FURIOUS FIGHTING ON SEA AND LAND
The bombardment began in earnest about midday.
The midget fleet remained at a respectable distance, keeping up a plunging fire. Abdularram meant to keep his own ships afloat though he cared nothing about the mighty leviathan that had been flagship to the feeble-kneed young Sultan of Zanzibar. Indeed, she was advanced later on in the day very close indeed to the city.
She was prettily manoeuvred too, and poured broadside after broadside into the principal part of the town, which now lay completely at its mercy.
The British Consul had remained and also the American, and about four in the afternoon they succeeded in getting audience of the Sultan himself. They had been unable to see him sooner. He had a headache, and was lying down, his prime minister told them.
The Sultan received him in what we may call his reception room, for want of a better name.
He remained seated and looked ghastly pale and old. Indeed, though little more than twenty, he seemed quite an aged man, with the exception of his black and flowing locks.
The British Consul stopped to bow at the audience chamber door.
So quickly had he stopped that the tall raw-boned American Consul, who appeared always to be in a hurry, and who was coming up behind, ran foul of him with such force that both were precipitated on the carpet.
The carpet was exceedingly rich and soft, yet, to say the least of it, this was rather an undignified way of entering into the presence of so great a Sultan.