"Do not ruffle the feathers," Hal cautioned them. "You will spoil Ingwe's dinner for him."
From that moment their love of the longbow was passionate and within days they had developed into archers of the first water. When Hal towed an empty water keg at a full cable's length behind the ship, the Amadoda. shot at it, first individually then in massed divisions like English archers. When the keg was heaved back on deck it was bristling like a porcupine's back, and they retrieved seven out of every ten arrows that had been shot.
In one area alone the Amadoda. showed no aptitude. at serving the great bronze culver ins Despite all the threats and mockery that Aboli heaped upon them, he could not get them to approach one with anything less than superstitious awe. Each time a broadside boomed they howled, "It is witchcraft. It is the thunder of the heavens."
Hal drew up a new watch-bill, in which the battle stations of the crew were rearranged to have the white seamen serving the batteries and the Amadoda handling the sails and making up the boarding-party.
A standing bank of high clouds twenty leagues ahead of their bows marked the island of Zanzibar. A fringe of coconut palms ringed the white beach of the bay, but the massive walls of the fortress were even whiter, dazzling as the ice slopes of a glacier in the sunlight. The citadel had been built a century before by the Portuguese and until only a decade previously it had assured that nation's domination of the trade routes of the entire eastern shores of the African continent.
Later the Omani Arabs, under their warrior king Ahmed El Grang the Left-handed, had sailed in with their war dhows, attacked the Portuguese and had driven out their garrison with great slaughter. This loss had signalled the beginning of the decline of Portuguese influence on the coast, and the Omanis had usurped their place as the foremost trading nation.
Hal examined the fort through the lens of his telescope and noted the banner of Islam flying above the tower, and the serried ranks of cannon along the tops of the walls. Those weapons could hurl heated shot onto any hostile vessel that attempted to enter the bay.
He felt a thrill of foreboding along his spine as he contemplated the fact that if he enlisted with the forces of the Prester, he would become the enemy of Ahmed El Grang. One day those huge cannon might be firing upon the Golden Bough. In the meantime he must make the most of this last opportunity to enter the Omani camp as a neutral and to gather all the intelligence that came his way.
The harbour was crowded with small craft, mostly the dhows of the Mussulmen from India, Arabia and Muscat. There were two tall ships among this multitude. one flew a Spanish flag and the other was French, but Hal recognized neither.
All these traders were drawn to Zanzibar by the riches of Africa, the gold of Sofala, the gum arabic, ivory, and the endless flood of humanity into its slave market. This was where seven thousand men, women and children were offered for sale each season when the trade winds brought the barques in from around the Cape of Good Hope and from all the vast basin of the Indian Ocean.
Hal dipped his ensign in courtesy to the fortress, then conned the Golden Bough towards the anchorage under top sails. At his order the anchor splashed into the clear water and the tiny sliver of canvas was whipped off her and furled by Aboli's exuberant Amadoda. Almost immediately the ship was besieged by a fleet of little boats, selling every conceivable commodity from fresh fruit and water to small boys. These last were ordered by their masters to bend over the thwarts, lift their robes and display their small brown buttocks for the delectation of the seamen at the Golden Bough's rail.
"Pretty jig-jig boys," the whore masters crooned in pidgin English.
"Sweet bums like ripe mangoes."
"Mister Tyler, have a boat lowered," Hal ordered. "I'm going ashore. I will take Althuda and Master Daniel with me and ten of your best men."
They rowed across to the stone landing steps below the fortress walls, and Big Daniel went ashore first to plough open a passage through the throng of merchants, who swarmed down to the water's edge to offer their wares. On their last visit he had escorted Sir Francis ashore so he led the way. His seamen formed in a phalanx around Hal and they marched through the narrow streets.
They passed through bazaars and crowded souks where the merchants displayed their stocks. Traders and seamen from the other vessels in the harbour picked over the piles of elephant tusks, and cakes of fragrant golden gum arabic, bunches of ostrich feathers and rhinoceros horns. They haggled over the price of the carpets from Muscat and the stoppered porcupine quills filled with grains of alluvial gold from Sofala and the rivers of the African interior. The slavemasters paraded files of human beings for potential buyers to examine their teeth, and palpate the muscles of the males or lift the aprons of the young females to consider their sweets.
From this area of commerce, Big Daniel led them into a sector of the town where the buildings on each side of the lanes almost touched each other overhead and blocked out the light of day, The stench of human faeces from the open sewers, which ran down to the harbour, almost suffocated them.
Big Daniel stopped abruptly in front of an arched mahogany door, carved with intricate Islamic motifs and studded with iron spikes, and heaved on the dangling bell rope Within minutes they heard the bolts on the far side being pulled back and the huge door creaked open. Half a dozen small brown faces peered out at them, boys and girls of mixed blood and of all ages between five and ten years.
"Welcome! Welcome!" they chirruped in quaintly accented English.
"The blessing of Allah the All Merciful be upon you, English milord. May all your days be golden and scented with wild jasmine."
A little girl seized Hal by the hand and led him through into the interior courtyard. A fountain tinkled in the centre and the air was filled with the scent of frangipani and yellow tamarind flowers. A tall figure, clad in flowing white robes and gold-corded Arabian head-dress, rose from the pile of silk carpets where he had been reclining.