the world. In China his legendary “Ever Victorious Army’ had earned him the sobriquet. He had come out of his headquarters in the south wing of the palace with his red flowerpot fez on his head.
“The order has already been sent to the gunners, sir.” Gordon’s reply was crisp and assertive, edged with annoyance. He did not need to be reminded of his duty.
His voice carried clearly to where Rebecca stood. It was said that he could make himself heard without effort across a raging battlefield.
A few minutes later the Egyptian artillery, in their emplacements along the city waterfront, opened up a desultory fire. Their pieces were of small calibre and obsolete pattern, six-pounder Krupps mountain guns; their ammunition was ancient and in short supply, much given to misfiring. However, to one accustomed to the ineptitudes of the Egyptian garrison, their accuracy was surprising. A few clouds of black shrapnel smoke appeared in the clear sky directly over the Dervish batteries, for the gunners on both sides had been ranging each other’s positions during all the months since the beginning of the siege. The Dervish fire slackened noticeably. Still unscathed, the white steamer reached the confluence of the two rivers and the line of barges followed her as she turned sharply to starboard into the mouth of the Blue Nile and was almost immediately shielded by the buildings of the city from the guns on the west bank. Deprived of their prey the Dervish batteries fell silent.
“Please may we go down to the wharf to welcome him?” Saffron was dragging her father to the head of the staircase. “Come on, Becky, let’s go and meet your beau.”
As the family hurried through the neglected, sun-bleached gardens of the palace, they saw that General Gordon was also heading for the harbour, with a group of his Egyptian officers scampering behind him. Just beyond the gates a dead horse half blocked the alley. It had been lying there for ten days, killed by a stray Dervish shell. Its belly was swollen and its gaping wounds heaved with masses of white maggots. Flies hovered and buzzed over it in a dense blue cloud. Mingled with all the other smells of the besieged city the stench of rotting horseflesh was sulphurous. Each breath Rebecca drew seemed to catch in her throat and her stomach heaved. She fought back the nausea so that she did not disgrace herself and the dignity of her father’s office.
The twins vied with each other in a pantomime of disgust. “Poof!” and “Stinky-woo!” they cried, then doubled over to make realistic vomiting sounds, howling with delight at each other’s histrionics.
“Be off with you, you little savages!” David scowled at them and brandished his silver-mounted cane. They shrieked in mock alarm, then raced away in the direction of the harbour, leaping over piles of debris from shelled and burnt-out houses. Rebecca and David followed at their best pace, but before they had passed the customs house they encountered the city crowds moving in the same direction.
It was a solid river of humanity, of beggars and cripples, slaves and soldiers, rich women attended by their slaves and scantily clad Galla whores, mothers with infants strapped to their backs, dragging wailing brats by each hand, government officials and fat slave traders with diamond and gold rings on their fingers. All had one purpose: to discover what cargo the steamer carried, and whether she offered a faint promise of escape from the little hell that was Khartoum.
The twins were rapidly engulfed in the throng so David lifted Saffron on to his shoulders while Rebecca grasped Amber’s hand and they pushed their way forward. The crowds recognized the tall, imposing figure of the British consul and gave way to him. They reached the waterfront only a few minutes after General Gordon, who called to them to join him.
The Intrepid this was cutting in across the stream and when she reached the quieter protected water half a cable’s length offshore she shed her tow lines and the four barges anchored in line astern, their bows facing into the strong current of the Blue Nile. Ryder Courtney placed armed guards on each barge to protect the cargoes against looting. Then he took the helm of the steamer and manoeuvred her towards the wharf.
As soon as he was within earshot the twins screeched a welcome: “Ryder! It’s us! Did you bring a present?” He heard them above the hubbub of the crowd, and had soon spotted Saffron perched on her father’s shoulders. He removed the cheroot from his mouth, flicked it overboard into the river, then reached for the cord of the boat’s whistle, sent a singing blast of steam high into the air and blew Saffron a kiss.
She dissolved into giggles and wriggled like a puppy. “Isn’t he the most dashing beau in the world?” She glanced at her elder sister.
Rebecca ignored her, but Ryder’s eyes turned to her next and he lifted the hat off his dense dark curls, sleeked with his sweat. His face and arms were tanned to the colour of polished teak by the desert sun, except for the band of creamy skin just below his hairline where his hat had protected it. Rebecca smiled back and bobbed a curtsy. Saffron was right: he really was rather handsome, especially when he smiled, she thought, but there were crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He’s so old, she thought. He must be every day of thirty.
“I think he’s sweet on you.” Amber gave her serious opinion.
“Don’t you dare start that infernal nonsense, Mademoiselle,” Rebecca warned her.
“Infernal nonsense, Mademoiselle,” Amber repeated softly and rehearsed the words to use against Saffron at the first opportunity.
Out on the river Ryder Courtney was giving his full attention to the steamer as he brought her into her mooring. He swung her nose into the current and held her there with a deft touch on the throttle, then eased the wheel over and let her drift sideways across the stream until her steel side kissed the matting fenders that hung down the side of the wharf. His crew tossed the mooring lines to the men on the jetty, who seized the ends and made her fast. Ryder rang the telegraph to the boiler room, and Jock McCrump stuck his head through the engine- room hatch. His face was streaked with black grease. “Aye, skipper?”
“Keep a head of steam in the boiler, Jock. Never know when we might need to run for it.”
“Aye, skipper. I want none of them stinking savages as shipmates.” Jock wiped the grease from his huge calloused hands on a wad of cotton waste.
“You have the con,” Ryder told him, and vaulted over the ship’s rail to the jetty. He strode towards where General Gordon waited for him with his staff, but he had not gone a dozen paces before the crowd closed round him and he was trapped like a fish in a net.
A struggling knot of Egyptians and other Arabs surrounded him, grabbing at his clothing. “Effendi, please, Effendi, I have ten children and four wives. Give us safe passage on your fine ship,” they pleaded, in Arabic and broken English. They thrust wads of banknotes into his face. “A hundred Egyptian pounds. It is all I have. Take it, Effendi, and my prayers for your long life will go up to Allah.”
“Gold sovereigns of your queen!” another bid, and clinked the canvas bag he held like a tambourine.
Women pulled off their jewellery heavy gold bracelets, rings and necklaces with sparkling stones. “Me and my baby. Take us with you, great lord.” They thrust their infants at him, tiny squealing wretches, hollow-cheeked with starvation, some covered with the lesions and open sores of scurvy, their loincloths stained tobacco-yellow with the liquid faeces of cholera. They shoved and wrestled with each other to reach him. One woman was knocked to her knees and dropped her infant under the feet of the surging crowd. Its howls became weaker as they trampled it. Finally a nail-shod sandal crushed the the eggshell skull and the child was abruptly silent and lay still, an abandoned doll, in the dust.
Ryder Courtney gave a bellow of rage and laid about him with clenched fists. He knocked down a fat Turkish merchant with a single blow to the jaw, then dropped his shoulder and charged into the ruck of struggling humanity. They scattered to let him pass, but some doubled back towards the Intrepid this, and tried to scramble across to her deck.
Jock McCrump was at the rail to meet them with a monkey wrench in his fist and five of his crew at his back, armed with boat-hooks and fire axes. Jock cracked the skull of the first man who tried to board and he fell into the narrow strip of water between the ship and the stone wharf, then disappeared beneath the surface. He did not rise again.
Ryder realized the danger and tried to get back to his ship, but even he could not cleave his way through the close pack of bodies.
“Jock, take her off and anchor with the barges!” he shouted.
Jock heard him above the uproar and waved the wrench in acknowledgement. He jumped to the bridge and gave a terse order to his crew. They did not waste time un mooring but severed the lines to the shore with a few accurate strokes of the axes. The Intrepid this swung her bows into the current, but before she had steerage way more of the refugees attempted to jump across the gap. Four fell short and were whipped away downstream by the racing current. One grabbed hold of the ship’s rail and dangled down her side, trying to lift himself aboard, imploring the crew above him for mercy.
