The Ivory Trail Part 12

Tongues! Oh, music of eastern tongues, harmonied murmur of streets ahum!

Trade! Oh, frasila weights of clove--ivory--copra--copal gum-- Rubber--vanilla and tortoise-sh.e.l.l! The methods change.

The captains come.

I was old when the clamor o' Babel's end (All seas were chartless then!) Drove forth the brood, and Solitude Was the newest quest of men.

I lay like a gem in a silken sea Unseen, uncoveted, unguessed Till scented winds that waft afar Bore word o' the warm delights there are Where ground-swells sing by Zanzibar Long rhapsodies of rest.

Wild, oh wilder than winter blasts my wet skies shriek when the winds are freed.

Mild, oh milder than virgin mirth is the laugh o' the reefs where sea-birds feed, Screaming and skirling and down again. (Though the sea-birds warn do captains heed?)

There is no public landing wharf at Zanzibar. Pa.s.sengers have to submit their persons into the arms of loud-lunged Swahili longsh.o.r.emen, who recognize one sole and only point of honor: neither pa.s.senger nor luggage shall be dropped into the surf.

Their invariable habit, the instant the view-halloa is raised, is to scamper headlong, pounce on the victim and pull him apart (or so it feels) until fortune, superior strength, or some such element decides the point; and then more often than not it is the victim's fate to be carried between two men, each hold of a thigh, each determined to get ash.o.r.e or to the boat first, and each grimly resolved not to let go until three times the proper fee shall have been paid. Of only these two things let the pa.s.senger a.s.sure himself--fight how he may, he will neither escape their clutches nor get wet. Rather they will hold him upside-down until the contents of his pockets fall into the surf. Dry on the beach or into the boat they will dump him. And whatever he shall pay them will surely be insufficient.

But we had a privy councilor of England of our party, and favors were shown us that never fall to the lot of ordinary travelers. Opposite the Sultan's palace is the Sultan's private wharf, so royal and private that it is a prison offense to trespa.s.s on it without written permission. Because of his official call at the Residency, and of his card left on the Sultan, wires had been pulled, and a pompous individual whose black face sweated greasily, and whose palm itched for unearned increment, called on Monty very shortly after breakfast with intimation that the wharf had been placed at our disposal, since His Highness the Sultan desired to do us honor.

So when the B. I. steamer dropped anchor in the great roadstead shortly after noon we were taken to the wharf by one of the Sultan's household--a very civil-spoken Arab gentleman--and three English officers met us there who made a fuss over Monty and were at pains to be agreeable to the rest of us. While we stood chatting and waiting for the boat that should row us and belongings the mile-and-a-half or so to the steamer, I saw something that made me start. Fred gazed presently in the same direction.

"Johnson is number one!" he said, as if checking off my mental processes. He meant Ha.s.san. "Number two is Georges Coutla.s.s, our friend the Greek. Number three is--am I drunk this early in the day?--what do you see?--doesn't she look to you like?--by the big blind G.o.d of men's mistakes it's--Monty! Didums, you deaf idiot, look! See!"

At that everybody naturally looked the same way. Everybody nodded.

Coutla.s.s the Greek, and Ha.s.san, reputed nephew of Tippoo Tib, were headed in one boat toward the steamer, the worse for the handling, but right side up and no angrier than the usual pa.s.senger. Following them was another boat containing a motley a.s.sortment of Arabs and part-Arabs, who might, or might not be a.s.sociated with them.

On the beach still, surrounded yet by a swarm of longsh.o.r.emen who yelled and fought, Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon and her Syrian maid stood at bay. Her two Swahili men-servants were overwhelmed and already being carried to a boat. Her luggage was being borne helter-skelter after them, and another boat waited for her just beyond the belt of surf, the rowers standing up to yell encouragement at the sweating pack that dared not close in on its victims. Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon appeared to have no other weapon than a parasol, but she had plainly the upper hand.

"She has a way with her with natives," said the senior officer present.

"It's a pity," said Monty. "I mean, one scarcely likes to use this wharf and watch that."

"Quite so. Yet we daren't accord her official recognition. She'd be certain to make capital out of it. We're awfully glad she's going.

The Residency atmosphere is one huge sigh of relief. We would like to speed the parting guest, but it mayn't be done. However, you'll know there are others not so particular. I imagine her friends are late for the appointment."

"Where's she going?" asked Monty.

"British East Africa."

"Mombasa?"

"And then on. She has drafts on a German merchant in Nairobi."

From that moment until we were safely in our quarters on the steamer Monty's att.i.tude became one of rigid indifference toward her or anything to do with her. The British officers went out to the steamer with us, but all the way Monty only talked of the climate, trade conditions, and the other subjects to which polite conversation of Africa's east coast is limited. Fred kept nudging him, but Monty took no notice. Yerkes whispered to Fred. Then I heard Fred whisper to Monty in one of those raucous asides that he perfectly well knows can be heard by everybody.

"Why don't you ask 'em about her, you a.s.s?"

But Monty refused to rise. He talked of the bowed and ancient slaves of Zanzibar, who refused in those days to be set free and afforded prolific ground for attack on British public morals by people whose business it is to abuse England for her peccadillos and forget her virtues.*

--------------- * In 1914 there were still thousands of slaves in German East, although the German press and public were ever loudest in their condemnation of British conditions.

We reached the ship, and were watching our piles of luggage arrive up the accommodation ladder when the solution of Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon's problem appeared. She arrived alongside in the official boat of the German consulate, a German officer in white uniform on either hand, and the German ensign at the stern.

"Pretty fair impudence, paying official honors to our undesirables, yet I don't see what we can do," said the senior from the Residency.

Yerkes drew me aside.

"Did you ever see anything more stupidly British?" he demanded.

"It's as obvious as the nose on your face that she's up to some game.

It's as plain as twice two that the Germans are backing her whether the British like it or not. Look at those two Heinies now!"

We faced about and watched them. After bowing Lady Waldon to her cabin, they approached our party with brazen claim to recognition--and received it. They were met, and spoken to apparently as cordially as if their friendship had been indisputable.

"Did you ever see anything to beat it? Why not kick 'em into the sea?

Either that woman's a crook or she isn't. If she isn't, then the British have treated her shamefully, turning their backs on her. But we know she is a crook! And so do they. The Germans know it, too, and they're flaunting her under official British noses! They're using her to start something the British won't like, and the British know it!

Yet she's going to be allowed to travel to British territory on a British ship, and the Heinies are shaken hands with! If you complained to Monty I bet he'd say, 'Don't talk fight unless you mean fight!'"

"Monty might also add, 'Don't talk-fight!'" said I.

"Oh, rot!" Will answered. "British individuals may bridle a bit, but their government'll shut its eyes until too late, whatever happens!

You mark my words!"

We strolled back toward our party in great discontent, I as much as he, never supposing there was another country in the world that could so deliberately shut its eyes to dog's work until absolutely forced to interfere, by a hair not quite too late.

Coutla.s.s and Ha.s.san traveled second-cla.s.s--the Arab and half-Arab contingent third--and none of them troubled us, at present, except that Will swore at sight of Coutla.s.s swaggering as if the ship and her contents were all his.

"To hear him brag you'd believe the British government afraid of him!"

he grumbled.

But an immediate problem drove Coutla.s.s out of mind. Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon had been given a cabin in line with ours, at the end of our corridor. Her maid, and her two Swahili servants were obliged to pa.s.s our doors to get to her cabin at all. As nearly all ships' cabins on those hot routes do, ours intercommunicated by a metal grill for ventilating purposes, and a word spoken in one cabin above a whisper could be heard in the next.

Fred was the first to realize conditions. He opened his door in his usual abrupt way to visit Monty's cabin and almost fell over the Syrian maid, her eye at Monty's key-hole--a little too early in the game to pa.s.s for sound judgment, as Fred was at pains to a.s.sure her.

The alarm being given, we locked our cabin doors, repaired to the smoking-room, and ordered drinks at a center table where no eavesdropper could overhear.

"It's one of two things," said Monty. He had his folding board out, and we did not doubt he would play chess from there to London. "Either they know exactly where that ivory is, or they haven't the slightest idea."

"My, but you're wise!" said Will.

Monty ignored him. "They suspect us of knowing. They mean to prevent our getting any of it. If they do know, they've some reason of their own for not getting it themselves at present. If they don't know, they suspect we know and intend to claim what we find."

"How should they think we know?" objected Will. "The first we ever heard of the stuff was in the lazaretto in Zanzibar."

"True. Juma told us. Juma probably told them that we told him.

Natives often put the cart before the horse without the slightest intention of lying."

"All the same, why should they believe him?"

"Why not? Zanzibar's agog with the story--after all these years. The ivory must have been buried more than a quarter of a century ago. Some one's been stirring the mud. We arrive, unexpectedly from nowhere, ask questions about the ivory, make plans for British East Africa--and there you are! The people who were merely determined to get the stuff jump to the false conclusion that we really know where it is."