Trade Wind by M. M. Kaye Read Free Book Online Page B

with difficulty, and said gravely: “So now that you are rich and independent you’re hurrying right out to your handsome sweetheart, with the Craynes’ approval, to be married in white satin and a wedding veil and live happily ever after. That it?”
    “No-o…not exactly. I am going out to see for myself what may be done to put a stop to the disgraceful traffic in slaves that is carried on in Zanzibar. And while I am there I shall also be able to renew my acquaintance with Mr Mayo before deciding whether we could make a success of marriage. We have not seen each other for nearly two years you see, and he may well have changed.”
    “And you too, I guess.”
    “I never change,” asserted Miss Hollis confidently. “But from all I have heard and read, the tropics are apt to have a deteriorating effect on men who are compelled to live there.”
    “On their health, certainly.”
    “Oh, and on their characters too, I assure you! That is why I felt I must see for myself. And even if it should turn out that Clay and I do not suit, I shall not have wasted my time, since quite apart from the slaves there must be so many things crying out to be changed in Zanzibar that I shall find plenty to do. I have been studying Arabic and Swahili for some months now, and though I am afraid that my vocabulary is still very small, I am told that I speak both languages passably well.”
    She leaned forward to lay a hand on the Captain’s sleeve, and said coaxingly: “So now won’t you please tell me something about the Island?”
    “Why don’t you go ask that young Mossoo Jooles?” retorted the Captain gruffly. “Reckon he’ll be pleased enough to tell you anything you want to know. His Pa’s French Consul in Zanzibar, so he’s lived there; which is more’n I have!”
    “Yes. He told me so,” said Hero. “But then he also told me that the Island was ‘A paradise on earth, colourful and exotic, and of a beauty inconceivable. A page,’ he says, ‘from the Arabian Nights!’”
    Captain Fullbright, amused at the quotation and the expressive look that accompanied it, laughed heartily and remarked that all Frenchmen—and for that matter most foreigners—only said what they felt a lady would wish to hear. “Did he tell you anything else about it?”
    “Indeed yes: a great deal. He told me that he is convinced that the British intend to annex the Island, together with Pemba and the Sultanates’ dependencies on the mainland.”
    “Did he, now! Waal, ma’am, I guess that’s something I wouldn’t know a thing about. How d’you reckon they’ll set about it?—or hain’t he told you that?”
    Apparently he had, and Miss Hollis (never one to shirk instructing the Ignorant), explained that it was really very simple; and quite infamous! The British, it seemed, were supporting a puppet-ruler—a most weak and vicious man, who besides encouraging slavery and wasting the revenues on riotous living, had no real claim to the throne, since he was merely a younger son of the late Sultan. The rival claimant, according to the French Consul’s son, was not only infinitely better fitted to rule, but possessed the respect and loyalty of nine-tenths of the local population together with the support of every thinking foreigner in Zanzibar with the exception of the British, who recognizing that his strength of character might be a bar to their schemes for colonial expansion, preferred to have a more malleable tool as a ruler. Had the Captain ever heard of anything more shameful? Of course she herself, as a good Republican, could not approve of kings in any form. But then nor could she tolerate injustice.
    Indignation brought a flush to Miss Hollis’s classic features, and her eyes sparkled in a manner that Captain Fullbright considered magnificent, though hardly alluring. He shrugged non-committally and remarked that in his opinion all power-politics were apt to be a dirty business, and though he did not hold any brief for the British, he