Once they missed the big American clipper by a single day. She had slipped out of the bay at Lindi twenty-four hours before Black Joke's arrival, after taking on fifty prime slaves. The watchers from the beach could not be certain if she had turned north or south, for she had made her offing below the horizon, and had been lost to sight from the shore before coming around on to her intended course.
Clinton guessed Huron would go south, and had steamed in pursuit for three days, over an empty sea, down a seemingly deserted coast with barren anchorages before admitting that St. John had sailed away from him again, and he was forced to abandon the hunt.
At the very least he knew that if Huron had turned north, St. John was still trading, and there was always a chance of another encounter. He prayed for it every evening. It was all that he needed to make this patrol a clean sweep, so that he could fly a broom from his masthead when he sailed into Table Bay again.
This time he had the sworn and witnessed depositions of the men who had sold St. John his slaves as proof positive that Huron was trading. He did not have to rely on the equipment clause, or the dubious rights of search.
He had his proof and somehow he knew his chance would come.
The tide was running at full flow for Clinton. He was imbued with a new sense of worthiness, a new, ironclad confidence in himself and his own good fortune. He carried himself differently, chin higher, shoulders squarer, and if his gait was not yet a swagger, it was at least an assured stride. He smiled more often and when he did there was a wicked curl to his upper lip and a devilish twinkle in the pale blue eyes. He had even grown a full mustache, golden and curling that gave him a piratical air, and his crew, who had always respected his cold precise management of the ship, but felt little affection for him, now cheered him when he came back on board from one of his forays ashore. Good old Tongs! ' It was his new nickname fromHammer and Tongs'. They had never had a pet name for him before, but now they were a proud ship, proud of themselves, and proud of their twenty-seven-year- old Old Man'. Give 'em hell, Tongs! ' they cheered behind him, as he led them, naked cutlass in hand, over the outer stockade of a barracoon with musket smoke swirling around his lanky figure. At 'em, the Jokers! ' they cheered themselves, as they leaped the gap between Black fake's rail and the deck of a slaving dhow, swinging their cutlasses, pistols popping as they drove the slavers down into their own holds and battened the hatches down on them, or chased them over the side where the sharks were cruising.
They knew they were creating a legend. Tongs and his jokers sweeping the slavers from the Mozambique channel, a hell of a story to tell the nippers back home, and a good slice of prize money to prove the tale.
It was in this mood that Black Joke sailed into Zanzibar harbour, the stronghold of the Omani Sultan, little Daniel into the lion's den. The gunners on the parapets of the fort, though they stood with the slow match burning in their hands, could not bring themselves to touch them to the huge bronze cannon as the ugly little gunboat came fussing up the Zanzibar roads.
Black Joke had her yards manned with neatly uniformed seamen. A spectacular display, geometrical white ranks of men against the backdrop of tropical anvilheaded thunder-clouds.
Her officers were in cocked hats and full ceremonial dress, uniform, swords, white gloves and white breeches, and as she made her turn into the inner harbour, Black Joke began firing her courtesy salute, which was a signal for most of the population to head for the hills, jamming the narrow alleyways of the old city with a lamenting torrent of refugees.
The Sultan himself fled his palace, and with most of his court took refuge in the British consulate, overlooking the harbour. I am not a coward, the Sultan explained bitterly to Sir John Bannerman, 'but the Captain of that ship is a madman. Allah himself does not know what he will do next.'
Sir John was a large man, of large appetite. He possessed a noble belly like the glacis of a mediaeval castle and full mutton-chop whiskers around a florid face, but the clear intelligent eyes, and the wide friendly mouth of a man of humanity and humour. He was a noted oriental scholar, and had written books of travel and of religious and political appraisal of the East, as well as a dozen translations of minor Arabic poets.
He was also a confirmed opponent of the slave trade, for the Zanzibar markets were held in the square below the windows of his residence and from his bedroom terrace he could watch on any morning the slaving dhows unloading their pitiful cargoes on the stone wharf they called, with cruel humour, the 'Pearl Gate'.
For seven years he had patiently negotiated a series of treaties with the Sultan, each one nipping a few more twigs off the flourishing growth which he detested, but found almost impossible to prune effectively, let alone root out entirely.
In all the Sultan's territories Sir John had absolute jurisdiction only over the community of Hindu traders on the island, for they were British subjects, and Sir John published a bulletin requiring them to free all their slaves forthwith, against a penalty of Si oo for non-compliance.
His bulletin made no mention of compensation, so the most influential of the merchants sent Sir John a defiance which was the Pushtu equivalent of 'The hell with you and your bulletins'.
Sir John, with his one good foot, personally kicked in the merchant's door, dragged him out from under his charpoy bed, dropped him to his knees with a fullblooded round-house punch, chained him around the neck and marched him through the city streets to the consulate and locked him in the wine cellar until the fine was paid and the slaves' manumission papers signed.
There had been no further defiance and no takers for the Hindu merchant's subsequent, privately circulated offer to pay another Sioo to anybody who would stick a knife between Sir John's ribs during one of his evening promenades through the old city. Thus it was that Sir John was still bluff and hale as he stood on his terrace puffing a cigar, his only indisposition was the gouty foot thrust into a carpet slipper. He watched the little black-hulled gunboat coming up the channel. She behaves like a flagship, he smiled indulgently, and beside him, Said the Sultan of Zanzibar, hissed like a faulty steam valve. El Sheetan! ' His wrinkled turkey neck turned bright red with impotent anger, his bony nose beaked like that of an unhappy parrot. 'He sails here, into my harbour, and my gunners stand by their cannons like dead men.
He who has beggared me, who has plunged my empire into ruins, what does he dare here? ' The answer that Clinton 'Tongs' Codrington would have given him was quite simple. He was carrying out to the letter the orders given him in Cape Town many months previously by Admiral Kemp, the Commander of the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean Squadron. You are further requested and required to take advantage of the first opportunity to call into the harbour of Zanzibar, where you will accord to his Royal Highness the Sultan of Omani full honours, while taking the advice of Her Majesty's Consul, Sir John Bannerman, as to reinforcing existing treaties between His Royal Highness and Her Britannic Majesty's Government.'
Which, being translated, was an instruction to show the Union Jack against a background of thirty-two pounder cannons, and by doing so remind the Sultan of his commitments under the various treaties. To teach the naughty old beggar to mind his P's and Q's, ' as Clinton explained cheerfully to Lieutenant Denham with a twirl of his new golden mustache. I would have thought, sir, that the lesson had already been given', Denham answered darkly. Not
