The Barren Islands/Chapter 2

ARRING three English missionaries, a number of west-coast chiefs returning from the capital, and two officers from a visiting cruiser also returning, Grenille and Trenchard had the big charabanc to themselves the following day. It was a mad trip—a perfect macadamized road, stretching down-grade for two hundred and fifty miles, the throttle wide open and the huge car thundering along regardless of all traffic. Was not the Government mail-stage more than any private citizen? Also, the driver wanted to compress the journey into one day, having a lady to meet at the end of the run. So what would take two full days up-grade, took one day down-grade; and only the missionaries, who felt certain the driver was drunk, failed to enjoy themselves. Every time the car roared through one of the deep cuts or plunged headlong down a bit of steep road, they waxed indignant. When the party finally staggered into the hotel at Maevatanana, it was only an hour after sunset.

Next morning Trenchard stepped aboard the flat-bottomed, puffy little river steamer and said good-by to Grenille. In the past month he had depended much upon the Frenchman, and a firm friendship had grown up between them. As they stood together by the gangplank, Grenille turned with a low word.

“My friend, if I have luck this trip, I am through with Madagascar—and shall have some gold to sneak away with. Where can we meet?”

“How long will you be up in the hills?”

“Possibly a month at the outside.”

“Then say a month from today, at Port Choiseul on the east coast. In the afternoon.”

“Done,” said Grenille. “You're off—good luck!”

“Same to you.”

So they parted, each knowing that the other man, if alive, would keep the rendezvous. The chances were against either; for Grenille, while not a hunted man, was playing a risky game in going after native gold. Trenchard looked back once as the steamer puffed out into the stream and waved his hand; then he faced the northwest and the future, alone. Two days down the Betsiboka would land him at Majunga, the most important harbor of the island, and the odds were even that he would step ashore to face arrest and a firing-squad.

ITHIN five minutes Trenchard, while making his way aft, came face to face with a Hindu merchant from Majunga, who knew him well. The Hindu gave him a blank stare and passed by; Trenchard went on his way, a glow in his heart, and secured a deck-chair beneath the stern awning. This little incident lifted his spirits amazingly and served as an antidote to the parting with Grenille. For a moment he had felt lonely, and smiled a little at the realization. After all, there were men who trusted him, who held his regard as worth more than ten thousand francs in blood-money—natives, Arabs, Hindus, Chinese, merchants up and down the French and mainland coasts. He thought of Lieutenant Brouillan, who talked of his little plots and schemes, and almost laughed.

The trip was uneventful. Trenchard, after his month of rest and recuperation, fully recovered from the bullet which had smashed his ribs, felt a growing impatience to be standing out to sea with the schooner leaning to the freshening salt wind. That bullet had paid him well, but he did not reckon payment in dollars. He was in the game for love of the game itself. At the present moment he did not even know—nor did Grenille—just what game he was playing with Ali el Khadar. The old Arab undoubtedly had something to smuggle out of French hands, but Trenchard had asked no questions. He seldom did ask questions, for that matter.

OW as he smoked his pipe and watched the hilly country around, watched the boatman shoving the little steamer off eternal sandbanks, watched the stretches of grassy plain when the river meandered in wide curves, he was glad to feel that in a few more hours he would be in the game once more. Of Brouillan or the latter's schemes he hardly thought—time enough for that when the time came. He was carefully figuring out each move to be made in taking off the man Forillon. Boyanna Bay, where he was to pick up the fugitive, was only a few miles along the coast southwest of Majunga; it was a large and shallow bay containing only Malagasy or Arab villages. To slip in there and out again would be a simple matter, and then on down to the Barren Islands.

“Altogether too simple,” thought Trenchard, watching the two naval officers get out rifles and go to work potting crocodiles. “There's evidently a cruiser at Majunga, while Brouillan's tinpot chartship Tonkin may be there as well—no telling. I don't think I'll take chances with the schooner. I'll go get Forillon myself.”

That was typical of Trenchard.

E said few words to anyone aboard, playing his rôle of a phlegmatic Norman to perfection, and did not even see the Hindu trader from Majunga until, on the second day, the mangrove swamps of the river delta came into sight. Then he deliberately went in search of the Hindu, and found the latter among other brown men on the foredeck. Trenchard made a gesture, and the Hindu joined him at the rail of the starboard passage.

“Tonight,” said Trenchard without preamble, “I shall be at the Hotel Paris. Tomorrow I go to Soalala, where I know no one. I want to get in touch with some one there who can be trusted and who knows everyone.”

“Good, sahib,” said the Hindu quietly. “The son of my father's brother is in business in Soalala, and knows all those infidel Arabs. He is Ram Das Bhantjee. Say that I sent you to him in the name of Vishnu the blessed.”

“Thank you,” said Trenchard, and went aft again.

An hour before sunset the little steamer was puffing across Bembatoke Bay toward the wharves inside the long white Pointe de Sable. For a mile or so Majunga ran along the shore, beautiful with its mosques and Hindu houses, a deep green park behind these where gigantic baobabs and mangoes flourished, and cresting the hill above, the large white colombier or military pigeonry, with its conspicuous bell-tower. It was not at these things that Trenchard gazed, however. He had already noted the Messageries liner and the big cruiser at anchor in the outer road; now he inspected the long wharves ahead, between the iron pier and the jetty, where Arab dhows, bullockers and coasting steamers were loading or unloading. Here hinged his fate, and as the river steamer whistled shrilly at the lighters, his gray eyes searched out that upon which hung life or death.

Presently he found her, tied up alongside the wharf. For an instant his heart stood still; the schooner lying there appeared deserted. Had she been recognized and seized, then? Impossible! Even to his eye, she looked unnaturally in her disguise. Then he perceived that she was not deserted after all—water-casks were going aboard. He drew a deep breath of relief.

A man more impatient, less master of himself, might yet have ruined everything; but not John Trenchard. He turned away, watched the town ahead, listened to the bells clanging below, waited by the open gangway as the little boat banged in at the wharf and lines were flung. Then he was out and ashore with his bag, and beckoning a rickshaw.

“Hotel Paris.”

He rode on through the town—a Hindu and Arab town with its arched windows and doors, its lintels and door-posts elaborately carved in Bombay and brought here for installation, its throngs of stately Arabs and bustling Hindus. Now from a mosque minaret was droning forth the call to afternoon prayer, and as Trenchard turned into the little Greek hotel, he heard behind him the rising buzz of voices clamoring out that first sura of the Koran.

N five minutes he had secured his room for the night. Then, lighting his pipe, he left the hotel and walked toward the wharves again. He sauntered along in leisurely fashion. Now and again he saw men who knew him—one or two Arab traders, a Hindu, two brown Sakalava fishermen who had once guided his schooner through the intricate Anakao shoals away from an irate customs launch. None of them spoke to him or seemed to see him. Trenchard loafed along, pipe in mouth, and presently approached his schooner.

Despite his self-control, he sighed a little at sight of her, for now she was a filthy native coaster, topmasts down and stowed below, her decks strewed and littered, lines hanging in sloven fashion, ropes half-coiled and disorderly, canvas tattered and patched. In her bows perched a huge Arab coral-anchor, of hollow wood filled with stones, that would have disgraced the sorriest dhow. Her crew of a dozen laughing Malagasy seamen were taking water-casks aboard and stowing them anywhere, a sous-officer of the port keeping tally. Loafing on the wharf beside a towering pile of fowl-crates, smoking and flinging an occasional order to the men, was the mate Yusuf, now in command.

Trenchard glanced at the bows of the schooner, saw the eyes painted there, Arab style, and paused beside Yusuf, who ignored his presence. Trenchard did not miss the men, some in uniform and some not, who were scattered all along the wharves, keeping an eye on things; they might be watching for escaped criminals such as Berry or Forillon, they might be alert to anything of a suspicious nature.

“Where are you bound for?” asked Trenchard, taking the pipe from his mouth. Yusuf turned and gave him an insolent stare. He was tall, a half-naked, pockmarked coast Arab, absolutely fearless and knowing every inch of the Madagascar coasts as few men knew them. These two men, one white, one brown, when at sea were as one man, in whose hands the schooner was invincible.

“South to Maintirano,” said Yusuf, then flung a sharp order at his men, ignoring Trenchard.

“Tuesday night,” said the latter in rapid Swahili, “off Boyanna Bay. Inside the Vigilant Bank, twenty-two hours. I'll show a light. Dangerous.”

“Ma'ashallah!” Yusuf whirled on him with strident scorn. “God forbid that I should gossip with infidels when I have work to do!”

RENCHARD shrugged and turned away. These two men understood each other perfectly, so that, between them, words were often needless. Yusuf knew that Trenchard would be waiting, at ten o'clock Tuesday night, inside the long Vigilant coral reef which ran out from Boyanna Bay. Trenchard knew that the schooner would be there to pick him up if Yusuf were alive. As this was Monday evening, both men had no time to lose.

In the red sunset, Trenchard cut across town, entered the park, and amid a towering aisle of mango trees climbed up the hill to the Malagasy town at the crest. There he paused, looking out to where the tall chimneys of the slaughterhouse and refrigerating plant belched smoke into the sky; then he went on past the colombier and,entered the native town. In ten minutes he came to the shop of a Sakalava whom he knew, and paused before the open front. This man had made a fortune in cattle during the war, yet still kept up his business of selling silk-and-rafia goods. He looked up at Trenchard and nodded slightly.

“Here!” Trenchard passed him a note. “I want to cross the bay tomorrow morning at sunrise. A two-man rickshaw must be waiting to get me to Soalala early in the afternoon.”

The Sakalava nodded assent and clawed at the bank-note. Trenchard turned and departed, passed down the hill again, and went to his dinner in the little hotel. So far, all was well.

ORNING saw M. Argenteuil breakfasting at dawn, satisfying a curious constabulary officer at the boat-landing, and on his way across the five-mile bay in a long fisherman's canoe whose outrigger flashed gold and silver in the sunrise. No wireless messages had arrived; therefore Ali el Khadra and his agents had learned nothing of Brouillan's schemes. Trenchard was inclined to make light of the latter. In the fresh salt air of morning his spirits were high; this was his last day under the assumed name; by next dawn he would be treading his own deck again, and once among the poorly charted coast reefs he could laugh at any pursuing gunboat. True, a calm would have him at a disadvantage, but even the tricky Mozambique Channel had a regular routine of weather in June; and the coast to the south, probably the least known portion of the entire world as regarded its dangers of reef and weather, was as the palms of their hands to Trenchard and his mate Yusuf. From early morning to ten o'clock, a land breeze, and from three to six in the afternoon a sea breeze, and at other times probable calms; but out in the channel proper calms would be almost unknown while the monsoon blew.

The brown Sakalava paddlers chanted a lively tune, drove their paddles hard, brought the big canoe up to the muddy landing inside Maroloha Point. Trenchard and his bag were set ashore, and found one of the new type of hill-road rickshaws waiting. This tokandia, so named after the mythical one-legged animal of the island, had one wheel, with a comfortable seat over it on heavy springs, and a man took the poles at either end, balancing and propelling it. Trenchard got settled, and was off.

West went the long, splendid road, always westward, past the glittering Makambi Inlet and on into the reddish hills, past Malagasy villages, past uplands studded with grazing humped island cattle, past rivers and coastal inlets where men and vehicles were ferried across. It was a glorious morning's ride, and Trenchard, knowing himself absolutely safe for once, relaxed and enjoyed every minute of it.

A laugh of happiness came into his throat at thought of the precision and fidelity with which he was served by these brown conquered men of Madagascar. A word from any of them would have been worth ten thousand francs; yet here he came and went his devious errands among the men who hunted him, and was unseen. There was something mystic and wonderful about it all; it put a glow into him. If treachery came to undo him, it would not come from these stalwart brown men.

So at last, after stopping at a village for a noonday meal of partridge and roast pumpkin, they came across the tree-scattered uplands at Boyanna Bay, and swept down the curving shore, past villages and high red cliffs, to the little town of Soalala at the head of the bay. Here a few coral-stone houses testified to the omnipresent Hindu merchants; godowns and cattle sheds crowded the waterfront; dhows were being laden with bullocks and meat; but Trenchard looked up the bay to where, two miles away, a long shape lay rolling and spouting forth a tiny stream of smoke. A gunboat, lying at the six-fathom anchorage—but why? Gunboats seldom came here. Had Forillon been captured—had the fugitive “squealed?” No, for none of the old tinpot's boats lay off the village.

RENCHARD climbed out of the rickshaw in front of the bazar of Ram Das Bhantjee, a very decent little shop where European goods were sold. Having previously instructed his two men about having a boat ready for him that night, he paid them and turned into the shop, without regard to the curious crowd gathering to see the white man. A sedate, white-turbaned Hindu came forward and greeted him, proving to be Ram Das in person.

“I am sent to you by your cousin in Majunga,” said Trenchard.

“With what message, sahib?”

“In the name of Vishnu the blessed.”

The Hindu salaamed, then led Trenchard through to a back room very comfortably fitted. The message was obviously a password, for when the door was closed, Ram Das smiled and spoke.

“Sahib, you are in safety here. Your desires?”

Trenchard took possession of a comfortable divan and lighted his pipe.

“First, about that gunboat out in the bay. What's she here for?”

“She came yesterday, sahib, and sent ashore inspectors to look at the cattle going to the Comoro Islands in those dhows. They finished their work this morning and went aboard her. She is leaving today or tomorrow.”

Trenchard frowned, hesitated. Sight of that gunboat had unsteadied him. This Hindu did not know his name, there was no reason to suspect anything amiss, and yet he had instinctive certainty that somehow he had put his foot into a trap—not here under this roof, but in Soalala.

“Tonight,” he said slowly, “I am going away in a boat; it is arranged for, when darkness falls. There is a white man here whom I am to take away with me. His name is Forillon, and he is in hiding. Have you any news of him?”

Ram Das dissented. “None, sahib. If it is your pleasure, I will inquire. You wish to see him?”

“Yes. If possible, have him brought here just at dark; but,” added Trenchard cautiously, “do not let him know before then that I am here.”

Ram Das, perfectly comprehending this strategy, flashed a smile, and disappeared. Half an hour later he returned with word that Forillon was sheltered in the house of a half-caste cattle-merchant, and that he would attend to bringing the man at dark. Satisfied that all was right after all, Trenchard removed his boots and stretched out for a siesta.

It was late when he wakened. Soon after, Ram Das appeared with food and excellent coffee, and Trenchard dined well. The gunboat, he learned, still lay at her anchor and would not leave until next morning; she had sent no more boats ashore. Trenchard, forcing himself to stifle his objectionable instinct, decided that her presence here was only a bit of bad luck, which need have no effect on his own plans—unless something went wrong. Ram Das proved to have a chart of the bay, produced it, and Trenchard pored over the sheet.

The bay opened due north, was about ten miles long, and four wide. Only a narrow track in the center was suitable for the gunboat, however; most of the bay consisted of coral reefs, mud-banks or shoals. The east head was composed of high red and white cliffs which ran back into mangrove swamp, but it was with the western side that Trenchard was concerned. This was all high forested hills, coming down in abrupt cliffs to the water, and these cliffs ran out to the square end of Bararata Point. For three miles to the east of this point, curving in across the harbor mouth, ran the Vigilant Bank—a wide coral shoal of erratic and varying depth.

Off this point there was nearly always a breeze, even during the period of usual coastal calms. Therefore Trenchard had no great fear of the schooner running into trouble. He could not rid himself of the thought that the gunboat might be here awaiting her; yet, since the fugitive Forillon was at liberty, this hypothesis could not be entertained.

“I must be getting nerves,” he thought disgustedly. Too much land-breeze, not enough salt air! The only danger might come from the gunboat leaving harbor tonight, but she'll not do that. Six fathom is the least she can dare tackle about here, and she wont take chances on running the channel at night—these French chaps don't do such things. Yusuf is certain to circle out to sea and then come straight in to pick me up, too, so she wont be sighted by the gunboat. All's safe.”

The sun was gone behind the wooded hills across the bay, and Ram Das came in for a moment, to say that he had summoned Forillon. Trenchard nodded. If the Hindu suspected the identity of his visitor, as perhaps he did—since Trenchard was famous up and down the coasts for smuggling goods and men out of French hands—he made no comment.

Twenty minutes later, Forillon entered the room.