nothing we can do for Lucy now.”
“Can’t you stop them? Please! Won’t you stop them, Ryder?”
There was no reply he could give her. He held the two girls tightly, Saffron on one side and Rebecca on the other. They clung to him and watched some of the mob crowd the gate that led to the menagerie and try to break in, but it was stout and resisted their efforts. Then the Nubian shouldered them aside. He braced himself against the gate and shook it until it rattled in its frame, but it did not give way. He stepped back, charged and crashed into it with one massive shoulder. The hinges were torn from the frame and the door flew open.
AH, the old keeper, stood in the open doorway with a rusty sword in his hands.
“AH, you old fool.” Ryder groaned and tried to turn the girls away so that they would not see what was about to happen. But they resisted and stared ashen-faced through the loophole.
AH raised the sword above his head. “Begone, all of you! You will not enter here.” His voice was high-pitched and quavering. “I will not allow you to touch my darlings.” He hobbled towards the giant, threatening him with the dented weapon. The Bone Cruncher shot out one thick arm and seized the old man’s sword wrist. He shook it as a terrier shakes a rat, and they heard the bone of the old man’s forearm crack. The rusty sword dropped into the dust at his feet. Using the broken arm as a handle the Bone Cruncher lifted AH’s wriggling body above his head and slammed him into the jamb of the gate with such force that his ribs snapped like dry kindling. He dropped the broken body, and stepped over it. The crowd rushed after him into the menagerie, but as they passed they hacked at Ali’s head with club or sword.
A great roar of greed and hunger went up from within the menagerie as the mob saw the rows of cages and the terrified animals they contained.
“Food! Meat!” screamed the Harpy. “I promised you a feast of fresh red meat. It is here for you.” She rushed at the nearest cage and tore open the door. It was filled with scarlet and grey parrots, a swirling screeching cloud of wings. She leapt in and slashed at them with the whisk, knocking them to the floor of the cage and stamping on them with both horny feet.
The crowd followed her example, breaking open the monkey cages and clubbing the terrified occupants as they bounded around. Then they attacked the stockades and pens of the antelope.
In the blockhouse they could hear what was happening. Above the crash of breaking cages and the uproar of the mob, Saffron was able to identify the terrified voices of her favourite creatures: the shrieks of the parrots and the howls of the monkeys.
“That’s Lucy, my poor darling Lucy,” she sobbed. “They can’t eat her. Tell me they won’t eat Lucy.” Ryder hugged her but could find no words of comfort.
Then there came wild bleating and bellows of pain from the larger animals.
“That’s Victoria, my bongo!” Saffron struggled again. “Let me go! Please, I have to save her.”
The female bongo bounded out through the gates of the menagerie where old Ali’s corpse still lay in the bloody dust. She must have escaped from her pen as the mob tore it down and seemed unhurt.
“Run, Victoria!” Saffron screamed. “Run, my baby.”
A dozen men and women ran after her with spears and swords. The large, strikingly coloured animal saw the open gate ahead of her and swerved towards it, her sleek hide glistening dark chestnut with creamy white stripes, ears pricked forward, eyes filled with terror, huge and dark in her lovely head. She had almost reached the open gate when one of the spearmen checked and swivelled his shoulders, his left hand pointing straight at her, the right cocked back and holding the spear. He swung his weight forward and the spear flew in a high arc, then dropped towards the animal. It struck her just forward of the croup and the spearhead buried itself. The point must have struck the spine, for her paralysed hindquarters dropped, and she stood still on her front legs.
A triumphant howl went up from the hunters and they crowded round the maimed animal. They made no effort to put her out of her misery, but hacked off lumps of her living flesh. The Nubian rushed up and, with a sweep of his sword, opened her belly as if it were a purse. The pale bag of her stomach and the entwined ropes of entrails bulged out through the gash. These were delicacies, and the mob dragged them out of her, and devoured them voraciously. The yellow contents of the uncleaned guts mingled with the blood, and dribbled from their lips and jowls as they chewed.
Rebecca gagged at the sight and turned away her face, but Saffron watched until at last the bongo collapsed and the crowd swarmed over her carcass like a flock of vultures hiding it from view. From the gates of the menagerie others ran out carrying bleeding lumps of meat and the battered carcasses of the birds and monkeys. They tried to escape before the latecomers from the city streets joined in. They were too late, and all across the compound vicious squabbles and fighting broke out. Saffron saw one of the children pounce upon a scrap. He stuffed it into his mouth and tried to swallow it. But the woman who had dropped it set upon him, beating him and pummelled him until he was forced to spit it out. Before she could pick it out of the dust, someone else snatched it and ran out of the gates with the woman chasing after her.
Another group broke down the door of the shed that contained the day’s cooking of green-cake. They gathered up slabs in their shirts, but before they could make off with it the harpy fell upon them. She seemed to have risen above the simple need to find food and ran among them, striking at random with her whisk, screaming, “That is the poison of Shaitan! Throw it on the fire. Throw it into the latrines where it belongs.” Although a few ran off with their booty, the harpy forced most to fling their share into the cooking fires or down the latrine pits.
“She has destroyed it all. What a shameful waste,” Rebecca cried in anguish. “And she is making them smash our cauldrons. Now we shall all starve.”
Ryder watched the harpy helplessly. He saw how dangerous this raving demagogue was, that at any moment she might trigger another explosion of murderous passion and insanity. However, most of the mob had disappeared, and it seemed that the riot must soon die of its own accord.
Even though the damage they had wreaked was punishing, Ryder sought some small comfort in the fact that they were making no effort to take the ivory. It was clearly too heavy to carry far. Most of his other valuable possessions were locked in the strongroom in the blockhouse. Just as soon as the Intrepid this was seaworthy again, he would load what was left of them and be ready for instant flight.
But the harpy was still prowling round the yard, stopping every few minutes to shake her whisk at the blockhouse and scream curses and insults at the white faces she could see watching her from the loopholes. When she paused at the door of the workshop, Ryder was not seriously alarmed. Some of the other looters had gone in there but had soon come out again. There was nothing in there for them to eat, nothing of obvious value for them to carry away. However, the harpy was in the workshop for only a minute, before she rushed out and screamed across the yard for the Nubian wrestler. Like a tame gorilla responding to its trainer, he crossed the yard with his massive rolling gait. She led him into the workshop. When the Nubian came out again he was carrying such a heavy burden that his legs were bowed under its weight.
“Look!” shouted Jock, in consternation. It was a burden that would have taken the strength of five ordinary men, but the Nubian was carrying the main steam pipe from the Intrepid this. Jock had laboured over this piece of machinery for months and now it was ready to reinstall in the steamer.
The harpy screeched towards the blockhouse, “You think to escape the wrath of the Mahdi? You think to run away in your little steamer? We are going to throw this thing into the Nile. When the Mahdi comes, your white and leprous corpses will rot in the streets of Khartoum. Even vultures will not eat them.” She drove the giant Nubian like an ox towards the gates.
“Even he can never carry it to the river!” Ryder exclaimed. But the harpy was now shouting for others to help him. A number were hurrying to his aid.
“I give you my solemn oath that he is taking my steam pipe nowhere,” Jock growled. He swung up the Martini-Henry, and the crash of the shot in the narrow confines of the room numbed their ears. The rifle kicked back, and the sweet stink of black powder smoke stung their nostrils.
The Nubian had reached the gates. He was less than sixty yards from the rifle slit. The heavy lead bullet caught him just behind the ear and angled forward through his brain. In a pink cloud of wet tissue, it burst out through his right eye socket. He collapsed, with the weight of the steam-pipe chest pinning his corpse to the sunbaked clay.
“You killed him,” Ryder exclaimed in disbelief.
“I aimed at him, didn’t I?” Jock said brusquely. “Of course I damn well killed him.” With his calloused thumb he pushed another cartridge into the breech of the rifle. “And I’m going to kill anybody else who touches my engine.”
