Now they were putting it all together for a final check before they transported it to the harbour for installation in the steamer’s engine room.
“Well, now, skipper, I think this time we’ve got it right.” Jock stood back with black grease to the elbows and his few remaining hairs plastered to his scalp with sweat. “This time I think the old this will be able to carry us out of this God-forsaken hell-hole. There is a shebeen in Aswan run by a lass from Glasgow, a lady of my acquaintance. She sells genuine malt from the Isle of Islay. I would fain have the taste of it on my tongue again. It is the true nectar of the Almighty, and that’s no blasphemy, mind.”
“I will buy the first round,” Ryder promised.
“And the rest,” Jock told him. “You havenae paid me this year past.”
Ryder was about to protest the injustice of this accusation but he heard racing footsteps coming across the compound and Saffron’s breathless squeaks: “Ryder! Come quickly.”
Ryder stepped to the doorway. “What is it, Saffron?”
She was holding her skirts high and her hat was hanging down her back on its ribbon. Her face was flushed scarlet. “Something terrible is happening. Rebecca has sent me to call you. Hurry!” She grabbed his hand and pulled him with her. They ran towards the cauldron yard.
“Can you hear it?” Saffron stopped and held up her hand. “Now, can you hear?” It was faint babble and murmur, like wind in trees or a distant waterfall.
“Yes, but what is it?”
“Our women say it’s a huge crowd of the people. They are coming from the arsenal. Our women say that the grain rations have been cut again, and there is going to be terrible trouble. They are terrified, and they are running away.”
“Saffron, go and fetch Rebecca and Amber.”
“Amber is not here. She is sulking in the palace. She has not come back since she heard that Captain Ballantyne had gone away.”
“Good. She will be safe there. Let the women go if they want to. Bring Rebecca, Nazeera and any others who want to stay to the blockhouse. You know how to shutter the windows and bar the doors. You also know where the rifles are kept. You and Rebecca arm yourselves. Wait for me there.”
“Where are you going?”
“To call the men. That’s enough questions. Now, run!”
It was for just this sort of trouble that Ryder had fortified the compound. The walls were high and solid and the tops were lined with shards of broken glass. He had designed the interior of the compound as a series of courtyards, each of which could be defended, but when one was overrun they could fall back into the next. In the centre, the blockhouse comprised his private quarters, treasury and arsenal. All the windows and doors could be covered with heavy shuttering. The walls were pierced with loopholes for rifle fire and the reed roof was heavily plastered with river clay to render it fireproof.
The first line of defence was the outer wall with its heavy gates at front and rear. He sent Jock with three men to barricade the rear gates, and stand guard there. Then Ryder took Bacheet and five of his most reliable men to the front gates, which opened on to the narrow street. They were all armed with long wooden staves. Ryder made certain the gates were bolted and the heavy timber bars were in their slots. It would take a battering-ram to break them down. There was a low wicket gate in the wall to one side, wide enough to admit one man at a time. Ryder stepped through it. The city street was empty, except for a few of the women from the green-cake kitchens. They were scurrying away like frightened chickens, and within seconds the last had disappeared.
Ryder waited. He was deliberately carrying nothing more provocative than the wooden staff. A rifle was worse than useless against a mob. A single shot might drop one person, but would merely infuriate the rest, and they would be on him before he could reload. A certain way to get yourself torn to pieces, he thought, and leant casually on the staff, assuming a calm, relaxed pose. The noise of the crowd was nearer now, becoming louder as he listened. He knew what that keening chorus of women’s voices meant. They were whipping themselves and their menfolk into a frenzy.
He stood alone in front of the gates, and the sound built up into a muted roar, coming down on him like the wild waters of a river in flash flood. Suddenly the front rank of the mob burst into view two hundred paces down the narrow street from where he stood. They saw him and faltered. The hubbub subsided gradually, and a strange hush fell over them. They knew him well and his reputation was formidable.
Damn me, if I don’t do a Gordon on them. Ryder smiled inwardly. Chinese Gordon was famous for the hypnotic power he could wield over a tribe of hostile savages. It was said he could calm and control them by the sheer power of his personality and the gaze of his steely blue eyes.
Ryder straightened until he stood tall, and glowered at them with all the ferocity he could command. He knew that they looked upon green or blue eyes as those of the Devil. The hush became silence. For the moment it was a standoff. It needed but a small push to topple it one way or the other.
He started to walk towards them. Now he held the stave threateningly, and paced with calculated menace. They backed off slowly before his approach. One looked back over his shoulder. They were on the point of breaking.
Suddenly a tall, gangling female figure bounded into the alley. Her features were withered with starvation. Her lips had shrunk back to expose bone-white teeth, too large for her pale pink gums, which were studded with open ulcers. She was the harpy of mythology, swathed in black cloth. As she danced towards him, her shanks beneath the black skirts were thin as the legs of a heron, and her enormous feet flapped like the carcasses of stranded black catfish. She threw back her head and emitted the cry of a banshee. The mob behind her roared and poured after her, filling the alley.
Ryder held up his right hand in a placatory gesture. “I will give you whatever you want,” he shouted. “Stop.”
His voice was drowned by the wild shrieks of the harpy: “We have come to take what we want, and we will kill all who stand in our way!”
Slowly Ryder lifted his left hand and made the sign of the evil eye. He pointed at the woman’s face, and saw her eyelids flutter as she recognized the sign. She stumbled and checked, but then she gathered herself and leapt forward again. He saw the madness in her gaze and knew she was too far gone to respond even to the most dire witchcraft.
Still he stood his ground until she was almost upon him. Then he stepped forward to meet her and drove the point of his staff into her midriff just below the ribcage. The spleens of most river-dwellers were swollen with malaria. A blow like that could burst the organ and kill or maim. The harpy dropped like a bundle of black rags, but the leading ranks of the mob leapt over her body. The man in the forefront swung a broadsword at Ryder’s head. He ducked and darted back through the wicket gate. Bacheet slammed and bolted it behind him. They heard and felt the impact as the mob crashed into it on the far side.
“We will let them through the gate one at a time, and we can crack their skulls as they come through,” Bacheet suggested.
“Too many.” Ryder shook his head. “I will climb to the top of the gate and try to reason with them.”
“You cannot reason with a pack of rabid dogs.”
Somebody was tugging insistently at his coattails and Ryder tried to pull away. Then he looked back. “I thought I told you to stay in the blockhouse,” he exclaimed angrily.
“I brought you this.” Saffron held up his gunbelt with the holstered revolver dangling from it and the rows of brass cartridges in their loops.
“Good girl!” He strapped it on. “But now get back to the blockhouse and stay there.” He did not watch her to make sure she had gone but turned back to Bacheet. “Fetch the long ladder from the workshop.”
They placed it against the wall. Hand over hand Ryder shot to the top and looked down into the street. The length and breadth of it was filled with humanity. He picked out the harpy he had felled: she was on her feet again, doubled over and hobbling with pain, but her voice was as shrill and strident as before. She was directing the crowd to gather anything that would burn from the buildings that lined the street. They were dragging out baulks of timber, dried palm fronds, old furniture, rubbish, and piling it against the outside of the compound gates.
“Hear me, citizens of Khartoum,” Ryder shouted in Arabic. “Let the peace and wisdom of God guide you. There is nothing within these walls that I will not give you gladly.”
They looked up him uncertainly as he balanced at the top of the ladder.
