Trade Wind (12 page)

“I’m afraid so. It’ll probably go on in the East for another century or so, but as far as the West is concerned the game is very nearly played out.”

“Game?” said Hero in incredulous distaste. “How can you possibly call anything so hideously cruel a ‘game’—or even attempt to defend it?”

“I’m not defending it. Only making money out of it.”

“Out of death and suffering?”

“Oh, I don’t think so: if you are suggesting that I am one of those subhuman fools whose idiot greed prompts them to thrust four hundred slaves into accommodation which is only fit for less than half that number of hogs. Personally, I’ve never lost a slave yet from an avoidable cause, and the trade would have lasted profitably for many more years, and without earning itself such a bad name, if others had had as much sense. But unfortunately there will always be a few greedy
cretins
who can be counted upon to ruin any really lucrative dodge.”

“And that is how you think of it—as a ‘lucrative dodge’? Have you no—no
compassion
?”

“No, I don’t think so. Compassion is an expensive luxury and one I can’t afford. And as far as I can remember no one ever had any for me.”

“I can’t believe that. Someone must have been kind to you—fond of you. Forgiven you things. Your mother—”

“She ran away with a dancing master when I was six.”

“Oh…Well then, your father.”

“If this is an attempt to coax me into telling you the sad story of my life,” said Captain Frost with a grin, “I feel it is only fair to warn you that you would find it intolerably dull.”

Miss Hollis regarded him with undisguised loathing, and having coldly informed him that she had already heard more than enough about him and was profoundly uninterested in his past, retired to her cabin in considerable dudgeon: firmly resolving to avoid his company for the remainder of her stay in his ship, and on no account to ask him any further questions.

She had not, however, been able to keep either of these admirable resolutions, for three nights later, aroused by the sound of a boat being lowered over the side, she had left her berth to investigate, and been startled to find that someone had not only blocked her view from both portholes by hanging heavy strips of coconut matting from the deck above, but had also bolted her cabin door from the outside.

Tugging at the handle in the hot darkness she became aware that the
Virago
was no longer moving, and that it was the unaccustomed silence that had made those other noises so clearly audible. Yet she could not believe that they were near land, for there was no sound of surf. The matting rasped against the side of the ship as the schooner rolled sleepily to the swell, and from behind it came a soft splash of oars that retreated until Hero could no longer hear them, and after a long interval returned again. A boat bumped alongside, and presently there were other noises; a murmur of voices and a familiar laugh. The squeak and whine of the windlass, and once again a boat pulling away…

Something was either being token off the ship or on to it, and quite suddenly Hero was sure that she knew what it was. They were taking on slaves! This, then, was what Captain Frost and his venal crew had been waiting for. A rendezvous with some sinister Arab dhow, presumably delayed by the storm (which would account for the loitering of the past week!) A dhow which was at that very moment engaged in transferring a human cargo to the dark hold of the
Virago
.

For a wild moment anger and shock almost betrayed her into hammering on the door and screaming to be let out, but the futility and foolishness of such an action came home to her in time. If the men out there were engaged in some ugly transaction that they did not wish her to witness, no one would come. Or if anyone did, it might well be the worse for her. For the moment, at least, there was nothing that she could do;—except register a solemn vow that as soon as she won free from this infamous ship she would do everything in her power to see that its owner was brought to justice and made to pay for his crimes.

“And I’ll do it, too!” Hero promised herself in a passionate whisper. She would find an opportunity the very next day to see for herself what cargo had been taken aboard, and if it proved to be what she suspected, she would tell Uncle Nat, who could be counted upon to inform the proper authority: presumably this British naval Lieutenant that Captain Fullbright had spoken of—Daniel Larrimore, who would “like to have the hanging of Rory Frost’.

She slept badly, and awakened late to find the cabin frill of sunshine and a sea breeze billowing the curtains as the
Virago
raced before the wind with all sails set. The matting that had covered the portholes had vanished, and when she tried the cabin door she found that it was no longer secured. But her breakfast that morning had included ripe figs and a fresh paw-paw, neither of which had figured on the menu before or would have kept for any length of time on board, and though Jumah, the Captain’s personal servant, spoke tolerable English and was fond of airing it, when she enquired where the fresh fruit had come from he affected not to understand her and replied affably in Arabic. Batty Potter having proved equally unhelpful. Hero had broken her resolution not to ask any further questions or enter into conversation with the
Virago
’s infamous owner.

“The fruit?” said Captain Frost, in no way disconcerted by her query:

“I hope there was nothing wrong with it? It came off a coastal dhow that we stopped to speak to last night. We lowered a boat and took on some supplies. I’m surprised we didn’t wake you.”

There was a faintly satirical note in his voice and a distinct glint of amusement in his regard, and Hero was seized with the uncomfortable suspicion that he was not only well aware that she had been awakened, but also that she had attempted to push the matting away from the porthole and had tried the handle of the door.

She said in a carefully controlled voice: “You did. But when I wished to come up on deck to see why we had stopped, I found that I was unable to do so because someone had locked the door.”

“Indeed? You should have called out,” said Captain Frost blandly. “Or perhaps you did so, and no one heard you?”

“You know very well that I did not,” retorted Hero crossly, “and that if I had, no one would have come. In fact I wouldn’t be a mite surprised if it was you yourself who locked me in!”

“It was. It seemed to me a wise precaution, and I see that my forethought was fully justified. It would not have done at all for you to have been seen on deck last night.”

“Because I might have seen something that you wished to conceal?”

“Not at all. Merely because the—er—gentlemen I happened to be meeting would not have understood your presence aboard my ship. They might have taken it amiss, and so I preferred that they should be kept in ignorance. There are a good many rough characters in this part of the world, Miss Hollis, and it does not pay to take chances with them.”

“Thank you. I will remember that,” said Hero meaningly. And was both disconcerted and unreasonably annoyed when Captain Frost laughed. The Captain, she considered, laughed a great deal too much and always at the wrong things. But he was to disconcert her to an even greater extent in the next few seconds:

“That eye of yours seems to be improving,” observed the Captain, looking her over critically. “In fact, with a little luck, your relatives may even be able to recognize you when we land.”

“You mean—you mean we really
are
going to Zanzibar?” demanded Hero breathlessly.

“Of course we are. Did you think I had kidnapped you?”

It was so exactly what she had thought that an uncontrollable wave of colour rose from the base of her throat to the roots of her cropped hair, temporarily dimming the rainbow hues that still surrounded her left eye and drawing another shout of laughter from the Captain.

“By God, you did! Well I’ll be damned! Hi—Batty, d’ye hear that? Our super-cargo thought we were kidnapping her. It’s not such a bad idea, now I come to think of it How much do you suppose they’d pay together back?”

Mr Potter, who with the aid of a pockmarked Arab named Hadir was busy laying a much-mended sail over most of the after-deck, made a rudely derisive noise, and the Captain grinned and said regretfully: “The trouble is, of course, that no one is ever going to believe we’ve got you unless we actually produce you, so I’m afraid it wouldn’t work. You see, Miss Hollis, you’re dead: lost overboard and drowned in mid-ocean. And as everyone must know that by now, anyone who might be interested enough to pay up would think we were spinning a very tall yarn if we said we’d got you. They’d want to see you before they parted with a dollar; and at pretty close quarters too, since no one is going to recognize you at long distance at the moment—not with that hair-cut and the state your face is in. No, it’s a pity, but I’m afraid that as a money-making proposition you’re no use to us. And just to reassure you, for anything in the nature of my personal pleasures I only kidnap pretty women.”

He slapped Miss Hollis encouragingly upon the shoulder in a manner that he might have employed towards a twelve-year-old schoolboy, and remarked unforgivably that he could only hope that her relatives would be pleased to have her back.

“Why should you suppose they might not be?” snapped Hero, betrayed into rudeness. (
Pretty women
, indeed!)

“Well, it depends on how much they think of you, doesn’t it? The majority of my relations, for instance, would be profoundly relieved if they heard that I’d been drowned at sea, and no bells would be rung if they subsequently discovered the report to be exaggerated.”

“I cannot say I am altogether surprised,” said Hero. “I guess if I had a nephew who repaid my hospitality by stealing my property while staying as a guest in my house, I should not feel any too kindly towards him either.”

If she had expected the Captain to be abashed she was much mistaken, for he only laughed and said: “I see Batty’s been telling tales out of school. No, I don’t suppose my uncle was any too pleased about that But then I wasn’t either. In fact the whole thing was a grave disappointment, for I’d always thought the old skinflint kept a really tidy sum in that safe, and though the amount we got out of it was not to be sneezed at, it wasn’t a fraction of what I reckoned he owed me. As for my aunt’s diamonds, they turned out to be very second-rate stuff and we got little more than a hundred guineas for the lot.”

“You would appear,” said Hero frostily, “to consider theft amusing. Possibly that is an English viewpoint.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. The English have always been great ones at grabbing everything they can lay hands on and then piously pretending that they only did it for the previous owner’s good. A hypocritical lot.”

Hero’s jaw dropped in an inelegant manner and she stared at him, momentarily rendered speechless.

“Now why are you looking at me like that? Surely it’s a well-known fact?”

“But I thought you were English.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Your voice…the way you talk…those books. The What are you, then?”

“Myself.”

“Do you mean,” said Hero, bewildered, “that you do not know who your parents were?”

“Oh, they were English. English of the English! The Frosts were probably sitting smugly in Kent when the Romans came, and they were certainly there when the Normans landed. But that doesn’t mean the country has to own me, or that I have to owe it anything.”

“Patriotism—” began Hero, but was not permitted to continue.

“Patriotism be damned. That whole concept is merely a combination of self-interest and sentimentality. You’re an American, aren’t you?”

“And proud of it!”

“Why? The herd instinct?
We mustangs are afar better lot than those vulgar pit-ponies or any horse that ever came from out of Arabia, while as for those impossible African zebras—!
That sort of thing?”

“Not at all. One’s ancestors—”

“A man is not responsible for his ancestors, so why should he accept credit or shoulder blame for anything they did? Or, for that matter, be judged in advance by the fact that he happens to have been born on one side or another of some imaginary line? It’s an archaic and dangerous idea and it’s quite time it became outmoded, since it leads to a deal of trouble. People are people; black, white, yellow or brown. You either like someone or you don’t, and the bit of earth they were born on shouldn’t have anything to do with it or be allowed to influence your judgement in any way. Yet it does. You, for instance—You haven’t even laid eyes on Zanzibar, but I’m willing to bet that you’ve already made up your mind that its people are a poor ignorant lot of heathens who are probably dishonest and certainly dirty, and all in crying need of the civilizing influence of the wonderful white man. Am I right?”

“No. Yes But then one knows…”

“I can see I am. And almost every white man in the island would agree with you, though there isn’t one of them who cares a snap of the fingers for the place or its people. They are only there for what they can get out of it for themselves or their firms or their countries. Yet the place that they regard as little better than a cess-pit was old Sultan Saïd’s idea of an earthly paradise. He fell in love with it at first sight and resented every minute he had to spend away from it; and he died trying to get back to it…and made very sure he would be buried there.”

The mockery had suddenly vanished from the Captain’s voice and been replaced by an odd note of regret—or could it have been affection?—that made Hero say curiously: “Did you know him?”

“Yes. I had the luck to do him a good turn once, and he never forgot it He was an amazing man, and a great one; though he should have known better than to make treaties with Western nations. There are a good many Europeans in Zanzibar now; merchants and consuls and consular staffs of half-a-dozen different nations. Every last one of them as convinced as you are that the native population can only derive benefit from contact with their superior civilizations, and must inevitably regard them with envy and admiration.”

“But they—the Westerners—
are
bringing them the benefits of civilization,” insisted Hero. “Even if only by example.”