Bacheet, the Arab boatswain, stepped to the rail above him and, with a single swing of his axe, neatly lopped off the four fingers of the man’s right hand. They fell to the steel deck like brown pork sausages. His victim shrieked and dropped into the river. Bacheet kicked the fingers over the side, wiped his blade on the skirt of his robe, then went to break out the bow anchor from its locker forward. Jock turned the steamboat out across the current, and ran out to anchor at the head of the line of barges.
A wail of despair went up from the crowd, but Ryder glowered at them, fists clenched. They had learnt exactly what that gesture presaged, and backed away from him. In the meantime General Gordon had ordered a squad of his soldiers to break up the riot. They advanced in a line with their bayonets fixed and used their rifle butts to club down any who stood in their way. The crowd broke before them, and disappeared into the narrow alleys of the city. They left the dead baby, with its bleeding mother wailing over it, and half a dozen moaning rioters sitting, stunned, in puddles of their own blood. The Turk who Ryder had floored lay quiescent on his back, snoring loudly.
Ryder looked about for David and his daughters, but the consul had shown the good sense to get his family away to the safety of the palace at the first sign of rioting. He felt a lift of relief. Then he saw General Gordon coming towards him, stepping through the litter and bodies. “Good afternoon, General.”
“How do you do, Mr. Courtney? I am pleased to welcome you. I hope you had a pleasant voyage.”
“Very enjoyable, sir. We made good passage through the Sud. The channel is well scoured out at this season. No necessity to kedge our way through.” Neither deigned to remark on the gauntlet that the steamboat had run through the Dervish batteries, or the riot that had welcomed it to the city.
“You are heavily laden, sir?” Gordon, who was fully six inches shorter, looked up at Ryder with those remarkable eyes. They were the steely blue of the noonday sky above the desert. Few men who looked into them could forget them. They were hypnotic, compelling, the outward sign of Gordon’s iron faith in himself and his God.
Ryder understood the import of the question instantly. “I have fifteen hundred sacks of dhurra sorghum in my barges, each bag of ten can tars weight.” A can tar was an Arabic measure, approximating a hundredweight.
Gordon’s eyes sparkled like cut sapphires, and he slapped his cane against his thigh. “Well done indeed, sir. The garrison and the entire population are already on extremely short commons. Your cargo might well see us through until the relief column from Cairo can reach us.”
Ryder Courtney blinked with surprise at such an optimistic estimate. There were close to thirty thousand souls trapped in the city. Even on starvation rations that multitude would devour a hundred sacks a day. The latest news they had received before the Dervish cut the telegraph line to the north was that the relief column was still assembling in the delta and would not be ready to begin the journey southwards for several weeks more. Even then they had more than a thousand miles to travel to Khartoum. On the way they must navigate the cataracts and traverse the Mother of Stones, that terrible wilderness. Then they must fight their way through the Dervish hordes who guarded the long marches along the banks of the Nile before they could reach the city and raise the siege. Fifteen hundred sacks of dhurra was not nearly enough to sustain the inhabitants of Khartoum indefinitely. Then he realized that Gordon’s optimism was his best armour. A man such as he could never allow himself to face the hopelessness of their plight and give in to despair.
He nodded his agreement. “Do I have your permission to begin sales of the grain, General?” The city was under martial law. No distribution of food was allowed without Gordon’s personal sanction.
“Sir, I cannot allow you to distribute the provisions. The population of my city is starving.” Ryder noted Gordon’s use of the possessive. “If you were to sell them they would be hoarded by wealthy merchants to the detriment of the poor. There will be equal rations for all. I will oversee the distribution. I have no choice but to commandeer your entire cargo of grain. I will, of course, pay you a fair price for it.”
For a moment Ryder stared at him, speechless. Then he found his voice. “A fair price, General?”
“At the end of the last harvest the price of dhurra in the souks of this city was six shillings a sack. It was a fair price, and still is, sir.”
“At the end of the last harvest there was no war and no siege,” Ryder retorted. “General, six shillings does not take into account the extortionate price I was forced to pay. Nor does it compensate me for the difficulties I experienced in transporting the sorghum and the fair profit to which I am entitled.”
“I am certain, Mr. Courtney, that six shillings will return you a handsome profit.” Gordon stared at him hard. “This city is under martial law, sir, and profiteering and hoarding are both capital crimes.”
Ryder knew that the threat was not an idle one. He had seen many men flogged or summarily executed for any dereliction of their duty, or defiance of this little man’s decrees. Gordon unbuttoned the breast pocket of his uniform jacket and brought out his notebook. He scribbled in it swiftly, tore out the sheet and passed it to Ryder. “That is my personal promissory note for the sum of four hundred and fifty Egyptian pounds. It is payable at the treasury of the Khedive in Cairo,” he said briskly. The Khedive was the ruler of Egypt. “What is the rest of your cargo, Mr. Courtney?”
“Ivory, live wild birds and animals,” Ryder replied bitterly.
“Those you may off load into your go down At this stage I have no interest in them, although later it may be necessary to slaughter the animals to provide meat for the populace. How soon can you have your steamer and the barges ready to depart, sir?”
“Depart, General?” Ryder turned pale under his tan: he had sensed what was about to happen.
“I am commandeering your vessels for the transport of refugees downriver,” Gordon explained. “You may requisition what cordwood you need to fuel your boilers. I will reimburse you for the voyage at the rate of two pounds per passenger. I estimate you might take five hundred women, children and heads of families. I will personally review the needs of each and decide who is to have priority.”
“You will pay me with another note, General?” Ryder asked, with veiled irony.
“Precisely, Mr. Courtney. You will wait at Metemma until the relief force reaches you. My own steamers are already there. Your famed skill as a river pilot will be much in demand in the passage of the Shabluka Gorge, Mr. Courtney.”
Chinese Gordon despised what he looked upon as greed and the worship of Mammon. When the Khedive of Egypt had offered him a salary of ten thousand pounds to undertake this most perilous assignment of evacuating the Sudan, Gordon had insisted that this be reduced to two thousand. He had his own perception of duty to his fellow men and his God. “Please bring your barges alongside the jetty and my troops will guard them while they are offloaded, and the dhurra is taken to the customs warehouse. Major al-Faroque, of my staff, will be in command of the operation.” Gordon nodded to the Egyptian officer at his side, who saluted Ryder perfunctorily. Al-Faroque had soulful dark eyes, and smelt powerfully of hair pomade. “And now you must excuse me, sir. I have much to attend to.”
As the official hostess to Her Britannic Majesty’s consul general to the Sudan, Rebecca was responsible for the running of the palace household. This evening, under her supervision, the servants had laid the dinner table on the terrace that overlooked the Blue Nile so that David’s guests might enjoy the breeze off the river. At sunset the servants would light braziers of eucalyptus branches and leaves. The smoke would keep the mosquitoes at bay. The entertainment would be provided with the compliments of General Gordon. Every evening the military band played and there was a fireworks display: General Gordon intended the show to take the minds of Khartoum’s population off the rig ours and hardships of the siege.
Rebecca had planned a splendid table. The consular silver and glassware had been polished to dazzling brilliance and the linen bleached white as an angel’s wing. Unfortunately the meal would not be of comparable quality. They would start with a soup of blackjack weeds and rose hips from the ruins of the palace garden. This would be followed by a pate of boiled palm-tree pith and stone ground dhurra, but the piece de resistance was supreme of pelican.
Most evenings David took his station on the terrace above the river with one of his Purdey shotguns at the ready, and waited for the flights of waterfowl to pass overhead as they flew in to their roosts. Behind him the twins waited with the other guns. Such a matching trio of firearms was known as a garnish of guns. David believed that any woman who lived in Africa, that continent of wild animals and wilder men, should be competent in the use of firearms. Under his tutelage Rebecca was already an expert pistol shot. At ten paces she was usually capable with six shots from the heavy Webley revolver of knocking at least five empty bully-beef cans off the stone wall at the bottom of the terrace to send them spinning out across the waters of the Nile.
The twins were still too small to withstand the recoil of a Webley or Purdey, so he had trained them to serve
