She looked up quickly. "It struck the trigger guard you did not tell me."

He shrugged. "It's not important now. But the ball was deflected."

She sat very still in her chair for ten minutes after he was gone, and then purposefully she stood over the bunk and stripped back the blanket, unwound the bandage and examined the wound again.

Very carefully she began to sound the ribs beneath it, pressing in with thumb gently to feel for the give of shattered bone. The ribs were all firm, yet that was no proof that the ball had not driven between two of them.

She pressed her thumb into the swelling towards the outside of his chest, and although he thrashed around weakly, she thought she felt the rasp of bone against bone, as though the rib had been chipped or even as if a long splinter had been cracked off it.

She felt a little flutter of excitement, and extended her examination gradually backwards, guided by his delirious cries of pain, until once again she reached the lower point of his shoulder and he came upright in the bunk with another wild yell of agony, breaking out once more into the burning sweat of high fever. But with the tip of her finger she thought she had felt something, something that was neither bone nor knotted muscle.

The excitement quickened her breathing. From the angle at which Clinton had stood, half-turned away from Mungo St. John, she now believed that it was possible that the ball had followed a different path from that which she had a.s.sumed.

If the pistol had been undercharged with powder, and if the ball had struck the trigger guard, it was just possible that it had not had the velocity to penetrate the, rib cage, it had been turned by the bone and ploughed along under the skin, skidding along the groove between two ribs following the track that she had just probed, and lodging at last in the thick bed of the latissimus dorsi and tenes major muscle.

She stood back from the bunk. She could be very wrong, she realized, but if she was he would die anyway, and that very soon. I will cut for it, she decided, the decision direct and swift. She glanced up at the skylight in the roof of the cabin. There was only an hour or two of good daylight left.

Zouga! she called as she raced from the cabin. "Zouga!

Come quickly! " Robyn administered another five grams of laudanum before they moved Clinton. It was as large a dose as she dared, for he had taken nearly fifteen grams in the preceding thirty-six hours. She waited as long as she could in the failing light for the drug to begin taking effect. Then she pa.s.sed the word to Lieutenant Denham to shorten sail, reduce engine revolutions and make the ship's motion as easy as possible.

Zouga had chosen two seamen to a.s.sist them. One was the boatswain, a burly and greying sailor, the other was the officers" steward who had impressed Robyn with his quiet, controlled manner.

Now as the three of them half-lifted Clinton and rolled him on to his side, the steward spread a sheet of fresh white canvas on the bunk under him to receive the spilled blood then Zouga swiftly knotted the lengths of soft cotton rope around Clinton's wrists and ankles. He had chosen cotton in preference to the coa.r.s.e hemp which would tear the skin, and he made the bowline knots that would not slip under pressure.

The boatswain helped him to tie down the ends at the head and foot of the bunk, stretching out the almost naked white body so that for an instant it reminded Robyn of the painting of the crucifixion that stood in Uncle William's study at King's Lynn, the Roman legionaries spread-eagling Christ upon the cross before driving home the nails. She shook her head irritably, driving the memory from her mind, concentrating all her attention on the task ahead. Wash your hands! " she ordered Zouga, indicating the bucket of almost boiling water and yellow lye soap the steward had provided.

"Y? Do it, she snapped, in no mood to argue. Her own hands were pink with the heat of the water and tingled with the harsh soap, as she wiped her instruments with the cloth dipped in a mug of the pungent ship's rum, laying them out on the shelf above the bunk, and then with the same cloth swabbed the hot discoloured flesh at the base of Clinton's shoulder blade. He jerked against his bonds and muttered an incoherent protest, but she ignored it and nodded to the boatswain.

He seized Clinton's head, drawing it back slightly, and thrust a thick pad of felt, a piece of wadding for the maindeck cannon, between his teeth, holding it in place. ZougaV He took Clinton's shoulders and locked them in his powerful fingers, preventing Clinton from rolling on to his belly. Good."

Robyn took one of the razor-sharp scalpels from the shelf, and then with the forefinger of her other hand probed brutally down to where she had felt that hard foreign body.

Clinton's back arched and he let out a shattering cry that was m.u.f.fled by the wadding, but Robyn felt it clearly this time, hard and unyielding in the swollen flesh.

She cut swiftly, without hesitation, opening the skin cleanly, following the direction of the muscle fibre beneath, dissecting down through layer after layer of muscle, separating the bluish membrane capsules that covered each of the muscles with the hilt of the scalpel, probing deeper and deeper with her fingers towards that elusive lump in the flesh.

Clinton writhed and heaved at his bonds, his breathing rasping in the back of his throat, his teeth locked into the felt wadding in a fierce rictus so that cords of muscle stood out along his jawline and white spittle frothed upon his lips.

His wild lunges made her task that much more difficult, and her fingers were slippery with blood in his hot flesh, but she found the rubbery pulsing snake of the lateral thoracic artery and worked past it gently, pinching off the smaller spurting blood vessels with the forceps, and tying them with a loop of catgut, torn between the need for speed and the danger of doing greater damage.

Finally she had to use the blade again, and she reversed the scalpel and paused a moment to locate the lump with the tip of her forefinger.

She could feel the sweat sliding down her cheek, and she was aware of the strained tense faces of the men who held Clinton as they watched her work.

She guided the scalpel down into the open wound, and then cut down firmly and a sudden bright yellow fountain spouted up through her fingers, and the cloying stomach-twisting stench of corruption that filled the hot little cabin made her gasp.

That sharp rush of pus lasted only a second, and then there was something black and sodden blocking the wound. She picked it out with the forceps, releasing another lesser welling up of the thick custardy matter. The wad, Zouga grunted with the effort of holding down the struggling naked body. They all stared at the soft rotten object in the teeth of her forceps.

The patch of cloth had been carried deeply into the flesh by the pa.s.sage of the ball, and Robyn felt a surging lift of relief, she had been right.

Quickly she went back to work, running her finger into the tunnel cut by the ball until she felt it with her fingertip. There it is! " She spoke for the first time since she had but the metal pellet was slippery and heavy, she cut, could not prise it loose and she had to cut again and then lock the teeth of the pair of bone forceps over it. It came out with reluctant suck of clinging tissue, and she dropped it impatiently on the shelf. It made a heavy clunk against the wood. There was a temptation to come out immediately, to sew up and bind up, but she resisted it and took an extra ten seconds to probe the wound thoroughly. She was almost immediately justified, there was another rotting and stinking taller of cloth in the wound track. A piece of the shirt. " She identified the white shreds, and Zouga's face mirrored his disgust. "Now we can come out, " Robyn went on complacently.

She left a bristle in the wound to allow the remaining pus to drain off. It stuck out stiffly between the st.i.tches with which she closed up.

When she stood back at last she was smugly satisfied with her work. There had been n.o.body at St. Matthew's who could lay down st.i.tches so neatly and regularly, not even the senior surgeons could match her.

linton had collapsed with the shock of deep surgery.

C His body was wet and slick with his sweat, and the skin at his wrists and ankles had been smeared away where he had fought against his bonds. Let him loose, " she said softly.

She felt a vast pride, almost of ownership, in him now, as though he were her special creation, for she had dragged him back almost bodily from the abyss. Pride was sin, she knew, but it did not make the sensation any the less agreeable, and in the circ.u.mstances, she decided, she had earned the pleasure of a little sin.. . .

Clinton's recovery was almost miraculous. By the next morning he was fully conscious, and the fever had abated to leave him pale and shaky, with just enough strength to argue bitterly when she had him carried up into the sunshine and laid behind the canvas wind shelter that the carpenter had rigged under the p.o.o.p. Cold air is bad for gunshot wounds, everybody knows that And I suppose I should bleed you before closing you up in that hot little h.e.l.l hole you call a cabin, Robyn asked tartly.

A navy surgeon would do so, he muttered. Then thank your Maker that I am not one."

On the second day he was sitting up unaided and eating voraciously, by the third he was managing the ship from his litter, and on the fourth day he was on his quarterdeck once more, although his arm was in a sling and he was still pale and gaunt where the fever had wasted away the flesh from his face, but strong enough to keep on his feet for an hour at a time before resorting to the rope chair the carpenter had rigged at the rail.

That day Robyn withdrew the bristle from the wound and was relieved at the tiny quant.i.ty of benign pus that followed it out. They watched the little town of Port Natal come up ahead of them, the primitive buildings huddled under the whale-backed mountain they called the Bluff like chickens under the wing of the hen. Black joke did not call, even though this was the furthest outpost of the British Empire on this coast, but steamed on briskly into the north, each day becoming perceptively warmer with the sun standing higher at noon and the sea changing to the darker azure of the tropics beneath Black Joke's bows, and once again the flying fish sported ahead of them on filmy silver wings.

The evening before they reached the Portuguese settlement of Lourenco Marques on the deep hight of Delagoa Bay, Robyn dressed the st.i.tches in Clinton's side, making small cooing and clucking sounds of satisfaction and approval as she saw how cleanly they were healing.

When she helped him into his shirt and then b.u.t.toned it for him, like a mother dressing her child, he told her gravely, I am aware you have saved my life. "Even though you do not approve of my methods? " she asked with a twinkle of a smile. I ask your forgiveness for my impertinence. " He dropped his eyes. You have proved yourself to be a brilliant physician."

She made a modest murmur of denial, but when he insisted, "No, I truly mean that. I think you are gifted, Robyn protested no further, but moved slightly to make it easier for him to reach her with his good arm, but his declaration of faith in her skills seemed to have exhausted his courage for the moment.

That evening she vented some of her frustration by confiding to her journal that, "Captain Codrington is clearly a min that can be trusted by a woman, in any circ.u.mstances, though a little more boldness would make him a great deal more attractive."

She was about to close the journal and lock it away in her chest, when another thought occurred to her, and she thumbed back through the preceding pages each crammed with her small neat script, until she reached the single sheet that had become a milestone in her life.

The entry for the day before Huron reached Cape Town she had left blank. What words were there to describe it? Each moment of it would be engraved forever on her memory. She stared for many minutes at the empty sheet, and then she made a silent calculation, subtracting one date from another. When she had the answer she felt a chill of foreboding, and went over the calculation again, reaching the same answer.

She closed the journal slowly and stared at the lantern flame.

She had missed her lunar courses by almost a week, and with a p.r.i.c.kle of dread lilting the fine hair at the nape of her neck she laid her hand upon her own belly as if there was something to feel there like the pistol ball in Clinton's flesh.

Black joke called at Lourenq Marques for coal bunkers, despite the tovrn's notoriety as a fever port. The swamps and mangroves that half-circled the town to the southwards spread the miasmic airs across the port.

Although Robyn had only very limited first-hand experience of the peculiar fevers of Africa, she had made a close study of all the writings on the subject, the most notable of these being probably those of her own father. Fuller Ballantyne had written a long paper for the British Medical a.s.sociation, in which he recognized four distinct types of African fever, the recurrent fevers with a definite cycle, he divided into three categories, quotidian, tertian and quartan, by the length of the cycle.

These he called the malarial fevers. The fourth type was the black vomit, or the yellow jack.

In his own unmistakable style, Fuller Ballantyne had shown that these diseases were neither contagious nor infectious. He had done so by a horrifying but courageous demonstration to a group of sceptical brother physicians at the military hospital at Algoa Bay.

While the other physicians watched, he had collected a wine gla.s.s of fresh vomit from a victim of the yellow jack. Fuller had toasted them with the awful draught and then drunk it down at a single swallow. His colleagues had waited, with a certain keen antic.i.p.ation for his demise and had some difficulty in hiding their disappointment when he showed no ill effects and set off a week later to walk across Africa. Fuller Ballantyne was a man it was easier to admire than to like. The episode had become part of the legend that surrounded him.

In his writings her father insisted that the disease could only be contracted by breathing the night air of tropical areas, particularly those airs released by swamps or other large bodies of stagnant water. However, some individuals most certainly had a natural resistance to the disease, and this resistance was probably hereditary. He cited the African tribes who lived in known malarial areas, and his own family and that of his wife who had lived and worked in Africa for sixty years with only mild afflictions.

Fuller wrote of the "seasoning fever', the first of which either killed or gave partial immunity to the subject. He used the example of the high mortality rate amongst newly arrived Europeans in Africa.

He quoted the case of Nathaniel Isaacs who in 1832 left Port Natal in a party with twenty-one newly arrived white men to hunt hippopotamus in the estuary and swamps of St. Lucia river. Within four weeks nineteen had perished while Isaacs and the other survivor were so wracked with the disease that they were invalids for a a year thereafter.

These losses were unnecessary, Fuller Ballantyne pointed out. There was a preventative and a cure that had been known for hundreds of years though under various names, Peruvian bark, or Chinchona bark, more recently called essence of quinine when manufactured in powder form by the Quaker brothers Luke and John Howard. Taken at the dosage of five grains daily it was a highly effective preventative, for even if the disease was subsequently contracted, it was in such mild form as to be no more dangerous than a common cold and responded immediately to a more ma.s.sive dose of twenty-five grains of quinine.

of course, Robyn had heard the accusation that her father played down the d=gers of the disease to further his grand design. Fuller Ballantyne had a vision of Africa settled by colonists of British stock, bringing to the savage continent the true G.o.d, and all the benefits of British justice and ingenuity. His catastrophic expedition to the Zambezi had been in pursuit of this vision, for the great river was to have been his highway to the high and healthy plateau of the interior where his Englishmen would settle, driving out the slavers, bringing the warring and G.o.dless tribes to order, and taming and cultivating the savage earth.

Part of his vision had died upon the terrible torrents and rapids of the Kaborra-Bossa gorge.

With a sneaking sensation of disloyalty Robyn admitted to herself that there was probably some shred of justification in the accusation, for she had as a child seen her father in the grip of a makfial fever brought out by the cold of an English winter. It had not seemed as mild as a common cold then. Despite this, there was no one in the medical profession who doubted that Fuller Ballantyne was probably one of the world's leading authorities on the disease and that he had a real talent in diagnosing and treating it. So she followed his dictates faithfully, administering the daily five grains of quinine to herself, to Zouga and under protest to Captain Codrington. She had no success with Zouga's Hottentot musketeers, however. At the first dose Jan Cheroot had begun staggering in circles, clutching his throat and rolling his eyes horribly, crying to all his Hottentot G.o.ds that he had been poisoned. Only a tot of ship's rum saved him, but none of the other Hottentots would touch the white powder after that. Not even the thought of a tot of rum would tempt them, which was a measure of their opposition to the cure. Robyn could only hope that they possessed the resistance to the fever that her father spoke of.

Her store of quinine was meant to last for the duration of the expedition, possibly as long as two years, so she had reluctantly to refrain from pressing any of it on Black fake's seamen. She stilled her conscience with the fact that none of them would be spending a night ash.o.r.e, therefore they would not be exposed to the dangerous airs. She prevailed upon Clinton Codrington to anchor in the outer roads where the onsh.o.r.e breeze kept the air sweet and, as an added attraction, the distance offsh.o.r.e prevented the swarms of mosquitoes and other flying insects from coming on board during the night.

The first night at anchor, the sound of music, of drunken laughter and the shrill cries of women at play and at work carried across the still waters to the nine Hottentot musketeers in their corner of the forecastle, and the lights of the bordels and bars along the waterfront were as irresistible to the nine as a candle to a hawk moth.

Temptation was made unbearable by the weight and heat of the golden sovereign that each of them carried in some secret place upon his person, the princely advance that Major Ballantyne had made against their salaries.

Sergeant Cheroot woke Zouga a little before midnight, his features a mask of outrage.

They are gone. " He was shaking with anger.

Where? " Zouga was still more asleep than awake. They swim like rats, " stormed Cheroot. "They all go drinking and a-whoring. " The thought of it was insupportable. "We must catch them. They will burn their brains out on smoke and pox themselves-" His rage was mixed with an equal portion of raw envy, and once they we re ash.o.r.e his enthusiasm for the chase was almost a frenzy.

Cheroot had an unerring instinct that led him directly to the lowest dives on the waterfront. You go in, Master, he told Zouga. "I'll wait around the back, and he twitched the short oaken club in his hand with gleeful antic.i.p.ation.

The tobacco smoke and the fumes of cheap rum and gin were like a solid wall, but the musketeers saw Zouga the moment he stooped through the doorway into the yellow lantern light. There were four of them. They overturned two tables and smashed a dozen bottles in their eagerness to depart, jamming in a solid knot in the doorway to the rear alley before bursting out into the night beyond.

It took Zouga half a minute to push and wrestle his way through the crowd. The women of a dozen rich shades between gold and ebony reached out to pluck shamelessly at the more private areas of his anatomy as he pa.s.sed, forcing him to defend himself, and the men deliberately blocked his path until he drew the Colt revolver from under his coat tails, only then they sullenly opened a way for him to pa.s.s. When he reached the back door Sergeant Cheroot had the four Hottentots laid out in a row in the filth and dust of the alley.

You haven't killed them? " Zouga asked anxiously. Nee wat! They got heads of solid bone. " Cheroot tucked the club back in his belt, and stooped to pick up one of the bodies. The strength of his wiry little body was out of all proportion to its size. He carried them down to the beach one at a time as though they were bags of straw, and dumped them head first into the waiting whaler. Now we find the others."

They ferreted them out, singly and in pairs from the fan-tan parlours; and the gin h.e.l.ls, tracking down the ninth and last to the embrace of an enormous naked Somali lady in one of the shacks of mud walls and corrugated iron roofs behind the waterfront.

It was almost dawn when Zouga climbed wearily out of the whaler on to Black joke's deck and booted the ninth Hottentot down the forecastle ladder. He started for his own cabin, red-eyed and irritable, aching with fatigue when it occurred to him that he had not noticed Sergeant Cheroot amongst the dark figures in the whaler, and his penetrating voice and biting sarcasm had been silent on the return from the beach.

Zouga's mood was murderous as he landed once again, and picked his way through the narrow filth-choked alleys to the mud and iron shack. The woman made up four of Jan Cheroot. She was a mountain of polished dark flesh, gleaming with oil, each of her widespread thighs thicker than his waist, her great mammaries each as large as his head, and Jan Cheroot's head was buried between them as though he was drowning himself in exotic and abundant flesh so that his ecstatic cries were almost smothered.

The woman looked down at him fondly, chuckling to herself as she watched Sergeant Cheroot's upended b.u.t.tocks. They were skinny and a delicate shade of b.u.t.tercup yellow, but they seemed to blur with the speed of movement, and the shock waves they created were transferred into the mountain of flesh beneath him, creating ripples and waves that undulated through the woman's belly and elephantine haunches, travelling up to agitate the pendulous folds that hung from her upper arms, and at last breaking in a wobbling heaving surf of gleaming black flesh around Sergeant Cheroot's head.

On the final return to the gunboat, Sergeant Cheroot sat, a small dejected figure, in the bows of the whaler.

His post coital tristesse considerably enhanced by the buzzing in his ears and the ache in his head. Only Englishmen had the alarming habit of bunching up a hand suddenly, and then hitting with more effect than a man wielding a club or hurling a brick. Sergeant Cheroot found his respect for his new master increasing daily. You should be an example to the men, Zouga growled at him as he hoisted him up the ladder by the collar of his uniform jacket. I know that, Master, Cheroot agreed miserably.

"But I was in love."

Are you still in love? " Zouga demanded harshly. No, Master, with me love don't last too long, Cheroot a.s.sured him hurriedly. I am a modestly wealthy man, Clinton Codrington told Robyn seriously. "Since my days as a midshipman I have saved as much of my pay as I did not need to live by, and of recent years I have been fortunate in the matter of prize money. This, together with the legacy of my mother, would enable me to rare very comfortably for a wife."

They had lunched with the Portuguese Governor at his invitation and the vinho Verde that had accompanied the meal of succulent seafood and tasteless stringy beef had given Clinton a flush of courage.

Rather than returning immediately to the ship after the meal, he had suggested a tour of the princ.i.p.al city of the Portuguese possessions on the east coast of the African continent.

The Governor's dilapidated carriage rumbled over the rutted roads and splashed through the puddles formed by the overflow from the open sewers. A raucous flock of ragged child-beggars followed them, dancing in their dirty rags to keep pace with the bony, sway-backed mule that drew the carriage, and holding up their tiny pinkpalmed hands for alms. The sun was fierce but not as fierce as the smells.

It was not the appropriate setting for what Clinton Codrington had in mind, and with relief he handed Robyn down from the carriage, scattered the beggars by hurling a handful of copper coins down the dusty street, and hurried Robyn into the cool gloom of the Roman Catholic cathedral. The cathedral was the most magnificent building in the city, its towers and spires rising high above the hovels and shacks that surrounded it.

However, Robyn had difficulty in concentrating on Clinton's declaration in these popish surroundings, amongst the gaudy idols, saints and virgins in scarlet and gold leaf. The reek of incense and the flickering of the ma.s.sed banks of candles distracted her even though what he was saying was what she wanted to hear, she wished he had chosen some other place to say it.

That very morning she had been taken by a sudden spell of vomiting, and a mild nausea persisted even now.

As a physician she knew exactly what that heralded.

Before the courtesy visit to we Portuguese Governor'smouldering palace, she had tentatively decided that she would have to take the initiative. That attack of vapours had convinced her of the urgency of the situation, and she had pondered how she could induce Clinton Codrington to stake some sort of claim to the burden she was convinced she was carrying.

When Zouga had still lived at King's Lynn with Uncle William, she had discovered a cheaply printed novel of a most disreputable type concealed amongst the military texts on Zouga's desk. From a furtive study of this publication she had learned that it was possible for a woman to seduce a man, as well as the other way around. Unfortunately, the author had not provided a detailed description of the procedures. She had not even been certain if it were possible in a carriage, or whether anything should be said during the process, but now Clinton was obviating the necessity for experiment by a straightforward declaration. Her relief was tinged with shades of disappointment, after having been forced into the decision to carry out his seduction she had found herself looking forward to the experienceNow, however, she forced herself to a.s.sume an attentive expression and, when he hesitated, to encourage him with a nod or a gesture. Even though I am without powerful friends in the service, yet my record is such that I would never expect half pay appointment, and although it might sound immodest I would confidently look forward to hoisting my own broad pennant before I am fifty years of age."

It was typical of him that he was already thinking twenty five years ahead. It required an effort to prevent her irritation showing, for Robyn preferred to live in the present, or at least the immediately foreseeable future. I should point out that an Admiral's wife enjoys a great deal of social prestige, he went on comfortably, and her irritation flared higher. Prestige was something she had always intended to win at first hand, crusader against the slave trade, celebrated pioneer in tropical medicine, writer of admired books on African travel.

She could not contain it longer, but her voice was sweet and demure. "A woman can have a career as well as being a wife."

Clinton drew himself up stiffly. "A wife's place is in the home, he intoned, and she opened her mouth, then slowly closed it again. She knew she was bargaining from weakness, and when she was silent Clinton was encouraged. "To begin with a comfortable little house, near the harbour in Portsmouth. Of course, once there are children one would have to seek larger premises-, You would want many children? " she asked still sweetly, but with colour mounting in her cheeks. Oh yes, indeed. One a year, and Robyn recalled those pale drabs with whom she had worked, women with brats hanging from both b.r.e.a.s.t.s and every limb, with another one always in the belly. She shuddered, and he was immediately concerned. Are you cold? "No. No, please go on."

She felt trapped, and not for the first time resented the role that her s.e.x had forced upon her. Miss Ballantyne, Doctor Ballantyne, what I have been trying to say to you, is that I would be greatly honoured if you could find it in yourself to consent to become my wife."

Now when it came she was not really ready for it, and her confusion was genuine. Captain Codrington, this comes as such a surprise-'I do not see why. My admiration for you must be apparent, and the other day you led me to believe-" He hesitated, and then with a rush, "you even allowed me to embrace you."

Suddenly she was overcome with the urge to burst out laughing, if only he had known her further intentions towards him, but she skittered away from the subject, her expression as solemn as his.

When would we be able to marry? " she asked instead. Well, on my return to-'There is a British consul at Zanzibar, and you are bound there, are you not! she interrupted quickly. "He could perform the ceremony."

Clinton's face lit with slow, deep joy. "Oh Miss Ballantyne, does that mean, can I take it that -" He took a pace towards her, and she had a vivid image of the tiny house in Portsmouth bursting at the seams with little blond replicas of himself, and she took a quick pace backwards and went on hurriedly. I need time to think."

He stopped, joy faded and he said heavily, "Of course. "It means such a change in my life, I would have to abandon all my plans. The expedition, it's such a big decision. "I could wait a year, longer if necessary. Until after the expedition, as long as you wished, he told her earnestly, and she felt a flutter of panic deep in her belly. No, I mean I need a few days, that is all, and she laid her hand on his forearm. "I will give you an answer before we reach Quelimane. I promise you that."

Sheikh Yussuf was a worried man. For eight days the big dhow-rigged vessel had lain within sight of land, the single, huge lateen sail drooped from the long yard, the sea about her was velvet smooth during the day and afire with phosphorus during the long moonless, windless nights.

So deep and utter was the calm that not the slightest swell moved the surface. The dhow lay so still that she might have been hard aground.

The Sheikh was a master mariner who owned a fleet of trading vessels and who for forty years had threaded the seaways of the Indian Ocean. He knew intimately each island, each headland and the tricks of the tides that swirled about them. He knew the great roads that the currents cut across the waters the way a post coachman knows each turn and dip of the road between his stages, and he could run them without compa.s.s or s.e.xtant, steering only by the heavenly bodies a thousand miles and more across open water, making his unerring landfalls on the great horn of Africa, on the coast of India and back again on the island of Zanzibar.

In forty years he had never known the monsoon wind to fail for eight successive days at this season of the year.

All his calculations had been based on the wind standing steady out of the south-east, day and night, hour after hour, day after day.

He had taken on his cargo with that expectation, calculating that he could discharge again on Zanzibar Island within six days of loading. Naturally, a man expected losses, they were an integral part of his calculations. Ten percent losses was the very least, twenty was more likely, thirty was acceptable, forty was always possible and even losses of fifty percent would still leave the voyage in profit.

But not this. He looked up at the stubby foremast from which drooped the fifteen-foot-long scarlet banner of the Sultan of Zanzibar, beloved of Allah, ruler of all the Omani Arabs and, overlord of vast tracts of eastern Africa. The banner was faded and soiled as the lateen sail, both of them veterans of fifty such voyages, of calms and hurricanes, of baking sun and the driving torrential rains of the high monsoon. The golden Arabic script that covered the banner was barely legible now, and he had lost count of the number of times it had been taken down from the masthead and carried at the head of his column of armed men deep into the interior of that brooding land on the horizon.

How many times had that banner wafted out proudly, long and sinuous as a serpent on the breeze, as he brought his vessel up under the fort at Zanzibar Island.