It was half an hour or so before sunset, and a serene beauty lay over land and sea. There was the gentlest breeze, and at our moorings it was almost cool. We were clustering on the landward side of the ship, smoking and watching the town and harbour. Close up under the tall white houses the blue sea broke in tiny creamy ripples on the sand or the low coral rocks, and, with its green woods to right and left, the city seemed to dream in the sun. One could see, however, that it was preparing to wake. A flutter of orange or scarlet on the flat roofs here and there told that the women were already coming up to enjoy the cooler hours; and between the thin cassuarinas in the square that opened to the sea before the Sultan’s Palace, a white-robed crowd was gathering for the faint excitement of the sunset gun. Between ship and shore, the brown-timbered rough-hewn native boats came and went on their long oars, and in smarter skiffs the silk and curio merchants were taking a lingering leave of us. From the south a dozen peaceful lateen-sailed dhows beat up for the native anchorage behind which, from our view-point, the twin spires of the Catholic cathedral stood out against an opal sky. Despite travellers’ tales, there is only one mosque with a minaret in Zanzibar, and that so small and hidden that it is scarcely visible from the sea.
Watching the dhows and sighting the cathedral, suggested, I suppose, Père Etienne. Someone asked if his reverence had come aboard, but no one knew. Lazily turning the question and answer over in my mind, I became aware that I was sure he had. The persistent intuition grew on me. Without speaking of it, I determined, out of sheer curiosity, to go and see. I detached myself from the group unobtrusively, and strolled off round the deck.
Sure enough on the seaward side I saw him. He was sitting in a deck-chair and looking out across the water. At first I thought he was gazing intently at nothing, but as I too looked, I made out, across the strait, the dim outline of the Sham-balla Mountains on the mainland that are sometimes visible for a little at sunset and dawn. The priest’s chair was drawn close to the bulwark, and almost before I knew what I was doing, I was leaning against it in an attitude which allowed me, too, to see those distant peaks and at the same time to converse easily, if it should be permitted.