The dense knot of half-naked black people that swarmed over the remains of the elephant was perfectly oblivious of Herman’s presence until at last he filled his lungs, and then emptied them again in a roar that carried over the hubbub of shouts and laughter. Instantly a vast silence fell upon the gathering, every head turned towards Herman and from each head eyes bulged in horrific disbelief.
‘Bwana Intambu,’ a small voice broke the silence at last. ‘Lord of the rope.’ They knew him well.
‘What … ?’ Herman began, and then gasped in outrage as he noticed in the crowd a black man he had never seen before, dressed in the full uniform of German Askari. ‘You!’ he shouted, pointing an accusing finger, but the man whirled and ducked away behind the screen of blood-smeared black bodies. ‘Stop him!’ Herman fumbled with the flap of his holster.
Movement caught his eye and he turned to see another pseudo-Askari running away between the huts. ‘There’s another one! Stop him! Sergeant, Sergeant, get your men here!’
The initial shock that had held them frozen was now past, and the crowd broke and scattered. Once again, Herman Fleischer gasped in outrage as he saw, for the first time, a figure sitting on a carved native stool on the far side of the square. A figure in an outlandish uniform of bright but travel-stained blue, frogged with gold, his legs clad in high jackboots, and on his head the dress helmet of an illustrious Prussian regiment.
‘Englishman!’ Despite the disguise, Herman recognized him. He had finally succeeded in unbuttoning the flap of his holster, and now he withdrew his Luger. ‘Englishman!’ He repeated the insult and lifted the pistol.
With the quickness of mind for which he was noted, Sebastian sat bewildered by this unforeseen turn of events, but when Herman showed him the working end of the Luger, he realized that it was time to take his leave, and he attempted to leap nimbly to his feet. However, the spurs on his boots became entangled once more and he went backwards over the stool. The bullet hissed harmlessly through the empty space where he would have been standing.
‘God damn!’ Herman fired again, and the bullet kicked a burst of splinters out of the heavy wooden stool behind which Sebastian was lying. This second failure aroused in Herman Fleischer the blinding rage which spoiled his aim for the next two shots he fired, as Sebastian went on hands and knees around the corner of the nearest hut.
Behind the hut, Sebastian jumped to his feet and set off at a run. His main concern was to get out of the village and into the bush. In his ears echoed Flynn O’Flynn’s advice.
‘Make for the river. Go straight for the river.’
And he was so occupied with it that, when he charged around the side of the next hut, he could not check himself in time to avoid collision with one of Herman Fleischer’s Askari, who was coming in the opposite direction. Both of them went down together in an untidy heap, and the steel helmet fell forward over Sebastian’s eyes. As he struggled into a sitting position, he removed the helmet and found the man’s woolly black head in front of him. It was ideally placed and Sebastian was holding the heavy helmet above it. With the strength of both his arms, he brought the helmet down again, and it clanged loudly against the Askari’s skull. With a grunt the Askari sagged backwards and lay quietly in the dust. Sebastian placed the helmet over his sleeping face, picked up the man’s rifle from beside him and got to his feet once more.
He stood crouching in the shelter of the hut while he tried to make sense of the chaos around him. Through the pandemonium set up by the panic-stricken villagers, who were milling about with all the purpose of a flock of sheep attacked by wolves, Sebastian could hear the bellowed commands of Herman Fleischer, and the answering shouts of the German Askari. Rifle-fire cracked and whined, to be answered by renewed outbursts of screaming.
Sebastian’s first impulse was to hide in one of the huts but he realized this would be futile. At the best it would only delay his capture.
No, he must get out of the village. But the thought of covering the hundred yards of open ground to the shelter of the nearest trees, while a dozen Askari shot at him, was most unattractive.
At this moment Sebastian became aware of an unpleasant warmth in his feet, and he looked down to find that he was standing in the live ashes of a cooking fire. The leather of his jackboots was already beginning to char and smoke. He stepped back hurriedly, and the smell of burning leather acted as a laxative for the constipation of his brain.
From the hut beside him he snatched a handful of thatch and stooped to thrust it into the fire. The dry grass burst into flame, and Sebastian held the torch to the wall of the hut. Instantly fire bloomed and shot upwards. With the torch in his hand, Sebastian ducked across the narrow opening to the next hut and set fire to that also.
‘Son of a gun!’ exulted Sebastian as great oily billows of smoke obscured the sun and limited his field of vision to ten paces.
Slowly he moved forward in the rolling cloud of smoke, setting fire to each hut he passed, and delighted in the frustrated bellows of Germanic rage he heard behind him. Occasionally ghostly figures scampered past him in the acrid half-darkness but none of them paid him the slightest attention, and each time Sebastian relaxed the pressure of his forefinger on the trigger of the Mauser, and moved on.
He reached the last hut and paused there to gather himself for the final sprint across open ground to the edge of the millet garden. Through the eddying bank of smoke, the mass of dark green vegetation from which he had fled in terror not many hours before, now seemed as welcoming as the arms of his mother.
Movement near him in the smoke, and he swung the Mauser to cover it; he saw the square outline of a kepi and the sparkle of metal buttons, and his finger tightened on the trigger.
‘Manali!’
‘Mohammed! Good God, I nearly killed you.’ Sebastian threw up the rifle barrel as he recognized him.
‘Quickly! They are close behind me.’ Mohammed snatched at his arm and dragged him forward. The jackboots pinched his toes and thumped like the hooves of a galloping buffalo as Sebastian ran. From the huts behind them a voice shouted urgently and, immediately afterwards, came the vicious crack of a Mauser and the shrill whinny of the ricochet.
Sebastian had a lead of ten paces on Mohammed as he plunged into the bank of leaves and millet stalks.
– 29 –
‘What should we do now, Manali?’ Mohammed asked, and the expression on the faces of the two other men echoed the question with pathetic trust. A benevolent chance had reunited Sebastian with the remnants of his command. During the flight through the millet gardens, with random rifle-fire clipping the leaves about their heads, Sebastian had literally fallen over these two. At the time they were engaged in pressing their bellies and their faces hard against the earth, and it had taken a number of lusty kicks with the jackboot to get them up and moving.
Since then Sebastian, mindful of Flynn’s advice, had cautiously and circuitously led them down to the landing-place on the bank of the Rovuma. He arrived to find that Fleischer’s Askari, by using the direct route and without the necessity of concealing themselves, had arrived before him. From the cover of the reed-banks Sebastian watched dejectedly, as they used an axe to knock the bottoms out of the dug-out canoes that were drawn up on the little white beach.
‘Can we swim across?’ he asked Mohammed in a whisper, and Mohammed’s face crumpled with horror, as he considered the suggestion. Both of them peered out through the reeds across a quarter of a mile of deep water that flowed so fast, its surface was dimpled with tiny whirlpools.
‘No,’ said Mohammed with finality.
‘Too far?’ asked Sebastian hopelessly.
‘Too far. Too fast. Too deep. Too many crocodiles,’ agreed Mohammed, and in an unspoken but mutual desire to get away from the river and the Askari, they crawled out of the reed-bank and crept away inland.
In the late afternoon they were lying up in a bushy gully about two miles from the river and an equal distance from M’topo’s village.
‘What should we do now, Manali?’ Mohammed repeated his question, and Sebastian cleared his throat before answering.
‘Well …’ he said and paused while his wide brow wrinkled in the agony of creative thought. Then it came to him with all the splendour of a sunrise. ‘We’ll just jolly well have to find some other way of getting across the river.’ He said it with the air of a man well pleased with his own perspicacity. ‘What do you suggest, Mohammed?’
A little surprised to find the ball returned so neatly into his own court, Mohammed remained silent.
‘A raft?’ hazarded Sebastian. The lack of tools, material and opportunity to build one was so obvious, that Mohammed did not deign to reply. He shook his head.
‘No,’ agreed Sebastian. ‘Perhaps you are right.’ Again the classic beauty of his features was marred by a scowl of concentration. At last he demanded, ‘There are other villages along the river?’
‘Yes,’ Mohammed conceded. ‘But the Askari will visit each of them and destroy the canoes. Also they will tell the headmen who we are, and threaten them with the rope.’
‘But they cannot cover the whole river. It has a frontier of five or six hundred miles. We’ll just keep walking until we find a canoe. It may take us a long time but we’ll find one eventually.’
‘If the Askari don’t catch us first.’
‘They’ll expect us to stay close to the border. We’ll make a detour well inland, and march for five or six days before we come back to the river again. We’ll rest now and move tonight.’
Heading on a diagonal line of march away from the Rovuma and deeper into German territory, moving north-west along a well defined footpath, the four of them kept walking all that night. As the slow hours passed so the pace flagged and twice Sebastian noticed one or other of his men wander off the path at an angle until suddenly they started and looked about in surprise, before hurrying back to join the others. It puzzled him and he meant to ask them what they were doing, but he was tired and the effort of speech was too great. An hour later he found the reason for their behaviour.
Plodding along, with the movement of his legs becoming completely automatic, Sebastian was slowly overcome by a state of gentle well-being. He surrendered to it and let the warm, dark mists of oblivion wash over his mind.
The sting of a thorn branch across his cheek jerked him back to consciousness and he looked about in bewilderment. Ten yards away on his flank, Mohammed and the two gun-boys walked along the path in single file, their faces turned towards him with expressions of mild interest in the moonlight. It took some moments for Sebastian to realize that he had fallen asleep on his feet. Feeling a complete ass, he trotted back to take his place at the head of the line.
When the fat silver moon sank below the trees, they kept going by the faint glow of reflected light, but slowly that waned until the footpath hardly showed at their feet. Sebastian decided that dawn could be only an hour away and it was time to halt. He stopped and was about to speak when Mohammed’s clutching hand on his shoulder prevented him.
‘Manali!’ There was a tone in Mohammed’s whisper that cautioned him, and Sebastian felt his nerves jerk taut.
‘What is it?’ he breathed, protectively unslinging the Mauser.
‘Look. There – ahead of us.’
Screwing up his eyes Sebastian searched the blackness ahead, and it was a long time before the faint ruddiness in the solid blanket of darkness registered itself upon the exhausted retinas of his eyes. ‘Yes!’ he whispered. ‘What is it?’
‘A fire,’ breathed Mohammed. ‘There is someone camped across the path in front of us.’
‘Askari?’ asked Sebastian.
‘Perhaps.’
Peering at the ruby puddle of dying coals, Sebastian felt the hair on the back of his neck stir and come erect with alarm. He was fully awake now. ‘We must go around them.’
‘No. They will see our spoor in the dust of the path and they will follow us,’ Mohammed demurred.
‘What then?’
‘First let me see how many there are.’
Without waiting for Sebastian’s permission, Mohammed slipped away and disappeared into the night like a leopard. Five anxious minutes Sebastian waited. Once he thought he heard a scuffling sound but he was not certain. Mohammed’s shape materialized again beside him. ‘Ten of them,’ he reported. ‘Two Askari and eight bearers. One of the Askari sat guard by the fire. He saw me, so I killed him.’
‘Good God!’ Sebastian’s voice rose higher. ‘You did what?’
‘I killed him. But do not speak so loud.’
‘How?’
‘With my knife.’
‘Why?’
‘Lest he kill me first.’
‘And the other?’
‘Him also.’
‘You killed both of them?’ Sebastian was appalled.
‘Yes, and took their rifles. Now it is safe to go on. But the bearers have with them many cases. It comes to me that this party follows after Bwana Intambu, the German commissioner, and that they carry with them all his goods.’
‘But you shouldn’t have killed them,’ protested Sebastian. ‘You could have just tied them up or something.’
‘Manali, you argue like a woman,’ Mohammed snapped impatiently, and then went on with his original line of thought. ‘Among the cases is one that by its size I think is the box for the tax money. The one Askari slept with his back against it as though to give it special care.’
The tax money?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, son of a gun!’ Sebastian’s scruples dissolved and in the darkness his expression was suddenly transformed into that of a small boy on Christmas morning.
They woke the German bearers by standing over them and prodding them with the rifle barrels. Then they hustled them out of their blankets and herded them into a small group, bewildered and shivering miserably in the chill of dawn. Wood was heaped on the fire; it burned up brightly, and by its light Sebastian examined the booty.
The one Askari had bled profusely from the throat on to the small wooden chest. Mohammed took him by the heels and dragged him out of the way, then used his blanket to wipe the chest clean.
‘Manali,’ he said with reverence. ‘See the big lock. See the bird of the Kaiser painted on the lid …’ He stooped over the chest and took a grip on the handles, ‘ … but most of all, feel the weight of it!’
Amongst the other equipment around the fire, Mohammed found a thick coil of one-inch manila rope. A commodity which was essential equipment on any of Herman Fleischer’s safaris. With it, Mohammed roped the bearers together, at waist level, allowing enough line between each of them to make concerted movement possible but preventing individual flight.
‘Why are you doing that?’ Sebastian asked with interest, through a mouthful of blood sausage and black bread. Most of the other boxes were filled with food, and Sebastian was breakfasting well and heartily.
‘So they cannot escape.’
‘We’re not taking them with us – are we?’
‘Who else will carry all this?’ Mohammed asked patiently.
Five days later Sebastian was seated in the bows of a long dug-out canoe, with the charred soles of his boots set firmly on the chest that lay in the bilges. He was eating with relish a thick sandwich of polony and picked onions, wearing a change of clean underwear and socks that were a few sizes too large, and there was clutched in his left hand an open bottle of Hansa beer – all these with the courtesy of Commissioner Fleischer.
The paddlers were singing with unforced gaiety, for the hiring fee that Sebastian had paid them would buy each of them a new wife at least.
Hugging the bank of the Rovuma on the Portuguese side, driven on by willing paddles and the eager current, in twelve hours they covered the distance that it had taken Sebastian and his heavily-laden bearers five days on foot.
The canoe deposited Sebastian’s party at the landing opposite M’topo’s village, only ten miles from Lalapanzi. They walked that dis
tance without resting and arrived after nightfall.
– 30 –
The windows of the bungalow were darkened, and the whole camp slept. After cautioning them to silence, Sebastian drew his depleted band up on the front lawn with the tax chest set prominently in front of them. He was proud of his success and wanted to achieve the appropriate mood for his home-coming. Having set the stage, he went up on to the stoep of the bungalow and tiptoed towards the front door with the intention of awakening the household by hammering upon it dramatically.
However, there was a chair on the stoep, and Sebastian tripped over it. He fell heavily. The chair clattered and the rifle slipped from his shoulder and rang on the stone flags.
Before Sebastian could recover his feet, the door was flung open and through it appeared Flynn O’Flynn in his night-shirt and armed with a double-barrelled shotgun. ‘Caught you, you bastard!’ he roared and lifted the shotgun.
Sebastian heard the click of the safety-catch and scrambled to his knees. ‘Don’t shoot! Flynn, it’s me.’
The shotgun wavered a little. ‘Who are you – and what do you want?’
‘It’s me – Sebastian.’
‘Bassie?’ Flynn lowered the shotgun uncertainly. ‘It can’t be. Stand up, let’s have a look at you.’
Sebastian obeyed with alacrity.
‘Good God,’ Flynn swore in amazement. ‘It is you. Good God! We heard that Fleischer caught you at M’topo’s village a week ago. We heard he’d nobbled you for keeps!’ He came forward with his right hand extended in welcome. ‘You made it, did you? Well done, Bassie boy.’
Before Sebastian could accept Flynn’s hand, Rosa came through the doorway, brushed past Flynn, and almost knocked Sebastian down again. With her arms locked around his chest and her cheek pressed to his unshaven cheek, she kept repeating, ‘You’re safe! Oh Sebastian, you’re safe.’