Secret of the Sands. Sara Sheridan

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.

      As they make camp in the middle of the morning and settle down to sleep for the hottest part of the day under a hastily erected tent that provides shade probably only a degree or two cooler than the baking sand adjacent to it, the doctor dresses a burn on the older Dhofari’s hand. The wound was acquired in the service of the British Empire, after all. He daubs lavender ointment across the skin. Kindness, the doctor always thinks, is terribly important to a patient. When he first qualified, many of his patients healed all the quicker, he’s sure, for his attention, rather than simply his medical knowledge.

      ‘I don’t know why you bother, old chap,’ Jones mumbles sleepily to his companion.

      ‘I have the ointment with me, it costs me nothing,’ the doctor points out.

      Jones turns over. ‘Night night,’ he murmurs like a child rather than one of His Majesty’s finest.

      Jessop burrows himself an indent in the sand. It is really very telling, he muses. Jones didn’t seem – he angles for the right word – so very ungentlemanly when they were aboard ship. He glances at the blinding orb that is reaching its height. The doctor prefers travelling by the stars. Night in the desert is quite the most extraordinary spectacle.

      ‘Good night,’ he returns, rather more formally, and settles down to sleep for a few hours before they get on their way.

       Chapter Seven

      It feels to Zena as if she has walked into a nightmare. In the low-ceilinged hold of the Arab dhow there are