However, after the armistice, things were back to normal and it required three thousand a year for an officer to support himself in the style the regiment expected. Gareth moved on, and had kept moving ever since.
Vicky Camberwell listened to him, fascinated despite herself She knew that this was the cobra dance before the chicken, she knew herself well enough to realize that part of the attraction he held for her was the very devilry and roguishness she had so readily recognized.
There had been others like this one. Her job took her to the trouble spots of the world, and men of this breed were attracted to the same hot spots. With these men there was always the excitement and danger, the thrill and the fun but inevitably there was also the sting and the pain in the end.
She tried not to respond, wishing the ride would end, but Gareth's sallies were too much for her and as the ricksha drew up in front of the Royal Hotel entrance, she could not resist the almost suffocating urge to laugh. She threw back her head, shaking her shining pale hair in the wind as she let it ring out.
Gareth had learned also to use the calibre of a woman's laughter as a yardstick. Vicky laughed with an unaffected gaiety, a straightforward physical response that he found reassuring, and he took her arm possessively as he helped her out of the ricksha.
He showed her through the royal suite with a proprietorial air.
"Only one suite in the place. Balcony looks out over the gardens, and you get the sea breeze in the evening." And, "Only private loo in the building, even one of those French jobs for sluicing the old privates, you know." And, "The bed is quite extraordinary, like sleeping on a cloud and all that rot. Never experienced anything like it."
"Is this where I am to stay?" Vicky asked, with a small-girl innocence.
"Well, I thought we could make some sort of arrangement, old girl." And she was left with no doubts as to the type of arrangement Gareth Swales had in mind.
"You are very kind, major," she murmured, and crossed to the handset of the telephone.
"This is Miss Camberwell. Major Swales is vacating the royal suite for me. Please have a servant move his clothes to alternative accommodation."
"I say-" gasped Gareth, and she covered the mouthpiece and smiled at him. "It's so sweet of you." Then she listened to the manager's voice. "Oh dear," she said. "Well, if that's the only room you have vacant, it will just have to do then, I am sure the major has experienced more uncomfortable billets." When Gareth saw the room that was now his, he tried honestly to remember humbler and less comfortable billets.
The Chinese prison in Mukden had been cooler and not placed directly over the boisterous uproar of the public bar, and the front line dugout during the winter of 1917 at Arras had been more spacious and better furnished.
The next three days Gareth Swales spent at the harbour, drinking tea and whisky in the office of the harbour master, riding out with the pilot to meet every new vessel as it crossed the bar, jogging in a ricksha along the wharf to speak with the skippers of dhows and Tuggers, rusty old coal-burners and neater, newer oil, burners, or rowing about the harbour in a hired ferry to hail the vessels that lay at anchor in the roads.
His evenings he spent plying Victoria Camberwell with charm, flattery and vintage champagne for all of which she seemed to have an insatiable appetite and complete immunity. She listened to him, laughed with him and drank his champagne, and at midnight excused herself prettily, and nimbly side-stepped his efforts to press her to his snowy shirt-front or get a foot in the door of the royal suite.
By the morning of the fourth day, Gareth was understandably becoming a little discouraged. He thought of taking a bucket of Tusker out to Jake's camp and cheering himself up with a little of the American's genial company.
However, he did not relish having to admit failure to Jake, SO he fought off the temptation and took his usual ricksha ride down to the harbour.
During the night a new vessel had anchored in the outer roads and Gareth examined her through his binoculars. She was salt-fir ned and dirty, (Id and scarred with a dark nondescript hull and a ragged crew, but Gareth saw that her rigging was sound and that although she was schooner rigged with masts which could spread a mass of canvas, yet she had propeller drive at the stern probably she had been converted to take a diesel engine under the high poop. She looked the most likely prospect he had yet seen in the harbour and Gareth ran down the steps to the ferry and exuberantly tipped the oarsman a shilling over his usual fare.
At closer range the vessel seemed even more disreputable than she had at a distance. The paintwork proved to be a mottled patchwork of layer peeling from layer, and it was clear what the sanitary arrangements were aboard. The sides were zebra-striped with human excrement.
Yet closer still, Gareth noticed that the planking was tight and sound beneath the execrable paint cover, and her bottom, seen through the clear water, was clean copper and free of the usual fuzzy green beard of weed. Also her rigging was well set up and all sheets had the bright yellow colour and resilient took of new hemp. The name on her stern was in Arabic and French, HirondeUe, and she was Seychelles registered.
Gareth wondered at her purpose, for she was certainly a ringer, a thoroughbred masquerading as a cart horse. That big bronze propeller would drive her handily, and the hull itself looked fast and sea-kindly.
Then as he came alongside he smelled her, and knew precisely what she was. He had smelled that peculiar odour of polluted bilges and suffering humanity before in the China Sea. He had heard it said that it was an odour that could never be scoured from a hull, not even sheep dip and boiling salt water would cleanse it. They said that on a dark night, the patrol boats could smell a slaver from over the horizon.
A man who made his daily bread buying and selling slaves would be unlikely to baulk at a mere trifle like gun running decided Gareth, and hailed her.
"Ahoy, HirondeLle!" The response was hostile, the closed dark faces of the ragged crew stared down at the ferry. They were a mixed batch, Arab, Indian, Chinese, Negro and there was no answer to his hail.
Standing in the ferry, Gareth cupped his hands to his mouth and, with the Englishman's unconscious arrogance that assumes all the world speaks English, called again.
"I want to speak to your captain." Now there was a stir under the poop and a white man came to the rail. He was swarthy, darkly sunburned and so short that his head barely showed above the gunwale.
"What you want? You police, hey?" Gareth guessed he was Greek or Armenian. he wore a dark patch over one eye, and the effect was theatrical. The good eye was bright and stony as water-washed agate.
"No police!" Gareth assured him. "No trouble," and produced the whisky bottle from his coat pocket and waved it airily.
The Captain leaned out over the rail and peered closely at Gareth.
Perhaps he recognized the twinkle in the eye and the jaunty piratical smile that Gareth flashed up at him. It often takes one to know one.
Anyway, he seemed to reach a decision and he snapped an order in Arabic. A rope ladder tumbled down the side.
"Come," invited the Captain. He had nothing to hide.
On this leg of his voyage he carried only a cargo of baled cotton goods from Bombay. He would discharge this here at Dares Salaam before continuing northwards to make a nocturnal landfall on the great horn of Africa, there to take on his more lucrative cargo of human wares.
As long as the merchants of Arabia, India and the East still offered huge sums for the slender black girls of the Danakil and Galla, men like this would brave the British warships and patrol boats to supply them.
"I thought we might drink a little whisky together and talk about money," Gareth greeted the Captain. "My name is Swales. Major Swales." The Captain had trained his oiled black hair into a queue that hung down his back. He seemed to cultivate the buccaneer image.