hand and considered him thoughtfully. “Captain Ballantyne, now that we have become friends, would you be civil enough to answer a question that has been troubling me lately? Nobody seems to know the answer.”
“I am honoured that you consider us friends.” Penrod was touched. She was such a funny little thing. “I would be delighted to render you any assistance I can.”
“How do people make love?” she asked.
Penrod found himself deprived of words and the breath to speak them. “Ah!” he said, and smoothed his moustache to win time. “I think that it is done in various ways. There do not seem to be any fixed rules of engagement.”
Amber was disappointed. She had expected more of him. Obviously he knew as little as Rebecca. “I suppose they kiss each other like you and I saw my sister kissing Ryder. Is that how they do it?”
“Indubitably.” He grabbed thankfully at the opening. “I think that is exactly how they do it.”
“I should think that would become rather boring after a while.”
“It seems to grow on some people,” Penrod said. “There is no accounting for taste.”
Amber changed the subject again, with disconcerting suddenness. “Did you know that Lucy, Ryder’s monkey, has had babies?”
“I had no idea. Boys or girls? What are they like.” He followed her thankfully on to firm ground.
Minutes later Amber’s eyes closed, she subsided against his shoulder and, like a puppy, dropped into instant sleep. She did not stir even when he laid her on the angareb and covered her with the threadbare blanket. He was in a good mood, smiling to himself as he left her and went on his midnight inspection of the harbour de fences For once every one of the Egyptian sentries was wide awake. Either they were stimulated by the proximity of the enemy and their own exposure in this forward position, or their hunger drove away sleep.
He found a comfortable place to sit on the forward firing platform and listened to the drums across the river. Their monotonous tempo became soporific and he found himself nodding. He stirred guiltily: If Chinese Gordon finds me I’ll be up before the firing squad myself. He took a turn along the parapet, and came back to his seat. He let himself relax and drift to the edge of sleep, but every few minutes he opened his eyes. He had trained himself to tread this tightrope without falling off it. Across the river the drums fell silent.
He opened his eyes again and looked up. Red Mars, the god of war, was hunting across the southern quadrant of the moonless sky with Sirius, the Dog, in leash. It was the darkest and loneliest hour of the night. He was close to the edge of sleep, but he kept his eyes open.
Tenrod.”
Cool fingers brushed his cheek. “Are you asleep?” He turned his head to her. He was touched that she had used his baptismal name. She must truly think of him as her friend. “No, I am not, but you should be.”
“I heard voices,” Amber whispered.
“A dream, perhaps,” he replied. “There are no voices.”
“Listen!” said Amber.
Faintly he heard a dog bark on the west bank and another answered it from Tutti Island, further downriver. No dogs remained in the city. The last had been killed and eaten months before. “Nothing.” He shook his head doubtfully, but she seized his arm and her sharp little fingernails dug in painfully.
“Listen, Pen. Listen!”
He felt his nerve ends jump tight, like the strike of a heavy fish on the deep-run fly. It was a whisper so faint, so insubstantial on the night breeze that only sharp young ears could have picked it up. It came from far out on the river. Sound carries over water, he thought, and stood up swiftly and silently. Faint as the breeze in the palm fronds, he had heard the traditional word of command to lower and furl the lateen sail of a dhow as it came in to its moorings. Now that he was straining his hearing to its limit, he heard the soft slap of bare feet on a wooden deck, and the slat ting of canvas. Seconds later came the creak of a muffled rudder in its yoke as the dhow put up its helm. “They have come,” he whispered, and moved swiftly along the firing platform to alert each of his men. “Stand to! Stand to your guns. The Dervish are here. Hold your fire until my command.”
The sergeant gunner stripped the tarpaulin off the Gatling. The stiff material crackled softly and Penrod hissed him to silence. He looked into the ammunition hopper that sat on top of the glistening weapon. It was filled to the brim: six hundred rounds. He lifted the lids of the spare ammunition cases. They were all unlocked. At the Hill of Isandlwana when the Zulu imp is had broken the British square the spare ammunition cases had been locked and the officer who had the Allen key had ridden out on patrol. Every white soldier in the camp had died that day under the Zulu blades. Ryder Courtney had told him that his elder brother had been among them. Tonight the ammunition cases were unlocked and the four Egyptian loaders were standing by to keep the hopper filled.
He ran to the rear of the firing platform. The corporal of signallers with a detail of four men had their crates of rockets open, and a line of ten flares ready for firing in their launching brackets, nose cones pointed skywards. “Send up a flare at the first shot. Keep one burning in the sky until the last shot is fired. I want the whole area lit up like daylight,” Penrod ordered.
There was no time for anything else. Penrod started back towards the forward firing platform to take command there. He could not trust the jittery Egyptians to resist blazing away at their first glimpse of the enemy boats before the Dervish were disembarked upon the beach and well inside the trap.
He tripped over Amber, who was at his heels. “Sweet Mary! I had forgotten about you.” He caught her by the arm and dragged her to the rear entrance of the redoubt. “Run!” he ordered. “You have to get out of here right away. This is no place for you now. Even the streets are safer. Run, Amber, and don’t stop until you get home.” He gave her a firm shove through the doorway to send her on her way, and did not wait to see if she had obeyed before he turned back towards the forward firing platform.
Amber ran a few paces down the alley, then turned and crept back to the entrance of the redoubt. She watched Penrod disappear into the darkness. “I am sick and tired of being treated like a baby,” she whispered. She hesitated only a moment before she followed him.
She moved quietly and self-effacingly along the back of the parapet so as not to attract the attention of the troopers who were manning the firing embrasures. They are all too busy to worry about me, she thought. Her confidence swelled, and she hurried forward to look for Penrod. What if he needs me? I will be no use sitting in my bedroom at the palace. She saw his tall figure just ahead.
Penrod was already standing at the parapet that overlooked the beach. The straw-filled decoys had been dragged away and now live riflemen leant on the firing sills, peering down upon the dark beach. He had his drawn sword in his right hand. Amber felt a prickle of pride. He is so brave and noble, she thought. She found a place to hide in a corner of the rear wall and sank down behind it. From here she could watch over him. A tight, brittle silence held all the men at the firing wall.
Suddenly Amber realized how few of them were spread out thinly along the wall, twenty paces between them. These men did not seem enough to stop the hordes of the Dervish.
Then a man close to where Amber knelt whispered so softly that she could barely catch the words. “Here they come.” His voice quavered with fear. The breech-block of his Martini-Henry snicked as he chambered a round. He lifted the weapon to his shoulder, but before he could press the trigger an open hand slapped across his face.
As he reeled sideways Penrod seized him by his collar and spoke close to his ear: “Fire before my command, and I will have you blown from the cannon’s mouth,” he promised. Al-Faroque’s execution had left a deep impression on all the Egyptians who had witnessed it. Penrod pushed the man back to his position and they waited.
Then Penrod drew breath sharply. The first Dervish boat glided in towards the beach below. As it touched the sand a dark horde of Ansar clambered out into the waist-deep water and waded on to the narrow strip of mud below the walls. They carried their swords at shoulder height and moved with barely a sound. From the dark waters behind them appeared a flotilla of small dhows and feluccas, each packed with a mass of men.
“Hold your fire!” Penrod strode back and forth along the parapet, keeping his puny force under control with his savage whisper. The feluccas and dhows kept coming in until the beach was packed with hundreds of Ansar. There was not room for all of them on firm ground and the ones in the rear were still waist deep in the river. Those in front began to rip down the barricade that blocked the entrance to the drainage creek.
“Steady now! Steady!” Penrod exhorted them.
Part of the barricade crashed down and the Dervish swarmed through. Their war cry went up: “There is no God but God!”
