Sara Sheridan - Secret of the Sands

The book Haines intended to write about the trip would have used, of course, much the same material, but as captain he considers that his right. Haines envisioned reporting to the Royal Society as the head of the expedition and doling out credit where it was due to his talented officers whose dedication, he had decided on wording it, was a credit to both the expedition and the Bombay Marine. He’d have credited Wellsted, of course. However, the lieutenant’s manuscript has squarely put paid to any such grandiose dreams and Haines wishes he could recall the parcel, which by now will no doubt have cleared the Red Sea and, safe aboard a company ship, be dispatched westwards to London. What rankles the captain most is that Wellsted did not dedicate the tome to him. In an unheard of lapse of etiquette, the lieutenant barely mentioned any of the other men on board, least of all the illustrious Haines. Worst of all, he is entirely unapologetic, which only makes Haines even more furious. When the hell did the man find the time to write a damn book, anyway?

A knock on the cabin door interrupts Haines’ furious train of thought. Three midshipmen hover in the doorway, boys of eleven, twelve and thirteen years of age, dressed in pale breeches and smart, brass-buttoned, navy jackets. Their hair is uniformly the colour of wet sand and they look so alike that they could be brothers, though really they are only brothers in arms. Haines notes to himself that they have been through a great deal, these boys and they are good lads. They have seen, between them, too many cadavers the last few days. As the captain motions them into the room, by far the largest on the ship, the boys seem suddenly taller as if growing into the space. Each of them silently hopes that one day he will be man enough to be called captain.

‘Ah. Dinner. Yes,’ says Haines.

Jardine, the captain’s portly, Scottish steward follows the deputation, closing the door behind him with an unexpectedly deft flick of the ankle. The man’s face is like a craggy cliff of pink chalk, fallen away slightly on one side, as if the steward’s very person is as old as time and disappearing gradually into the sea. There was, during the time of the fever, no expectation that Jardine might succumb; he is an indestructible kind of fellow. Now in one hand he holds a decanter of brandy and in the other a flacon of red wine, which he lays on the table.

‘What is it tonight, Jardine?’

‘Mutton, sir. Stewed,’ he replies, lopsided in the mouth.

They last resupplied far south of Makkah and bought a flock of small, dark-coated sheep from an unwilling tribe of Wahabi for a small fortune. Supplies further along the coast have proved limited. Many of the Musselmen refuse to trade with the English at all although some tribes are easier than others. This coast – to the east of the Red Sea – is proving particularly troublesome. Islam, in this area, appears to be taken to extremes and is most unforgiving in its tenets – quite a contrast to the more laissez-faire Ibadis who populate the other side of the Peninsula and to the south. In this neck of the woods the mere sight of white skin often provokes an apoplexy of virulent hatred. The landing parties have been spat upon, screamed at and chased off at knife point by wild-eyed, pale-robed assailants spewing a torrent of abuse, which upon later translation, turned out to mean ‘Eat pig, pig-eaters!’ and the like. At one port a merchant even pissed into a sack of flour rather than sell it to the infidel ship to be eaten by unbelievers. ‘Die empty-bellied, kafir, ’ the man sneered. No amount of money or attempt at goodwill seems to make the long-bearded zealots change their minds. The holy cities are closed to foreigners so it has been mutton for some weeks now, supplemented with thin dates, ship’s tack, sheep’s milk, coffee, a small amount of cornbread and any decent-sized fish the younger members of the crew can scoop out of the water.

‘Well, lads, you did not join up, I trust, in the hope of feasting at the expense of the Bombay Marine?’

Haines pours his officers a glass each.

‘A toast, shall we?’ he says with largesse.

That very morning the last of the dead was buried at sea – an Irish seadog from Belfast called Johnny Mullins, who fought the malaria like a trouper but lost in the end. All members of the crew who caught the sickness are either dead or cured now. The worst has passed and Haines holds up his glass.

‘We survivors, gentlemen. May our poor fellows rest in peace.’

The boys shift uneasily. Protocol demands that they do not start the proceedings of dinner without all the invited officers present. They may be young, but they know the form.

‘Come now,’ says the captain testily, imposing his authority.

Slowly, the boys concur. Uneasily, they pick up their glasses and down the wine.

‘Jardine!’ the captain calls for service.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Mutton stew is it?’

‘Yes, sir. With seaweeds. But …’

‘If Lieutenant Wellsted cannot be troubled to join us on time, then I see no reason why we should wait on his pleasure.’

Haines turns back to the little group.

‘Now,’ he says. ‘The soundings you took today, young Ormsby. I checked over your work and I was most impressed. Heaving the lead all afternoon like that and collating your measurements with excellent accuracy – why, you are a regular Maudsley man, are you not? We’ll have you in charge of this survey yet!’

Ormsby’s grin could illuminate London Bridge. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he says as Jardine shuffles in with a pewter casserole dish, steam emanating from the open lid, and starts to serve the officers their dinner.

Chapter Six

Jessop and Jones are coming to realise that the Dhofaris have a very different sense of time. Or, as the lieutenant puts it, ‘You cannot trust a word the buggers say.’ It has been another day or two to the emir’s camp for almost a week now, and no manner of earnest enquiry elicits any other response from the men, than occasionally, a wry shrug of the shoulders. Jessop restricts Jones from becoming too insistent.

‘We are not in such a rush, old man,’ he points out.

It is long enough till the men’s rendezvous with the Palinurus that they have time to lag behind their schedule.

Apart from their inability to keep to a timetable, Jessop finds the Dhofaris very pleasant. They are endlessly patient with his attempts to map the route, which is proving extremely difficult. For a start, for most of the day, the brass instruments the doctor brought for the job are far too hot to touch.

‘Sort of thing you don’t realise in Southampton,’ he smiles.

Jones does not find this kind of thing amusing. The tasks are as much his as the doctor’s to complete but the lieutenant constantly gives up, the doctor considers, a mite too easily for an English officer who is charged with what is, after all, the fairly routine, if inconvenient, mission of checking the lie of the land. The Dhofaris bind their hands in cloth and try their best to assist.

At night, by the panorama of low-slung stars with which the region is blessed, the instruments provide better results. The sand dunes, however, are tricky to render. The wind will move them long before the next British mission comes inland, making that element of the map all but useless. There is no landscape on earth as changeable as the desert, Jessop muses. While the Northumberland hills where he grew up have remained largely the same for thousands of years, the features of the desert landscape might last no more than a few weeks. The doctor does not give up, though. He merely notates all his thoughts and as much detail as he can manage, down to the fact that the thin goats the Dhofaris have brought have shorter carcasses than their European cousins and are surprisingly tasty. A chap never knows what might prove a useful piece of information – which shrub will turn out to hold a priceless secret that can be used in British industry, or the understanding of which local custom will endear a later British delegation to an emir or a caliph and secure a lucrative trade agreement. Dr Jessop, unlike Lieutenant Jones, is focussed clearly on what the East India Company requires of him. He notes each twenty-four hours the mileage they have managed to cover and estimates that a thirsty camel can drink twenty gallons in less than three minutes.