already scattered wrecks upon the reefs and beaches of the Mozambique channel, or sailing southwards under prize crews. Nothing can save him, repeated Admiral Kemp, and then paused. His own career was finished also. He realized that, and he felt the deep injustice of it. For forty years he had put not a single foot wrong, and his retirement was so close, so very close. He shook off the lethargy of despair, and began to draft his orders.
The first was to all ships of his squadron, to detach immediately and to steam in search of Black joke. In despair he realized that it might take as much as six weeks for his orders to reach his commanders, for they were scattered across two oceans. It might also take as long again for them to search out the errant gunboat in the maze of islands and bays along the Mo ambique channel.
However, when they did so, Captain Codrington was to be relieved of his command with immediate effect.
Lieutenant Denham was to take over as temporary commander, with orders to bring Black joke into Table Bay as soon as possible.
Admiral Kemp was confident that he could assemble sufficient senior officers on the Cape Station to convene an immediate court-martial. It might help his own position a little if he could report to the First Lord that a savage sentence had already been handed down to Codrington.
Then there was a despatch to H. M. Consul in Zanzibar, suggesting he keep the Sultan reassured and quiescent until the situation could once more be brought under control, and until instructions could be forwarded from the Foreign Office in London regarding possible redress and compensation, although naturally at this stage, no promises or commitments were to be given the Sultan, beyond expressions of good faith and commiseration.
Then there was the onerous task of making his report to the Admiralty. There were no words to soften the actions of his subordinate, and his own responsibility.
Besides he had been a serving officer too long to make any such attempt. Yet when the bare facts were stated, even in the beloved unemotional jargon of the navy, they seemed so magnified that Admiral Kemp was himself utterly appalled, all over again. The packet-boat was delayed five hours while the Admiral completed, sealed and addressed this missive. It would be in London in less than a month.
His last despatch was addressed to the officer commanding Her Majesty's ship Black joke in person. And in it Admiral Kemp allowed himself to give expression to some of his own bitterness, taking a sour sadistic pleasure in weighing the relative effectiveness of such words as 'corsair' and 'pirate', or 'malicious' and 'irresponsible'.
He had his little masterpiece of venom written Out in five copies to be disseminated in every direction and by every available means that might most speedily bring the puppy to heel. Yet when they were sent, all he could do was wait, and that was the worst part of the affair. Uncertainty and inaction seemed to corrode his very soul.
He dreaded each new arrival in Table Bay, and whenever the signal gun on the hill above the town boomed its brief feather of gunsmoke, his spirit quailed and that sour ache of dread stabbed him in his guts.
Each new despatch lengthened the toll of destruction and depredation, until at last there was a report from the culprit himself, sewn up in a package of canvas and addressed to Admiral Kemp, delivered by the prize crew of a particularly valuable dbow over eighty feet long and of a hundred-ton burden.
The tone in which Captain Codrington listed his achievements infuriated the Admiral as much as the deeds themselves. In an almost casual opening paragraph, Captain Codrington recorded the addition of some million square miles of Africa to the Empire.
He had the grace to admit that his action may have exceeded his orders, and he explained away the discrepancy winningly.
It had been my firm intention to avoid scrupulously, whilst on this service, every act of a political nature.
However, I was forced to accept the cession of the kingdoms of Elat and Telfa by the entreaties of the Sheikh and the Imam, together with that of their people, who seek refuge from the inimical and savage acts of the Sultan of Zanzibar This was hard fare to serve their Lordships, especially the First Lord, Lord Somerset, who had always grudged the use of his men and ships to fight against slavery.
However, much worse was to follow. Captain Codrington went on to lecture the Admiral and to deliver a few homilies for their Lordships' instruction. By God's providence, an Englishman with no other force than the character of his noble nation has brought to these poor people salvation. Their Lordships must pardon me for using an unfashionable argument, a sneer at the Little Englanders, 'however, it is as clear to me as the African sun that God has prepared this continent for the only nation on earth that has the public virtue sufficient to govern it for its own benefit, and for the only people who take the revealed word for their moral law.'
Admiral Kemp gulped as he read it, swallowed the wrong way, and was prostrated with a coughing fit from which he recovered some minutes later to read on. in all the foregoing I have been influenced by no personal Motive Or interest, by no desire of vainglory, but my endeavours have solely been to use the powers granted me to the honour of my God, my Queen and to the benefit of my country and all mankind!
The Admiral removed his reading glasses and stared at the glass case of stuffed songbirds on the wall opposite him.
To write that, he is either the world's greatest fool or a brave man or both, he decided at last.
Admiral Kemp was wrong in his estimate. In fact, Clinton Codrington was having an attack of cockiness and self-importance occasioned by the sense of limitless power which this command had given him. He had been wielding this power for many months, and his judgement and good sense had warped. Yet he still truly believed that he was fulfilling, in this order, the will of God, his patriotic duty and the spirit of his orders from the Lords of the Admiralty.
He was also fully aware that he had demonstrated superior professional ability in carrying out a series of land and sea actions, nearly always against superior numbers, without a single reverse and with the loss of only three men killed in action and less than a dozen wounded. There was only one area in which Clinton had any reservations regarding the success of the patrol up to this time.
Huron was still on the coast, he had intelligence of her from a dozen sources. Mungo St. John was trading, paying top prices for only the best merchandise, handpicked by either himself or his mate, the bald yellow giant, Tippoo. They were taking only healthy, mature men and women fit to withstand the long voyage back around Good Hope and across the middle passage, and there was a shortage of this type of merchandise.
For Clinton every dawn brought the hope that Black Joke would once again raise that towering pyramid of beautiful white sails, but each day the hope faded slowly with the passage of the fierce tropical sun across the heavens, to be extinguished each night as the huge red orb plunged into the sea, and to be resurrected again with the next dawn.
