absently. The feeling of the smooth ivory under his fingers was as comforting as a string of worry-beads. With a single bullet through the brain, Ryder had killed the mighty bull who had carried these tusks at Karamojo, a thousand miles south of Khartoum on the Victoria Nile.
Still fondling the ivory, he studied the faded photograph in its ebony frame on the near wall. It depicted a family standing in front of an ox-wagon in a bleak but unmistakably African landscape. A team of sixteen oxen was in spanned and the black driver stood beside them, ready to crack his long whip and begin the trek towards some nameless destination out there in the blue yonder. In the centre of the picture Ryder’s father sat in the saddle of his favourite mount, a grey gelding he had named Fox. He was a big, powerfully built man, with a full dark beard. He had died so long ago that Ryder could not remember if it was a reasonable likeness. He was holding the six-year-old Ryder on the pommel of his saddle with his long skinny legs dangling. Ryder’s mother stood at the horse’s head gazing serenely at the camera. He remembered every detail of her lovely features and, as always when he looked on them, he felt his heart squeezed by the memory. She was holding his sister’s hand. Alice was a few years older than Ryder. On the other side of her stood Ryder’s elder brother, with one arm protectively round their mother’s waist. That day had been Waite Courtney’s sixteenth birthday. He was ten years older than Ryder, and had been more a father to him than a brother after their own father had been killed by a wounded buffalo during the course of the journey on which the five in the photograph had been about to embark.
The last time Ryder Courtney had wept was when he received the telegraph from his sister Alice in London with the terrible news that
Waite had been killed by the Zulus on some God-forsaken battlefield in South Africa under a hill called Isandlwana, the Place of the Little Hand. He had left his widow Ada with two sons, Sean and Garrick; fortunately they were almost grown men and could take care of her.
Ryder sighed and drove those sad thoughts from his mind. He shouted for Bacheet. Although it was still dark, there was much they must do today if they were to be ready to sail before midnight.
The two men walked past the ivory warehouse to the gate of the animal stockade. Old Ali met them coughing and grumbling.
“O beloved of Allah,” Ryder greeted him. “May the wombs of all your beautiful young wives be fruitful. And may their ardour fire your heart and weaken your knees.”
Ali tried not to grin at this levity, for all three of his wives were ancient crones. When a chuckle almost escaped him he turned it into a cough, then spat a glob of yellow phlegm into the dust. AH was the keeper of the menagerie, and although he seemed to hate all mankind he had a magical way with wild creatures. He led Ryder on a tour of the monkey cages. They were all clean, and the water and feed in the dishes was fresh. Ryder reached into the cage of Colobus and his favourite jumped on to his shoulder, bared his teeth and exposed his fangs. Ryder found the remains of the dhurra cake from his breakfast in his pocket and fed it to him. He stroked the handsome black and white coat as they went on down the row of cages. There were five different species of ape, including dog-faced baboons, and two young chimpanzees, which were hugely in demand in Europe and Asia, and would find eager buyers in Cairo. They clambered up and hugged Ali round the neck; the youngest sucked his ear as though it were its mother’s teat. Ali grumbled at them in soft, loving tones.
Beyond the monkeys there were cages full of birds, from starlings of vivid metallic hues to eagles, huge owls, long-legged storks and horn-bills, with beaks like great yellow trumpets. “Are you still able to find food for them?” Ryder indicated the carnivorous birds tethered by one leg to their posts. Ali grunted noncommittally, but Bacheet answered for him.
“The rats are the only animals that still thrive in the city. The urchins bring them in for two copper coins each.” Ali looked at him venomously for having divulged information that was none of his business.
At the far end of the stockade the antelopes were penned together, except for the Cape buffalo who were too aggressive to share with other animals. They were still calves, barely weaned, for young animals were more resilient and travelled better than mature beasts. Ryder had left for last the two rare and lovely antelope he had captured on his last expedition. They had lustrous ginger coats with stark white stripes, huge swimming eyes and trumpet-shaped ears, and were also still calves; when fully mature they would be the size of a pony. Buds bulged out between their ears, which would soon sprout into heavy corkscrew horns. Although the cured hides of the bongo had been described before, no live specimen had ever been offered for sale in Europe, as far as Ryder knew. A breeding pair like this would command a prince’s ransom. He fed them dhurra cakes and they slobbered greedily into his palm.
As they walked on Ryder and Ali discussed how best to maintain a constant supply of fodder to keep their charges nourished and healthy. The bongos were browsing animals, and Ali had discovered that they accepted the foliage of the acacia tree. Al-Mahtoum’s men regularly brought in camel loads of freshly cut branches from the desert in exchange for handfuls of silver Maria Theresa dollars.
“Soon we will have to capture another floating reed island because if we do not the other animals will starve,” Ali warned lugubriously. He relished being the bearer of worrisome tidings. When rafts of swamp weed and papyrus broke free from the dense masses in the lagoons and channels of the Sud they were carried downstream on the Nile. Some of the rafts were so extensive and buoyant that often they brought large animals with them from the swamps. Despite the best efforts of the Dervish, Ryder and his crew were able to secure these living rafts with long cables and heave them on to the bank. There, gangs of labourers hacked the matted vegetation into manageable blocks and moored them in the moat of the channel. The grasses and reeds remained green until they could be used as fodder.
There was scarcely enough daylight for Ryder to finish his preparations to leave Khartoum, and the sun was setting by the time he and Bacheeet left the compound with a string of baggage camels for the old harbour. Jock McCrump had steam up in the boilers of the Intrepid this when they went aboard.
Ryder was painfully aware of the spying eyes of the city upon them as they loaded the last bundles of cordwood for the boilers into one of the barges. The sun had been down for two hours before they had finished but the heat of the day still held the city in a sweaty embrace as the moon began to show its upper limb above the eastern horizon and transform the ugly buildings of the city with its pale romantic rays.
Unremarked among the other sparse river traffic, a tiny felucca used the last of the evening breeze to leave the Omdurman bank and slip downriver. Under cover of darkness it passed not much more than its own length beyond the entrance to the old harbour. The captain stood on one of the thwarts and stared into the entrance. He saw that torches were burning, and with the rays of the moon he was able to make out all the unusual activity around the ferenghi steamer moored in the inner harbour. He heard the clamour and shouting of many voices. It was as he had been informed. The ferenghi ship was making ready to leave the city. He dropped back on to his seat at the tiller and whistled softly to his three-man crew to harden the big lateen sail so that he could bring her closer to the night breeze, then put the tiller hard up. The small boat shot away at an angle across the current and headed back for Omdurman on the western side of the river. As they came under the loom of the land the captain whistled again, but more piercingly, and was challenged almost immediately from the darkness: “In the name of the Prophet and the Divine Mahdi, speak!”
The captain stood up again and called to the watchers on the bank. “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet. I bear tidings for the Khalifa Abdullahi.”
The Intrepid this still lay at the Old City wharf. Jock McCrump and Ryder Courtney were checking the row of Martini-Henry rifles in the gun rack at the back of the open bridge, making certain they were loaded, and that spare packets of the big Boxer-Henry 45 calibre cartridges were to hand, should they run into the Dervish blockade when they left the harbour.
No sooner had they completed their final preparations than the first of the most important passengers came up the gangplank, Bacheet leading them to their quarters. The this had only four cabins. One belonged to Ryder Courtney, but over Bacheet’s protests he was going to relinquish it to the Benbrook family. There were only two bunks in the tiny cabin. They would be crowded, but at least it had its own bathroom. The girls would be afforded some privacy in the crowded steamer. Presumably one of the twins could sleep with her father, while the other would be with Rebecca. The foreign consuls had been allocated the remaining cabins, while the rest of the almost four hundred passengers must take their chances on the open decks, or crowded into the three empty barges. The fourth barge was laden with the cordwood so that they would not be forced to go ashore to cut supplies of this precious commodity.
Ryder looked towards the eastern horizon. The moon was only a few days from full, and would give him just enough light to descry the channel down towards the Shabluka Gorge. Unfortunately it would also light up the target
