ports and towns of the coast, burning the churches and despoiling the monasteries, massacring the monks and the holy men.'
'I intend sailing to offer my services to the Prester to help him resist the pagan,' Hal told him.
'It is another crusade, and yours is a noble inspiration,' Welles applauded him. 'Many of the most sacred relics of Christendom are held by the holy fathers in the Ethiopian city of Aksum and in the monasteries in secret places in the mountains. If they were to fall into the hands of the pagIan, it would be a sad day for all Christendom.'
'If you cannot yourself go upon this sacred venture, will you not spare me a dozen of your men, for I am sore pressed for the lack of good sailors?' Hal asked.
Welles looked away. 'I have a long voyage ahead of me, and there are bound to be heavy losses among my crew when we visit the fever coast of the Gambia and make the middle passage of the Atlantic,'he mumbled.
'Think on your vows,' Hal urged him.
Welles hesitated, then shrugged. 'I will muster my crew, and you may appeal to them and call for volunteers to join your venture.'
Hal thanked him, knowing that Welles was on a certain wager. Few seamen at the end of a two-year voyage would forgo their share of profits and the prospect of a swift return home, in favour of a call to arms to aid a foreign potentate, even if he were a Christian. Only two men responded to Hal's appeal, and Welles looked relieved to be shot of them. Hal guessed that they were troublemakers and malcontents, but he could not afford to be finicky.
Before they parted, Hal handed over to Welles two packets of letters, stitched in canvas covers with the address boldly written on each. One was addressed to Viscount Winterton, and in the long letter Hal had penned to him he set out the circumstances of Captain Llewellyn's murder, and his own acquisition of the Golden Bough. He gave an undertaking to sail the ship in accordance with the original charter.
The second letter was addressed to his uncle, Thomas Courtney, at High Weald, to inform him of the death of his father and his own inheritance of the title. He asked his uncle to continue to run the estate on his behalf.
When at last he took leave of Welles, the two seamen he had acquired went with him back to the Golden Bough. From his quarterdeck Hal watched the top sails of the Rose of Durham drop below the southern horizon, and days afterwards the hills of Madagascar rise before him out of the north.
That night Hal, as had become his wont, came up on deck at the end of the second dog watch to read the traverse board and speak to the helmsman. Three dark shadows waited for him at the foot of the mainmast.
'Jiri and the others wish to speak to you, Gundwane,' Aboli told him.
They clustered about him as he stood by the windward rail. jiri spoke first in the language of the forests. 'I was a man when the slavers took me from my home,' he told Hal quietly. 'I was old enough to remember much more of the land of my birth than these others.' He indicated Aboli, Kimatti and Matesi, and all three nodded agreement.
'We were children, 'said Aboli.
'In these last days,' jiri went on, 'when I smelled the land and saw again the green hills, old memories long forgotten came back to me.
I am sure now, in my deepest heart, that I can find my way back to the great river along the banks of which my tribe lived when I was a child.'
Hal was silent for a while, and then he asked, 'Why do you tell me these things, jiri? Do you wish to return to your own people?'
Jiri hesitated. 'It was so long ago. My father and my mother are dead, killed by the slavers. My brothers and the friends of my childhood are gone also, taken away in the chains of the slavers.' He was silent awhile, but then he went on, 'No, Captain, I cannot return, for you are now my chief as your father was before you, and these are my brothers.' He indicated Aboli and the others who stood around him.
Aboli took up the tale. 'If Jiri can lead us back to the great river, if we can find our lost tribe, it may well be that we can find also a hundred warriors among them to fill the watch-bill of this ship.'
Hal stared at him in astonishment. 'A hundred men? Men who can fight like you four rascals? Then, indeed, the stars are smiling upon me again.'
He took all four down to the stern cabin, lit the lanterns and spread his charts upon the deck. They squatted around them in a circle, and the black men prodded the parchment sheets with their forefingers and argued softly in their sonorous voices, while Hal explained the lines on the charts to the three who, unlike Aboli, could not read.
When the ship's bell tolled the beginning of the morning watch, Hal went on deck and called Ned Tyler to him. 'New course, Mister Tyler. Due south. Mark it on the traverse board.'
Ned was clearly astounded at the order to turn back, but he asked no question. 'Due south it is.'
Hal took pity on him, for it was evident that curiosity itched him like a burr in his breeches. 'We're closing the African mainland again.'
They crossed the broad channel that separated Madagascar from the African continent. The mainland came up as a low blue smudge on the horizon and, at a good offing, they turned and sailed southwards once more along the coast.
Aboli and jiri spent most of the hours of daylight at the masthead, peering at the land. Twice Jiri came down and asked Hal to stand inshore to investigate what appeared to be the mouth of a large river. Once it turned out to be a false channel and the second time Jiri did not recognize it when they anchored off the mouth. 'It is too small. The river I seek has four mouths.'
They weighed anchor and worked out to sea again, then went on southwards. Hal was beginning to doubt Jiri's memory but he persevered. Several days later he noticed the patent excitement of the two men at the masthead as they stared at the land and gesticulated to each other. Matesi and Kimatti, who as part of the off-duty watch had been lazing on the forecastle, scrambled to their feet and flew up the shrouds to hang in the rigging and stare avidly at the land.
Hal strode to the rail and raised Llewellyn's brass-bound telescope to his eye. He saw the delta of a great river spread before them. The waters that spilled out from the multiple mouths were discoloured and carried with them the detritus of the swamps and the unknown lands that must lie at the source of this mighty river. Squadrons of sharks were feeding on this waste, and their tall, triangular fins zigzagged across the current.
Hal called Jiri down to him and asked, 'What do your tribe call this river?'
'There are many names for it, for the one river comes to the sea as many rivers. They are called Muselo and Inharnessingo and Chinde. But the chief of them is Zambere.'
'They all have a noble ring to them,' Hal conceded. 'But are you certain this is the river serpent with four mouths?' 'On the head of my dead father I swear it is.'
Hal had two men in the bows taking soundings as he crept inshore, and as soon as the bottom began to shelve steeply he dropped anchor in twelve fathoms. He would not risk the ship in the narrow inland waters and the convoluted channels of the delta. But there was another risk he was unwilling to face.
He knew from his father that these tropical deltas were dangerous to the health of his crew. If they breathed the night airs of the swamp, they would soon fall prey to the deadly fevers that were borne upon them, aptly named the malaria, the bad airs.
Sukeena's saddle-bags, which with her mother's jade brooch were her only legacy to Hal, contained a goodly store of the Jesuit's powder, the extract of the bark of the Cinchona tree. He had also discovered a large jar of the same precious substance among Llewellyn's stores. It was the only remedy against the malaria, a disease that mariners encountered in every known area of the oceans, from the jungles of Batavia and Further India to the canals of Venice, the swamps of Virginia and the Caribbean in the New World.
Hal would not risk his entire crew to its ravages. He ordered the two pinnaces swung up from the hold and assembled. Then he chose the crews for these vessels, which naturally included the four Africans and Big Daniel. He placed a falconer in the bows of each and had a pair of murderers mounted in the stems.
All the men in the expedition were heavily armed, and Hal placed three heavy chests of trade goods in each boat, knives and scissors and small hand mirrors, rolls of copper wire and Venetian glass beads.
He left Ned Tyler in charge of the Golden Bough with Althuda, and ordered them to remain anchored well offshore, and await his return, The distress signal would be a red Chinese rocket. only if he saw it was Ned to send the longboats in to find them.
'We may be many days, weeks even,' Hal warned. 'Do not lose patience. Stay on your station as long as you do not have word of us.'
Hal took command of the leading boat. He had Aboli and the other Africans in his crew. Big Daniel followed in the second.
Hal explored each of the four mouths. The water levels seemed low, and some of the entrances were almost sealed by their sand bars. He knew of the danger of crocodiles and would not risk sending men over the side to drag the boats over the bar. In the end he chose the river mouth with the greatest volume of water pouring through it. With the onshore morning breeze filling the lug sail and all hands at the oars they forced their way over the bar into the hot, hushed world of the swamps.
Tall
