‘It’s not really my fault, you know.’ Sebastian wriggled with embarrassment under the stare. Then once again he produced his Admiralty chart, spread it on the deck, and placed his finger on the island which Flynn O’Flynn had ringed in blue pencil as the rendezvous. ‘I mean, it is rather your cup of tea, finding the place. After all, you are the navigator, aren’t your
The captain spat fiercely on his deck, and Sebastian flushed.
‘Now that sort of thing isn’t going to get us anywhere. Let’s try and behave like gentlemen.’
This time the captain hawked it up from deep down in his throat and spat a lump of yellow phlegm into the blue pencil circle on Sebastian’s map, then he rose to his feet and stalked away to where his crew squatted in a group under the poop.
In the short dusk, while the mosquitoes whined in a thin mist about Sebastian’s head, he listened to the Arabic muttering and saw the glances that were directed at him down the length of the dhow. So when the night closed over the ship like a bank of black steam, he took up a defensive position on the foredeck and waited for them to come. As a weapon he had his cane of solid ebony. He laid it across his lap and sat against the rail until the darkness was complete, then, silently, he changed his position and crouched beside one of the water barrels that was lashed to the base of the mast.
They were a long time coming. Half the night had wasted away before he heard the stealthy scuff of bare feet on the planking. The absolute blackness of the night was filled with the din of the swamp; the boom and tonk of frogs, the muted buzz of insects and the occasional snort and splash of a hippo, so that Sebastian had difficulty in deciding how many they had sent against him. Crouching by the water barrel he strained his eyes unavailingly into the utter blackness and tuned his hearing to filter out the swamp noises and catch only those soft little sounds that death made as it came down the deck towards him.
Although Sebastian had never scaled any academic heights, he had boxed light heavyweight for Rugby, and fast-bowled for Sussex the previous cricket season when he had led the county bowling averages. So, although he was afraid now, Sebastian had a sublime confidence in his own physical prowess and it was not the kind of fear that filled his belly with oily warmth, nor turned his ego to jelly, but rather, it keyed him to a point where every muscle in his body quivered on the edge of exploding. Crouching in the night he groped for the cane that he had laid on the deck beside him. His hands fell on the bulky sackful of green coconuts that made up part of the dhow’s deck cargo. They were carried to supplement, with their milk, the meagre supply of fresh water on board. Quickly Sebastian tore open the fastenings of the sack and hefted one of the hard round fruits.
‘Not quite as handy as a cricket ball, but—’ murmured Sebastian and came to his feet. Using the short run up he delivered the fast ball with which he had shattered the Yorkshire first innings the previous year. It had the same effect on the Arab first innings. The coconut whirred and cracked against the skull of one of the approaching assassins and the rest retired in confusion.
‘Now send the men,’ roared Sebastian and bowled a short lifter that hastened the retreat.
He selected another coconut and was about to deliver that also when there was a flash and a report from aft, and something howled over Sebastian’s head. Hastily he ducked behind the sack of coconuts.
‘My God, they’ve got a gun up there!’ Sebastian remembered then the ancient muzzle-loading jezail he had seen the captain polishing lovingly on their first day out from Zanzibar, and he felt his anger rising in earnest.
He jumped to his feet and hurled his next coconut with fury.
‘Fight fair, you dirty swine!’ he yelled.
There was a delay while the dhow captain went through the complicated process of loading his piece. Then a cannon report, a burst of flame, and another potleg howled over Sebastian’s head.
Through the dark hours before dawn the lively exchange of jeers and curses, of coconuts and potlegs continued. Sebastian more than held his own for he scored four howls of pain and a yelp, while the dhow captain succeeded only in shooting away a great deal of his own standing rigging. But as the light of the new day increased, so Sebastian’s advantage waned. The Arab captain’s shooting improved to such an extent that Sebastian spent most of his time crouching behind the sack of coconuts. Sebastian was nearly exhausted. His right arm and shoulder ached unmercifully, and he could hear the first stealthy advance of the Arab crew as they crept down towards his hide. In daylight they could surround him and use their numbers to drag him down.
While he rested for the final effort, Sebastian looked out at the morning. It was a red dawn, angry and beautiful through the swamp mists so the water glowed with a pink sheen and the mangroves stood very dark around the ship.
Something splashed farther up the channel, a water bird perhaps. Sebastian looked for it without interest, and heard it splash again and then again. He stirred and sat up a little straighter. The sound was too regular for that of a bird or a fish.
Then around the bend in the channel, from behind the wall of mangroves, driven on by urgent paddles, shot a dug-out canoe. Standing in the bow with a double-barrelled elephant gun under his arm and a clay pipe sticking out of his red face, was Flynn O’Flynn.
‘What the hell’s going on here?’ he roared. ‘Are you fighting a goddamned war? I’ve been waiting a week for you lot!’
‘Look out, Flynn!’ Sebastian yelled a warning. ‘That swine has got a gun!’
The Arab captain had jumped to his feet and was looking around uncertainly. Long ago he had regretted his impulse to rid himself of the Englishman and escape from this evil swamp, and now his misgivings were truly justified. Having committed himself, however, there was only one course open to him. He lifted the Jezail to his shoulder and aimed at O’Flynn in the canoe. The discharge blew a long grey spurt of powder from the muzzle, and the potleg lifted a burst of spray from the surface of the water beyond the canoe. The echoes of the shot were drowned by the bellow of O’Flynn’s rifle. He fired without moving the pipe from his mouth and the narrow dug-out rocked dangerously with the recoil.
The heavy bullet picked up the Arab captain’s scrawny body, his robe fluttered like a piece of old paper and his turban flew from his head and unwound in mid-air as he was flung clear of the rail to drop with a tall splash alongside. He floated face down, trapped air ballooning his robe about him and then he drifted away slowly on the sluggish current. His crew, stunned and silent, stood by the rail and watched him depart.
Dismissing the neat execution as though it had never happened, O’Flynn glared up at Sebastian and roared, ‘You’re a week late. I haven’t been able to do a goddamned thing until you got here. Now let’s get the flag up and start doing some work!’
– 4 –
The formal annexation of Flynn O’Flynn’s island took place in the relative cool of the following morning. It had taken some hours for Flynn to convince Sebastian of the necessity of occupying the island for the British crown, and he succeeded only by casting Sebastian in the role of empire builder. He made some flattering comparisons between Clive of India and Sebastian Oldsmith of Liverpool.
The next problem was the choice of a name. This stirred up a little Anglo-American enmity, with Flynn O’Flynn campaigning aggressively for ‘New Boston’. Sebastian was horrified, his patriotic ardour burned brightly.
‘Now hold on a jiffy, old chap,’ he protested.
‘What’s wrong with it? You just tell me what’s wrong with it!’
‘Well, first of all this is going to be one of His Britannic Majesty’s possessions, you know.’
‘New Boston,’ O’Flynn repeated. That sounds good. That sounds real good.’
Sebastian shuddered. ‘I think it would be – well, not quite suitable. I mean, Boston was the place where they had that tea thing, you know.’
The argument raged more savagely as Flynn lowered the level in the gin bottle, until finally Sebastian stood up from the carpet o
n the floor of the dhow cabin, his eyes blazing with patriotic outrage. ‘If you would care to step outside, sir,’ he enunciated with care as he stood over the older man, ‘we can settle this matter.’ The dignity of the challenge was spoiled by the low roof of the cabin which made it necessary for Sebastian to stoop.
‘Man, I’d eat you without spitting out the bones.’
That, sir, is your opinion. But I must warn you I was highly thought of in the light heavyweight division.’
‘Oh, goddamn it.’ Flynn shook his head wearily and capitulated. ‘What difference does it make what we call the mother-loving place. Sit down, for God’s sake. Here! Let’s drink to whatever you want to call it.’
Sebastian sat on the carpet and accepted the mug that Flynn handed him. ‘We shall call it—’ he paused dramatically, ‘we shall call it New Liverpool,’ and he lifted the mug.
‘You know,’ said Flynn, ‘for a limey, you aren’t a bad guy,’ and the rest of the night was devoted to celebrating the birth of the new colony.
In the dawn the empire builders were paddled ashore in the dug-out by two of Flynn’s gun-bearers.
The canoe ran aground on the narrow muddy beach of New Liverpool, and the sudden halt threw both of them off-balance. They collapsed gently together on to the floor of the dug-out, and had to be assisted ashore by the paddlers.
Sebastian was formally dressed for the occasion but had buttoned his waistcoat awry and he kept tugging at it as he peered about him.
Now at high tide, New Liverpool was about a thousand yards long and half as broad. At the highest point it rose not more than ten feet above the level of the Rufiji river. Fifteen miles from the mouth the water was only slightly tainted with salt and the mangrove trees had thinned out and given way to tall matted elephant grass and slender bottle palms.
Flynn’s gun-bearers and porters had cleared a small opening above the beach, and had erected a dozen grass huts around one of the palm trees. It was a dead palm, its crown leaves long gone, and Flynn pointed an unsteady finger at it.
‘Flag pole,’ he said indistinctly, took Sebastian’s elbow and led him towards it.
Tugging at his waistcoat with one hand and clutching the bundled Union Jack that Flynn had provided in the other, Sebastian felt a surge of emotion within him as he looked up at the slender column of the palm tree.
‘Leave me,’ he mumbled and shook off Flynn’s guiding hand. ‘We got to do this right. Solemn occasion – very solemn.’
‘Have a drink.’ Flynn offered him the gin bottle, and when Sebastian waved it away, he lifted it to his own lips.
‘Shouldn’t drink on parade.’ Sebastian frowned at him. ‘Bad form.’
Flynn coughed at the vicious sting of the liquor and smote himself on the chest with his free hand.
‘Should draw the men up in a hollow square,’ Sebastian went on. ‘Ready to salute the flag.’
‘Jesus, man, get on with it,’ grumbled Flynn.
‘Got to do it right.’
‘Oh, hell,’ Flynn shrugged with resignation, then issued a string of orders in Swahili.
Puzzled and amused, Flynn’s fifteen retainers gathered in a ragged circle about the flag pole. They were a curious band, gathered from half a dozen tribes, dressed in an assortment of cast-off Western clothing, half of them armed with ancient double-barrelled elephant rifles from which Flynn had carefully filed the serial numbers so they could never be traced back to him.
‘Fine body of men,’ Sebastian beamed at them in alcoholic goodwill, unconsciously using the words of a Brigadier who had inspected Sebastian’s cadet parade at Rugby.
‘Let’s get this show on the road,’ Flynn suggested.
‘My friends,’ Sebastian obliged, ‘we are gathered here today …’ It was a longish speech but Flynn weathered it by nipping away quietly at the gin bottle, and at last Sebastian ended with his voice ringing and tears of great emotion prickling his eyelids, ‘ … In the sight of God and man, I hereby declare this island part of the glorious Empire of His Majesty, George V, King of England, Emperor of India, Protector of the Faith …’ His voice wavered as he tried to remember the correct form, and he ended lamely, ‘ … and all that sort of thing.’
A silence fell on the assembly and Sebastian fidgeted with embarrassment. ‘What do I do now?’ he enquired of Flynn O’Flynn in a stage whisper.
‘Get that goddamned flag up.’
‘Ah, the flag!’ Sebastian exclaimed with relief, and then uncertainly, ‘How?’
Flynn considered this at length. ‘I guess you have to climb up the palm tree.’
With shrill cries of encouragement from the gun-bearers, and with Flynn shoving and cursing from below, the Governor of New Liverpool managed to scale the flag pole to a height of about fifteen feet. There he secured the flag and descended again so swiftly he tore the buttons off the front of his waistcoat, and twisted his ankle. He was borne away to one of the grass huts singing, ‘God save our Gracious King’ in a voice broken with gin, pain and patriotism.
For the rest of their stay on the island, the Union Jack flew at half mast above the encampment.
Carried initially by two Wakamba fishermen, it took fully ten days for the word of the annexation to reach the outpost of the German Empire one hundred miles away at Mahenge.
– 5 –
Mahenge was in the bush country above the coastal lowlands. It consisted, in its entirety, of four trading posts owned by Indian shopkeepers – and the German boma.
The German boma was a large stone building, thatched, set about with wide verandas over which purple bougainvillea climbed in profusion. Behind it stood the barracks and parade ground of the African Askari, and before it a lonely flag pole from which streamed the black, red and yellow of the empire. A speck in the vastness of the African bush, seat of government for an area the size of France. An area that spread south to the Rovuma river and the border of Portuguese Mozambique, east to the Indian Ocean, and west to the uplands of Sao Hill and Mbeya.
From this stronghold the German Commissioner (Southern Province) wielded the limitless powers of a medieval robber baron. One of the Kaiser’s arms, or, more realistically, one of his little fingers, he was answerable only to Governor Schee in Dar es Salaam. But Dar es Salaam was many torturous miles away, and Governor Schee was a busy man not to be troubled with trivialities. Just as long as the Herr Commissioner Herman Fleischer collected the taxes, he was free to collect them in his own sweet way; though very few of the indigenous inhabitants of the southern province would have described Herman Fleischer’s ways as sweet.
At the time that the messenger, carrying the news of the British annexation of New Liverpool, trotted up over the last skyline and saw through the acacia thorn trees ahead of him the tiny clustered buildings of Mahenge, Herr Fleischer was finishing his midday meal.
A man of large appetite, his luncheon consisted of approximately two pounds of Eisbein, as much pickled cabbage, and a dozen potatoes, all swimming in thick gravy. Having aroused his taste-buds, he then went on to the sausage. The sausage came by weekly fast-runner from Dodoma in the north, and was manufactured by a man of genius, a Westphalian immigrant who made sausages with the taste of the Black Forest in them. The sausage, and the Hansa beer cooling in its earthernware jug, aroused in Herr Fleischer a delicious nostalgia. He ate not quietly but steadily, and, these quantities of food confined within the thick grey corduroy of his tunic and breeches, built up a pressure that squeezed the perspiration from his face and neck, forcing him to pause and mop up at regular intervals.
When he sighed at last and sagged back in his chair, the leather thongs squeaked a little under him. A bubble of trapped gas found its way up through the sausage and passed in genteel eruption between his lips. Tasting it, he sighed again in happiness and squinted out from the deep shade of the veranda into the flat shimmering glare of the sunlight.
Then he saw the messenger coming. The man reached the steps of the veranda and squatted down in the sun with his lo
in-cloth drawn up modestly between his legs. His body was washed shiny black with sweat but his legs were powdered with fine dust to the knees, and his chest swelled and subsided as he drank the thin hot air. His eyes were downcast, he could not look directly at the Bwana Mkuba until his presence was formally acknowledged.
Herman Fleischer watched him broodingly, his mood evaporating for he had been looking forward to his afternoon siesta – and the messenger had spoiled that. He looked away at the low cloud above the hills in the south and sipped his beer. Then he selected a cheroot from the box before him and lit it. The cheroot burned slowly and evenly, restoring a little of his good humour. He smoked it short before flicking the stub over the veranda wall.
‘Speak,’ he grunted, and the messenger lifted his eyes, and gasped with wonder and awe at the beauty and dignity of the Commissioner’s person. Although this was ritual admiration, it never failed to stir a faint pleasure in Herr Fleischer.
‘I see you, Bwana Mkuba – Great Lord,’ and Fleischer inclined his head slightly. ‘I bring you greetings from Kalani, headman of Batja, on the Rufiji. You are his father, and he crawls on his belly before you. Your hair of yellow, and the great fatness of your body, blind him with beauty.’
Herr Fleischer stirred restlessly in his chair. References to his corpulence, however well-intentioned, always annoyed him. ‘Speak,’ he repeated.
‘Kalani says thus: “Ten suns ago, a ship came into the delta of the Rufiji, and stopped by the Island of the Dogs, Inja. On the island, the men of this ship have built houses, and above the houses, they have placed on a dead palm tree the cloth of the Insingeese which is of blue and white and red, having many crosses within crosses.”’