Her shoes were of the lace-up type that women call "sensible."
On her long lovely legs they looked almost frivolous.
Her hair was drawn severely back to expose a long swan neck. The hair was fine and silken, sun-bleached, in places, almost white and shaded over her high broad forehead to the colour of wheat and autumn leaves.
Gareth recovered first. "Miss Camberwell, of course. I know your work. Your column is syndicated in the Observer." She looked at him without expression, remarkably immune to the celebrated Swales smile.
Her eyes, he noticed, were serious and level, sage green in colour, but shot with speckles of tawny gold.
Jake"s match burned his fingers and he swore. She turned to him and he stood up quickly.
"I didn"t expect a woman."
"You don"t like women?" Her voice was pitched low and had a husky tone that raised goose b.u.mps on Jake"s forearms.
"Some of my favourite people are women." He saw that she was tall, reaching almost to his shoulder, and that her body had a poised athletic carriage. She held her head at a haughty angle which emphasized the strong independent line of mouth and jaw.
"In fact, I can"t think of anyone I like more." And she smiled for the first time. It had surprising warmth, and Jake saw that her front teeth were slightly uneven one pushed out of line with the other. He stared at it fascinated for a moment, then he looked up into the appraising green eyes.
"Do you drive a car?" he asked seriously, and her smile turned to surprised laughter.
"I do." said Vicky, laughing. "I also ride a horse and a bicycle, I can ski, pilot an aeroplane, play snooker and bridge, sing, dance and play the piano."
"That will do," Jake laughed with her. "That will do just fine." Vicky turned back to the Prince. "What is all this about, Lij Mikhael?" she asked. "Just what do these two gentlemen have to do with our plans?" The towering purple hull of the Dunnottar Castle swung slowly across the back-drop of palm trees and the high sun-gilded ranges of c.u.mulus cloud, as she pulled her anchors and came around for the harbour entrance.
At the rail of the upper deck, the tall figure of the Prince was flanked by the white-robed figures of his staff, and as the ship increased speed and kicked up a white sparkling bow wave, he lifted an arm in a gesture of farewell.
Swiftly, the shape of the liner dwindled away into the limitless eastern ocean as she made her offing before turning northwards once more.
The four figures on the wharf lingered after it had disappeared, staring out at the horizon whose long sweep was uninterrupted except by the tiny white triangular sails of the fishing fleet coming in off the banks.
Jake spoke first. "We"ll have to find digs for Miss Camberwell. And at the thought, both he and Gareth made a grab for her single battered portmanteau and the typewriter in its leather case.
"Spin you for it," suggested Gareth, and an East African shilling appeared in his hand.
"Tails,"decided Jake.
"Rough luck, old son," Gareth commiserated, and returned the coin to his pocket. "I"ll take care of Miss Camberwell-" he went on, " then I"ll start looking for a ship to take us up coast. In the meantime, I suggest you have another look at those cars." As he spoke, he hailed a ricksha from the row which waited at the head of the wharf.
"Remember, Jake, it was one thing driving them down to the harbour but an altogether different matter driving them through two hundred miles of desert. You"d best make sure we don"t have to walk home, he advised, and handed Vicky Camberwell into the ricksha. "Driver, advance!" he called, and with a cheery wave they jogged away up town.
"It looks as though we are on our own, sir," said Gregorius, and Jake grunted, still staring after the departing ricksha. "I think I should also find accommodation," and Jake roused himself.
"Come along, lad. You can doss down in my tent for the few days before we leave." And then he grinned. "I hope you won"t be offended if I wish it was Miss Camberwell rather than you, Greg." The boy laughed delightedly. "I understand your feelings but perhaps she snores, sir."
"No girl who looks like that could possibly snore," Jake told him. "And another thing don"t call me "sir", it makes me nervous. My name"s Jake." He picked up one of Greg"s bags. "We"ll walk," he said. "I have a horrible hollow feeling that it"s going to be a long weary wait until next the eagle screams." They set off along the dusty unpaved verge of the road.
"You said you own a Morgan? "Jake asked.
"That"s right, Jake." you know what makes it move?"
"The internal combustion engine."
"Oh brother," applauded Jake. "That is a flying start. You have just been appointed second engineer get your sleeves rolled up." Gareth Swales had a theory about seduction which in twenty years he had never had reason to revise.
ladies liked the company of aristocrats, they were all of them basically sn.o.bs and a coat of arms usually made the coldest of them swoon. No sooner had they settled into the padded seats of the ricksha, than he turned upon Vicky Camberwell the full dazzling beam of his wit and charm.
No one who had built up an international reputation in the hard field of journalism by the age of twenty-nine could be expected to lack perception, or be naive in the wicked ways of the world. Vicky Camberwell had made a preliminary judgement of Gareth within minutes of meeting him.
She had known others with the same urbane good looks and meticulous grooming, the light bantering tone and the steely glint in the eye. Rogue, she had decided and every second in his company confirmed the initial judgement but d.a.m.ned good-looking rogue, and very funny rogue with the exaggerated accent and turn of speech which she had recognized immediately as a huge put-on. She listened with amus.e.m.e.nt as he set out to impress with his lineage.
"As the colonel used to say we always referred to my old man as the colonel." Gareth"s father had indeed died a colonel, but not in an ill.u.s.trious regiment, as the rank suggested. He had worked his way up from the lowly rank of constable in the Indian police.
"Of course, the family estates were from my mother"s side-" His mother. had been the only daughter of an unsuccessful baker, and the family estate had comprised the mortgaged premises in Swansea.
"The colonel was always a bit of a rogue, and moved with a wild crowd, you know. Fast ladies and slow horses. The estates went to the block, I"m afraid." Victims themselves of the grinding injustices of the British cla.s.s system, mother and father had devoted themselves to lifting their only son beyond that invisible barrier that divides the middle from the upper cla.s.ses.
"Of course, I was at Eton and he was mostly on foreign service.
Wish I"d got to know the old devil better. He must have been a wonderful character-" Entrance to the school had been a.s.sisted by the Commissioner of Police, himself an old Etonian. The mother"s small inheritance and the greater part of the father"s salary went into the costly business of turning the son into a gentleman.
"Killed in a duel, would you believe it. Pistols at dawn.
He was a romantic, too much fire in his veins." When the cholera took the mother, the father"s salary was insufficient to meet the bills that a young man casually ran up when he mixed sociably with the sons of dukes. In India, bribery was a convention, a way of living but the colonel was found out. It was indeed pistols at dawn. The colonel rode out into the dark Indian forest with his Webley service pistol, and his bay mare trotted back to the stables an hour later with an empty saddle and the reins trailing.
"Had to leave Eton, naturally." Under considerable duress.
It was coincidence that Gareth"s friendship with the house master"s daughter took place at the same time as the colonel"s last ride, but at least it allowed Gareth to leave in a blaze of glory, as Lij Mikhael remarked, rather than as a n.o.body whose fees had not been met.
He went out into the world with the speech, the manners and the tastes of a gentleman but without the means to support them.
"Luckily they were having this war at the time " and even a regiment like the Duke"s were not enquiring too deeply into the private means of their new officers. Eton was sufficient recommendation, and, with the help of the German machine guns, promotion was swift.
However, after the armistice, things were back to normal and it required three thousand a year for an officer to support himself in the style the regiment expected. Gareth moved on, and had kept moving ever since.
Vicky Camberwell listened to him, fascinated despite herself She knew that this was the cobra dance before the chicken, she knew herself well enough to realize that part of the attraction he held for her was the very devilry and roguishness she had so readily recognized.
There had been others like this one. Her job took her to the trouble spots of the world, and men of this breed were attracted to the same hot spots. With these men there was always the excitement and danger, the thrill and the fun but inevitably there was also the sting and the pain in the end.
She tried not to respond, wishing the ride would end, but Gareth"s sallies were too much for her and as the ricksha drew up in front of the Royal Hotel entrance, she could not resist the almost suffocating urge to laugh. She threw back her head, shaking her shining pale hair in the wind as she let it ring out.
Gareth had learned also to use the calibre of a woman"s laughter as a yardstick. Vicky laughed with an unaffected gaiety, a straightforward physical response that he found rea.s.suring, and he took her arm possessively as he helped her out of the ricksha.
He showed her through the royal suite with a proprietorial air.
"Only one suite in the place. Balcony looks out over the gardens, and you get the sea breeze in the evening." And, "Only private loo in the building, even one of those French jobs for sluicing the old privates, you know." And, "The bed is quite extraordinary, like sleeping on a cloud and all that rot. Never experienced anything like it."
"Is this where I am to stay?" Vicky asked, with a small-girl innocence.
"Well, I thought we could make some sort of arrangement, old girl." And she was left with no doubts as to the type of arrangement Gareth Swales had in mind.
"You are very kind, major," she murmured, and crossed to the handset of the telephone.
"This is Miss Camberwell. Major Swales is vacating the royal suite for me. Please have a servant move his clothes to alternative accommodation."
"I say-" gasped Gareth, and she covered the mouthpiece and smiled at him. "It"s so sweet of you." Then she listened to the manager"s voice. "Oh dear," she said. "Well, if that"s the only room you have vacant, it will just have to do then, I am sure the major has experienced more uncomfortable billets." When Gareth saw the room that was now his, he tried honestly to remember humbler and less comfortable billets.
The Chinese prison in Mukden had been cooler and not placed directly over the boisterous uproar of the public bar, and the front line dugout during the winter of 1917 at Arras had been more s.p.a.cious and better furnished.
The next three days Gareth Swales spent at the harbour, drinking tea and whisky in the office of the harbour master, riding out with the pilot to meet every new vessel as it crossed the bar, jogging in a ricksha along the wharf to speak with the skippers of dhows and Tuggers, rusty old coal-burners and neater, newer oil, burners, or rowing about the harbour in a hired ferry to hail the vessels that lay at anchor in the roads.
His evenings he spent plying Victoria Camberwell with charm, flattery and vintage champagne for all of which she seemed to have an insatiable appet.i.te and complete immunity. She listened to him, laughed with him and drank his champagne, and at midnight excused herself prettily, and nimbly side-stepped his efforts to press her to his snowy shirt-front or get a foot in the door of the royal suite.
By the morning of the fourth day, Gareth was understandably becoming a little discouraged. He thought of taking a bucket of Tusker out to Jake"s camp and cheering himself up with a little of the American"s genial company.
However, he did not relish having to admit failure to Jake, SO he fought off the temptation and took his usual ricksha ride down to the harbour.
During the night a new vessel had anch.o.r.ed in the outer roads and Gareth examined her through his binoculars. She was salt-fir ned and dirty, (Id and scarred with a dark nondescript hull and a ragged crew, but Gareth saw that her rigging was sound and that although she was schooner rigged with masts which could spread a ma.s.s of canvas, yet she had propeller drive at the stern probably she had been converted to take a diesel engine under the high p.o.o.p. She looked the most likely prospect he had yet seen in the harbour and Gareth ran down the steps to the ferry and exuberantly tipped the oarsman a shilling over his usual fare.
At closer range the vessel seemed even more disreputable than she had at a distance. The paintwork proved to be a mottled patchwork of layer peeling from layer, and it was clear what the sanitary arrangements were aboard. The sides were zebra-striped with human excrement.
Yet closer still, Gareth noticed that the planking was tight and sound beneath the execrable paint cover, and her bottom, seen through the clear water, was clean copper and free of the usual fuzzy green beard of weed. Also her rigging was well set up and all sheets had the bright yellow colour and resilient took of new hemp. The name on her stern was in Arabic and French, HirondeUe, and she was Seych.e.l.les registered.
Gareth wondered at her purpose, for she was certainly a ringer, a thoroughbred masquerading as a cart horse. That big bronze propeller would drive her handily, and the hull itself looked fast and sea-kindly.
Then as he came alongside he smelled her, and knew precisely what she was. He had smelled that peculiar odour of polluted bilges and suffering humanity before in the China Sea. He had heard it said that it was an odour that could never be scoured from a hull, not even sheep dip and boiling salt water would cleanse it. They said that on a dark night, the patrol boats could smell a slaver from over the horizon.
A man who made his daily bread buying and selling slaves would be unlikely to baulk at a mere trifle like gun running decided Gareth, and hailed her.
"Ahoy, HirondeLle!" The response was hostile, the closed dark faces of the ragged crew stared down at the ferry. They were a mixed batch, Arab, Indian, Chinese, Negro and there was no answer to his hail.
Standing in the ferry, Gareth cupped his hands to his mouth and, with the Englishman"s unconscious arrogance that a.s.sumes all the world speaks English, called again.
"I want to speak to your captain." Now there was a stir under the p.o.o.p and a white man came to the rail. He was swarthy, darkly sunburned and so short that his head barely showed above the gunwale.
"What you want? You police, hey?" Gareth guessed he was Greek or Armenian. he wore a dark patch over one eye, and the effect was theatrical. The good eye was bright and stony as water-washed agate.
"No police!" Gareth a.s.sured him. "No trouble," and produced the whisky bottle from his coat pocket and waved it airily.
The Captain leaned out over the rail and peered closely at Gareth.
Perhaps he recognized the twinkle in the eye and the jaunty piratical smile that Gareth flashed up at him. It often takes one to know one.
Anyway, he seemed to reach a decision and he snapped an order in Arabic. A rope ladder tumbled down the side.
"Come," invited the Captain. He had nothing to hide.
On this leg of his voyage he carried only a cargo of baled cotton goods from Bombay. He would discharge this here at Dares Salaam before continuing northwards to make a nocturnal landfall on the great horn of Africa, there to take on his more lucrative cargo of human wares.
As long as the merchants of Arabia, India and the East still offered huge sums for the slender black girls of the Danakil and Galla, men like this would brave the British warships and patrol boats to supply them.
"I thought we might drink a little whisky together and talk about money," Gareth greeted the Captain. "My name is Swales. Major Swales." The Captain had trained his oiled black hair into a queue that hung down his back. He seemed to cultivate the buccaneer image.
"My name is Papadopoulos." He grinned for the first time.
"And the talk of money is sweet like music." He held out his hand.
Gareth and Vicky Camberwell came to Jake"s camp in the mahogany forest, bearing gifts.
"This is a surprise," Jake greeted them sardonically as he straightened up from the welding set with the torch still flaring in his hand. "I thought you two had eloped."
"Business first, pleasure later." Gareth handed Vicky down from the ricksha. "No, my dear Jake, we have been working hard." J can see that. You look really worn out with your labours." Jake doused the welding torch and accepted the bucket of Tusker beer. He broached two bottles -immediately, handing one to Greg and lifting the other to his own lips. He wore only a pair of greasy khaki shorts.
When he lowered it, he grinned. "But, what the h.e.l.l, I was dying of thirst and so I forgive you."
"You have saved our lives, Major Swales and Miss Camberwell," agreed Greg, and saluted them with the de wed bottle.
"What on earth is this?" Gareth turned to inspect the ma.s.sive construction on which Jake and Greg had been working, and Jake patted it proudly.
"It"s a raft." He circled the complicated platform of empty oil drums with its decking of timber slats, indicating its finer features with the half-empty beer bottle.
"Armoured cars don"t swim, and we have to land them on a shelving beach. It"s unlikely we will be able to get within a hundred yards of the sh.o.r.e. We"ll float them off." Vicky was looking at the fine muscling of Jake"s shoulders and arms, at the flat belly and the dark pelt of hair that covered his chest, but Gareth was fascinated by the crudely constructed raft.
"I was going to talk to you about landing the cars, and suggest something like this," Gareth said, and Jake lifted an eyebrow at him in disbelief.
"All we must make sure of is that the vessel that lands us has a derrick strong enough to swing the cars outboard."
"What do they weigh?"
"Five tons each."
"Fine, the HirondeUe can handle that."
"The Hirondelle?"
"The vessel that"s transporting us."
"So you have been working."
Jake laughed. "I would never have believed it of you. When do we sail?"
"Dawn, the day after tomorrow. We will load during the night not wanting to advertise our cargo and we will sail at first light."
"That doesn"t give me much time to teach Miss Camberwell to drive one of the cars." Jake turned to her now, and once again felt the thrill of looking into those speckled eyes of green and gold. "I"m going to need a deal of your time."
"That"s one thing I"ve got plenty of at the moment." For Vicky the interlude in Dares Salaam had served to rest her tired and strained nerves. her previous a.s.signment at Geneva had been irksome and wearying. She had spent the last few days exploring the ancient port and writing a two-thousand-word filler on its origins and history. She had enjoyed Gareth Swales"s attentions and the by-play of avoiding his more serious advances. Now she was becoming aware of Jake Barton"s smouldering admiration. Nothing like being pursued by two tough, dangerous and forceful males to relax a girl, she thought, and smiled at Jake, enjoying his reaction, and watching Gareth Swales bridle and move in to intervene.
"I can give Vicky a bit of instruction on the jolly old machines, don"t want to take you off important work." Vicky did not turn her head, but went on smiling at Jake.