Rebecca and Ryder. She told me she despised him, but now she’s cooing at him like a dove, she thought. “You should have shot all of them, not just two,” she said sourly. “Then we might have saved Lucy.”
“At least Billy seems none the worse.” Saffron’s severe expression softened and Ryder took immediate advantage. “How are you going to feed him? He isn’t weaned yet,” he enquired solicitously.
“Nazeera has found a woman who lost her new baby from cholera. We’re paying her to feed Billy and he guzzles her milk like a little pig,” Saffron replied.
Rebecca blushed. “I am sure Ryder does not want to hear all the gruesome details,” she told her little sister primly.
“Then he should not have asked,” Saffron replied reasonably. “Anyway, everybody knows how babies are fed, so why are you turning red, Becky?”
Ryder looked around for an avenue of escape, and found one. “Good morning, Amber. You missed all the excitement yesterday.”
But Saffron did not want to relinquish Ryder’s attention to yet another sister. “Don’t mind her,” she said. “She has been grumpy since Captain Ballantyne went away.” Before Amber could protest she went on blithely, “All the Sudanese women have run away. They won’t come back to work here. They have been threatened by bad men in the town who say that we are doing the Devil’s work by making green-cake.”
Ryder looked at Rebecca with concern. “Is this true?”
“I am afraid it is. They were too terrified to come to tell us themselves. But one went to Nazeera. Even then she was taking a grave risk. She says that the Dervish sympathizers in the city have discovered how valuable the green-cake is to our survival, and they are trying to stop us making it. That female creature and the Nubian wrestler who led the riot against you were Mahdists.”
“That explains a great deal.” Ryder nodded. “But what do you plan to do?”
“We will go on alone,” Rebecca replied simply.
“Just the three of you?”
“Four, with Nazeera. She is not afraid. We Benbrooks don’t give up that easily. We have found two cauldrons that were not smashed and our first batch of green-cake will be ready by this evening.”
“Pulping the vegetation is hard work,” he protested.
“In which case you should let us get on with it, Ryder,” Rebecca told him. “Why don’t you go and help Mr. McCrump?”
“A man knows when he is not wanted in the kitchen.” Ryder tipped the brim of his hat and hurried back to the workshop.
A little after noon Jock pushed the welding goggles to the top of his head and smiled for the first time that day. “Well, skipper, that’s about the best I can do. Maybe she’ll hold up without blowing out under pressure and giving us another steam bath. We can only pray to the Almighty.”
They loaded the drive shaft and steam pipe into a Scotch cart and covered them with a tarpaulin to hide them from the eyes of Dervish agents while they moved them through the streets. No draught animals remained in the city. They had all died of starvation or been eaten. Ryder joined Jock, Bacheet and the Arabs in the shafts of the cart and they trundled it down to where the Intrepid this lay at the wharf. By lantern light they worked on in the engine room long after dark. When even Jock was overtaken by exhaustion they stretched out on the this’s steel deck plates and snatched a few hours’ sleep.
They woke again at dawn. The food bag was almost empty, but Ryder ordered Bacheet to dole out a few dates and scraps of smoked fish for breakfast. Then they went back to work in the engine room. In the middle of the morning Saffron and Amber came down to the harbour. They had two small loaves of freshly made green-cake hidden in Saffron’s paintbox.
“We put them there because we did not want anyone to know what we were doing. This is our first batch,” Saffron announced, with pride. She held up her hands, “Look!” Amber followed her example.
Ryder saw the blisters in their palms. “My two heroines.”
There were only a few mouthfuls for each of the men, but it was enough to boost their flagging energy. Saffron and Amber sat with Ryder on the edge of the deck, their legs hanging over the side, and watched him eat. He was touched by the womanly satisfaction that they showed, even at their age, to be feeding a man. They watched each piece go into his mouth just as his mother had so many years ago.
“I am sorry, but that’s all,” Saffron said, as he finished. “We’ll make some more tomorrow.”
“It was delicious,” he replied. “The best batch yet.”
Saffron looked pleased. She pulled her knees up to her chin, and sat hugging her long skinny legs, it makes me sick to think of all those horrible Dervish eating their heads off over there.” She stood up reluctantly and brushed down her skirts. “Come on, Amber. We must get back or Becky will give us the sharp edge of her tongue.”
Long after the twins had gone, and the men were struggling to manoeuvre the long drive shaft into its chocks in the confines of the engine room, Ryder pondered Saffron’s casual remark.
It was mid-afternoon when Jock announced at last that he was cautiously optimistic that this time the engine might perform as God and its makers had intended. He and his crew fired up the boiler, and while they were waiting for a head of steam to build up, Ryder shared one of his last remaining cigars with the Scotsman. They leant together on the bridge rail, both tired and subdued.
Ryder took a long deep draw on the cigar and passed it to Jock. “The Mahdi has a hundred thousand men camped on the other side of the river. Tell me, Jock, how do you suppose he is feeding them?” he asked.
Jock held the smoke in his lungs until his face turned puce. At last he exhaled explosively. “Well, first off they have thousands of head of stock that they’ve plundered,” he said. “But I reckon he must be bringing dhurra downriver from Abyssinia.”
“In dhows?”
“Of course. How else?”
“At night?” Ryder persisted.
“Of course. On a moonlit night you can see the sails. Lot of traffic on the river at night.”
“Jock McCrump, I want you to get this old tub of ours working under a full head of steam by tomorrow evening at the latest. Earlier than that, if you like.”
Jock stared at him suspiciously, and then he grinned. His teeth were as ragged and uneven as those of an ancient tiger shark. “If I didn’t know you better, skipper, I’d think you were up to something.”
There were no clouds in the desert sky to provide a canvas on which the setting sun could paint its setting. The great red orb dropped like a stone below the horizon and almost immediately the night came down upon the heat-drugged land. Ryder waited until he could no longer make out the opposite bank of the river, then gave orders to Bacheet to cast off.
With his engine telegraph at ‘dead slow ahead’, he eased the Intrepid this out through the harbour entrance and into the main stream of the river. As soon as he felt the tug of the current he turned the bows into it and rang down to Jock for ‘half ahead’. They pushed up against the flow of the river and Ryder listened anxiously to the beat of the engine. He could feel the hull quivering under his feet, but there were no rough vibrations. He held her at that speed until they had rounded the first bend of the Blue Nile and a long deep glide of the river lay ahead.
He took a deep breath and rang down for ‘three-quarters ahead’. The this responded with the panache of a toreador parading into the bullring. Ryder let out a long sigh of relief. “Take the wheel, Bacheet. I am going below.”
He slid down the engine-room companionway. Jock was shining the beam of his bulls eye lantern on to the shaft, and Ryder went to stand beside him. They watched it turning in its new bearings. Jock lowered the lantern and in its golden light they studied the outline of the silver column minutely, looking for the tiniest flutter or tremble of distortion. Like a gyroscope, it was spinning so evenly that it seemed to be standing still.
Jock cocked his head. “Listen to her sing, Skipper.” He raised his voice above the hiss and slide of the cylinders. “Sweeter than Lily McTavish!”
“Who in creation is Lily McTavish?”
“Barmaid at the Bull and Bush.”
Ryder let out a roar of laughter. “I never realized what a connoisseur of opera you are, Jock.”
“Can’t really say I know much about it, skipper, but I do know a fine pair of tits when I see ‘em.”
“Can I push the this up to full revolutions?”
“Just like Lily McTavish, I reckon she’s game for anything.”
