Jim and Louisa began work on the construction of their own private quarters within the walls of the fort. With so many willing hands to join in the work, it was less than a week before they vacated the wagon that for so long had been their home, and moved under a thatched roof between solid walls of sun-baked brick.
Then there were darker matters to address. Rashood was brought out in his chains from the cell in the fort, which had originally been intended as a cellar. Dorian and Mansur who were, by the law of Islam, the judges and the executioners, took him into the forest far out of sight and earshot of the fort. They were gone for only a few hours, but when they returned they were grim of countenance, and Rashood was no longer with them.
The next day Tom convened a session of the family council. For the first time Louisa Courtney attended as the newest addition to the clan. As the eldest, Tom explained the decisions that faced them. 'Thanks to Jim and Louisa we are heavily overstocked with ivory. The best markets are still Zanzibar, the factories on the Coromandel Coast or at Bombay in the realm of the Great Mogul. Zanzibar is in the hands of Caliph Zayn al-Din, so that port is closed to us. I will stay on here at Fort Auspice to conduct company business, and I will need Jim to help me. Dorian will take the ships north, laden with as much of the ivory as they can carry, though I doubt that will be even a quarter of our total stock. When it has been sold he has even more pressing business in Muscat.' He looked at his younger brother. 'I will ask Dorian to explain it to you.'
Dorian removed the ivory mouthpiece of his hookah from between his teeth, which were still white, even and without gaps. He looked around the circle of well-beloved faces. 'We know that Zayn al-Din was ousted by a revolutionary junta in Muscat. Both Batula and Kumrah were able to obtain certain confirmation of that on their last voyage to Oman. Kadem ibn Abubaker,' Dorian's handsome features darkened as he pronounced the name of Yasmini's murderer, 'purported to bring me an invitation from the junta, to take Zayn al-Din's place on the Elephant Throne, and to lead the battle against him. We don't know if the junta are truly trying to find me, or if it was merely another lie to try to entice
me into Zayn's clutches. In any event, I refused for the sake of Yasmini, but in attempting to protect her I condemned her to death.'
Dorian's voice faltered, and Tom cut in gruffly, 'You are too harsh on yourself, brother. No man living could have foreseen the consequences.'
'Nevertheless Yasmini is dead by Zayn's orders and by the bloody hands of Kadem. There is no surer way for me to avenge her death than by sailing to Oman and throwing in my lot with the revolutionaries in Muscat.'
Mansur got up from his stool at the foot of the long table and went to stand at Dorian's shoulder. 'If you will allow it, I will sail with you, Father, and take my place at your right hand.'
'Not only will I allow it, I will welcome you with all my heart.'
That is settled, then,' said Tom briskly. 'Jim and his bride will be here to help Sarah and me, so we will not be short-handed and we can spare Mansur. When do you plan on sailing, brother?'
The trade winds will give way to the monsoon within six weeks. The winds should stand fair towards the end of next month,' Dorian replied. That will give us time to make the preparations.'
'We will strip all the remaining cannon out of the ships to give you more burthen for the ivory,' Tom said. 'Besides, we can use them here in the fort to bolster our defences. We can never be certain that Keyser has not smelt us out. Then there are these marauding Nguni imp is sweeping through the land. Jim has routed one group under Manatasee, but we know from the fugitives who have come in to us that there are others just as savage running amok out there. Once you have sold the ivory you will be able to buy new guns in India. There are handy armourers in the Punjab. I have seen their work, and they make excellent nine- pounders. Just the right weight and length of barrel for our hulls.'
When the guns had been lifted out of the schooners, and all the powder and shot with them, they were ferried ashore in the longboats, dragged up the hill by teams of oxen and set in the earth emplacements around the fort.
'Well, that should do nicely.' Tom eyed the new defences with satisfaction. 'It would take an army with siege machines to subdue us. I think we are safe from marauding tribes, or even from any force that Keyser might care to send against us once he gets wind of where we are.'
Relieved of the cannon, the schooners rode lightly at anchor, showing much of the copper sheeting on their bottoms. 'We will soon find ballast to restore their trim,' Dorian promised, and he ordered the loading of the ivory and the refilling of the water casks.
oince Yasmini's murder Dorian had been cast into sudden moods of
deep melancholy. He seemed prematurely aged by grief. There were new strands of pure silver in his red-gold hair and beard, and fresh lines deeply etched in his brow. But now, with a definite goal in mind and Mansur beside him, he seemed rejuvenated, once more abounding in vigour and determination.
They began to load the ivory aboard the schooners, and to lay in fresh stores and top up the water casks for the voyage ahead. The pickle barrels were refilled with sides of beef from the captured herds, and the hulls of the two ships settled deeper in the water. Dorian and his captains, Batula and Kumrah, agonized over the trim to wring the best speed and handiness from them.
'Until we have new guns to defend ourselves, we will have to rely on speed to run from any enemy that we encounter. Despite our father's and brother Tom's best intentions and effort twenty years ago, there are still pirates at work in the Ocean of the Indies.'
'Keep well offshore from the African coast. That's where they have their nests,' Tom advised, 'and with the monsoon in your sails you will be well able to outrun any pirate dhow.'
They were all so busily employed, the women ordering their new homes, Tom and Jim occupied with the cattle and horses, Dorian and Mansur making the ships ready, that the days sped by.
'It does not seem like six weeks,' Jim told Mansur, as they stood on the beach together and looked out at the two little schooners. The yards were crossed and the crews had gone aboard. All was ready for them to catch the tide on the morrow.
'It seems, these days, that we no sooner set eyes upon each other than it is time to part again,' Mansur agreed.
'I have a feeling that this time it will be for more than just a short while, coz,' Jim said sadly. 'I believe that an adventure and a new life await you over the blue horizon.'
'You also, Jim. You have your woman, soon you will have a son, and you have made this land your own. I am alone, and I still seek the country of my heart.'
'No matter how many leagues of sea or land come between us, I shall always feel close to you in spirit,' said Jim.
Mansur knew how great an effort it had taken him to make such a sentimental declaration. He seized his cousin and hugged him hard. Jim hugged him back just as fiercely.
The two schooners sailed with the dawn and the tide, and all the family was on board the Revenge as they cleared the mouth of the bay. A mile offshore Dorian have to, and Tom and Sarah, Jim and Louisa went down into the longboat and watched the two ships sail on and
grow tiny with distance. At last they disappeared over the horizon and Jim turned the longboat back for the bay.
The fort seemed strangely empty without Dorian and Mansur, and they missed their marvelous voices at the family singsongs around Sarah's harpsichord in the evenings.
The voyage across the Ocean of the Indies was swift and almost without incident. With Mansur commanding the Sprite and Dorian the Revenge, the two schooners sailed in close company and the monsoon wind was kind to them. They gave the island of Ceylon a wide berth, mindful of Keyser's threats to warn the Dutch governor in Trincomalee of their trespasses in the colony of Good Hope, and they sailed on to the Coromandel Coast of south-eastern India, to reach it before the change of season. They called in at the competing trading factories of the English, French and Portuguese, without admitting their true identity. Both Dorian and Mansur adopted Arabic dress and in public spoke only that language. In each port Dorian judged the demand for ivory precisely, and was at pains not to flood the market with abundance. They did much better than he and Tom had calculated. With the ships' coffers charged with silver rupees and gold mohurs, and still a quarter of their ivory unsold, they turned back southwards and rounded the southern tip of India, sailing through the Palk between Ceylon and the mainland, then northwards again along the western coast until they reached the territories of the Great Mogul. Here they sold the remainder of the ivory in Bombay where the English East India Company had its headquarters, and in the other markets of the western ports of the crumbling Mogul empire.
The once mighty empire, the richest and most glorious that had ever flourished in the great continent, was now in decay and dissolution as lesser emperors than Babur and Akbar struggled for dominance. Despite the political upheavals, the new Persian influence at the court of Delhi made for a favourable trading climate. The Persians were traders to the marrow of their bones, and the prices for ivory exceeded those that they had received in the factories of the Camatic.
Dorian was now in a position to rearm the two schooners, fill their empty holds with powder and shot, and transform them from trading vessels into fighting ships. They sailed on northwards and anchored in the roads of
