Well, it eventually did in this case at all events. But there were wheels within wheels, political mining and counter-mining, and intrigues deep and shallow.
Be all this as it may, Zanzibar was for the present left unprotected save by its own fleet. Now this fleet was a very good one, as I have before hinted, and if manned by British seamen it could really have done some splendid execution when it came to be wanted. At present it lay in the open roadstead, and was even anchored without much system.
The new Sultan was very easy-minded. The ships made a fine show. That was delightful, and especially did he love to look upon them on gala days. In fact, he made gala days and kept birthdays and high days, just for the pleasure of seeing his war-ships dressed all over with bunting. And such a blaze of colour had really a fine back-ground by day in the blue bright Indian Ocean.
Then when darkness came the Sultan spent a deal of his pocket money precisely as boys do in the first week in November. He went in heavily for fireworks, and the ships were all lit up with blue or crimson fire. The Sultan of Lamoo was not a fool, and he had some heavy men (of other nations be it whispered) who backed him. He had, moreover, a splendid admiral in Abdularram. Perhaps he knew more about dhow-fleets than gun-boats or cruisers, but he had men on board the spit-fire shiplets of Lamoo that knew far more about the newest class of torpedoes than they did about the Koran.
There is a tradition (as in a former book of mine I mentioned) that one time--date forgotten--when Zanzibar was not so valuable a possession, but a city nevertheless of some 300,000 inhabitants, an enormous fleet of armed dhows suddenly appeared like a cloud of locusts on the distant horizon. And like the locust-cloud, it bore right down upon the city, and an army of strange men was thrown upon the beach and at once attacked the Sultan's forces. These had soon been made an end of, and the palace was robbed.
The whole town was looted--women carried off, and all who resisted slain.
But, so says the tradition, the army at last re-embarked, carrying with them their dead and wounded, then this Armada put to sea again. They disappeared beyond the horizon and were never seen nor heard tell of in this world again.
They were foreign men, they were foreign dhows, foreign devils all, but who they were or whence they came may never be known.
However, history was now going in some measure to repeat itself, without so much of the mysterious.
Down the beautiful river, therefore, which after gliding through a quiet landscape of green and charming forest, rolls over a sandy bar and empties itself into the Indian Ocean, there dropped one day the midget fleet of Lamoo, and one by one braved the danger of the only opening in the reef, and got clear and safely out.