large number of boats will be brought from the Menzala to carry your men and their equipment ashore.'

Jack smiled. 'Pray make all proper acknowledgments and tell the Effendi that I am very much obliged to him for his exertions: but he need not trouble with the boats - we have plenty of our own, and in any case by the day after tomorrow I hope to be half way to Suez. Please to ask him whether he can tell us anything about the route to Suez.'

'He says he has travelled upon it several times, sir. A little way south of Tel Farama, the mound over there, it crosses the caravan track to Syria, by a well called Bir ed Dueidar. Then it becomes the pilgrims' road down to the Red Sea, where they take ship for Jeddah. There are other wells, and if they are dry there are the Balah lakes and Timsah. It is as flat as a table nearly all the way, and firm, unless there have been bad sand-storms that sometimes make moving dunes: but mostly firm.'

'Yes. That tallies with all I have heard: I am delighted to have it confirmed. By the way, I presume the odabashi has sent to tell Murad that we are here?'

'I am afraid not, sir: he says that the Bey must-not be disturbed in his devotions on any account, and that he may come back to the fort tomorrow night, or the night after, and that anyway it would be best to wait until after the fast. Nothing is ever done during the fast.'

'I see. Then pray desire the Effendi to go on shore at once and to procure horses for you and me and a guide. We will follow him as soon as I have given the necessary directions.'

The Egyptian having been seen over the side, paler, more worried and anxious still, obviously faint from want of food, Jack summoned his officers. He told them to stand by for a landing in divisions, 'a landing vi et armis, gentlemen,' he said: and feeling rather pleased with this he repeated' Vi et armis', looking for some slight response. He saw nothing but pleased expectancy and total incomprehension on the cheerful, attentive faces before him. They were happy to see him in such high spirits, but what really mattered at this point was clear, specific instructions: with an imperceptible inward sigh Captain Aubrey gave them. As soon as he threw out the signal, probably within half an hour, the men were to go ashore with their weapons and bags; they were to proceed in strict marching order to the encampment prepared for them, and there they were to await his directions; there was to be no straggling, and they were not to turn in, since if all went well Captain Aubrey hoped to march a short stage that night. Each watch must be provided with its due allowance of rum and tobacco for four days, so that if they had to be poisoned at least they would be poisoned like Christians: the kegs must be rigorously guarded, a petty-officer sitting on each all the time. And although native bread would be served out, the men were to carry biscuit for the same period; this would do away with any complaints from delicate stomachs. He raised his voice, directing it into the neighbouring cabin, where he knew that his steward was listening intently at the bulkhead and called 'Killick. Killick, there. Lay out a frilled shirt, my number one coat, blue pantaloons, and Hessian boots: I am not going to ruin my white breeches, riding about all over Asia, etiquette or no. And my best scraper, with the chelengk shipped. D'ye hear me, there?'

Killick heard: and since he had grasped that the skipper was going to call on the Turkish commanding officer, for once he put out the finery with no tedious whining or proposing second-best: indeed, he went so far as to lay out Jack's Nile medal of his own mere notion, together with his hundred-guinea sword.

'Dear me,' thought Stephen as Captain Aubrey came on deck, buckling this same sword, 'he has added a cubit to his stature.' It was quite true: the prospect of decisive action seemed to make Jack grow in height and breadth; and it certainly gave him a different expression, more detached, remote, and self-contained. He was a big man in any case - one perfectly capable of carrying off a diamond spray in his hat without the least difficulty - and with this increase in moral size he became a more imposing figure by far, even to those who knew him intimately well as a mild, amiable, not always very wise companion.

He had a word with Mr. Allen and then, just as he and Hairabedian were about to drop down into the waiting gig, he caught sight of Stephen and Martin. His closed, determined face broke into a smile and he called out 'Doctor, I am going ashore. Do you choose to come too?' And seeing Stephen glance at his neighbour he called 'We can make room for Mr Martin as well, by sitting close.'

'To think that in five or ten minutes I shall tread the African shore,' said Martin as the boat pulled in. 'I had never hoped for so much.'

'I am grieved to disappoint you,' said Jack, 'but I am afraid that what you see ahead of you is the continent of Asia. Africa is somewhat to the right.'

'Asia!' cried Martin. 'So much the better.' He laughed aloud; and he was laughing still when the boat ground up on the Asian sand.

The sinister Davis at bow-oar skipped out with the gang-plank so that the Captain's gleaming boots should not be splashed, and he even carried good-nature so far as to give Stephen and Martin a rough, hairy hand as they came blundering forward in their hopelessly lubberly fashion.

A little way from the edge of the sea the sand gave way to a hard, ridged, strong-smelling mud, and the mud to the dunes. As they reached the dunes they lost the breeze entirely: heat rose from the ground and enveloped them, and with the heat came swarms of fat black fearless hairy flies that settled on them, crawling on their faces, up their sleeves and down their collars.

At the turn of the path they were met by a squat broad man with long dangling arms, a janissary who saluted in the Turkish manner and then stood staring at Jack and his chelengk with open consternation on his huge, greenish-yellow face, perhaps the ugliest in the Muslim world. 'This is the odabashi,' said Hairabedian. 'I see,' said Jack, returning the salute; but the man appeared to have nothing to say, and as it was to be hoped that both flies and heat might diminish on the castle hill, Jack walked steadily on. He had not gone five yards before the odabashi was there again, his uncouth person agitated with a variety of bows, his harsh voice filled with deference and anxiety. 'He begs you will pass by the main gate, so that he may turn out the guard and the trumpeters,' said Hairabedian. 'He begs you will step in and sit in the shade.' 'Thank him, but say I am pressed for time and cannot go a step out of my way,' said Jack. 'God damn these flies.'