At the end of the corridor, a guard stood outside the heavy watertight door in the bulkhead that led through into the handling room of the forward magazine. The guard wore only a thin white singlet and white flannel trousers, but his waist was belted in a blancoed webbing from which hung a sheathed bayonet, and there was a Mauser rifle slung from his shoulder.
From his position he could look into the handling room, and he could keep the full length of the alleyway under surveillance.
A double file of Wakamba tribesmen filled the alleyway, living chains along one of which passed the cordite charges; along the other the nine-inch shells.
The Africans worked with the stoical indifference of draught animals, turning to grip the ugly cylindro-conical shells, hugging a hundred and twenty pounds’ weight of steel and explosive to their chests while they moved it on to the next man in the chain.
The cordite charges, each wrapped in thick paper, were not so weighty and moved more swiftly along their line. Each man bobbed and swung as he handled his load, so it seemed that the two ranks were sets in a complicated dance pattern.
From this mass of moving humanity rose clouds of warm body odour, that filled the alleyway and defeated the efforts of the air-conditioning fans.
Sebastian felt sweat trickling down his chest and back under the leather cloak, he felt also the tug of weight within the folds of the cloak each time he swung to receive a fresh cordite charge from his neighbour.
He stood just outside the door of the handling room, and each time he passed a charge through, he looked into the interior of the magazine where another gang was at work, packing the charges into the shelves that lined the bulkheads, and easing the nine-inch shells into their steel racks. Here there was another armed guard.
The work had been in progress since early that morning, with a half-hour’s break at noon, so the German guards had relaxed their vigilance. They were restless in anticipation of relief. The one in the magazine was a fat middle-aged man who at intervals during the day had broken the monotony by releasing sudden ear-splitting posterior discharges of gas. With each salvo he had clapped the nearest African porter on the back and shouted happily.
‘Have a bite at that one!’ or, ‘Cheer up – it doesn’t smell.’
But at last he also was deflated. He slouched across the handling room, and leaned against the angle of the door to address his colleague in the alleyway.
‘It’s hot as hell, and smells like a zoo. These savages stink.’
‘You’ve been doing your share.’
‘I’ll be glad when it’s finished.’
‘It’s cooler in the magazine with the fans running – you are all right.’
‘Jesus, I’d like to sit down for a few minutes.’
‘Better not, Lieutenant Kyller is on the prowl.’
This exchange was taking place within a few feet of Sebastian. He followed the German conversation with more ease now that he had been able to exercise his rusty vocabulary, but he kept his head down in a renewed burst of energy. He was worried. In a short while the day’s shift would end and the African porters would be herded on deck and into the launches to be transported to their camp on one of the islands. None of the native labour force were allowed to spend the night aboard Blücher.
He had waited since noon for an opportunity to enter the magazine and place the time charge. But he had been frustrated by the activities of the two German guards. It must be nearly seven o’clock in the evening now. It would have to be soon, very soon. He glanced once more into the magazine, and he caught the eye of Walaka, Mohammed’s cousin. Walaka stood by the cordite shelves, supervising the packing, and now he shrugged at Sebastian in eloquent helplessness.
Suddenly there was a thud of a heavy object being dropped to the deck, and a commotion of shouts in the alleyway behind Sebastian. He glanced round quickly. One of the bearers had fainted in the heat and fallen with a shell in his arms, the shell had rolled and knocked down another man. Now there was a milling confusion clogging the alleyway. The two guards moved forward, forcing their way into the press of black bodies, shouting hoarsely and clubbing with the rifle butts. It was the opportunity for which Sebastian had waited.
He stepped over the threshold of the magazine, and went to Walaka beside the cordite shelves.
‘Send one of your men to take my place,’ he whispered, and reaching up into the folds of his cloak he brought out the cigar box.
With his back towards the door of the magazine, using the cloak as a screen to hide his movements, he slipped the catch of the box and opened the lid.
His hands trembled with haste and nervous agitation as he fumbled with the winder of the travelling-clock. It clicked, and he saw the second hand begin its endless circuit of the dial. Even over the shouts and scuffling in the alleyway, the muted ticking of its mechanism seemed offensively loud to Sebastian. Hastily he shut the lid and glanced guiltily over his shoulder at the doorway. Walaka stood there, and his face was sickly grey with the tension of imminent discovery, but he nodded to Sebastian, a signal that the guards were still occupied without.
Reaching up to the nearest shelf, Sebastian wedged the cigar box between two of the paper-wrapped cylinders of cordite. Then he packed others over it, covering it completely.
He stood back and found with surprise that he was panting, his breathing whistling in his throat. He could feel the little drops of sweat prickling on his shaven head. In the white electric light they shone like glass beads on his velvety, black-stained skin.
‘Is it done?’ Walaka croaked beside him.
‘It is done,’ Sebastian croaked back at him, and suddenly he was overcome with a driving compulsion to be out of this steel room, out of this box-packed room with the ingredients of violent death and destruction; out of the stifling press of bodies that had surrounded him all day. A dreadful thought seized his imagination, suppose the artificer had erred in his assembly of the time charge, suppose that even now the battery was heating the wires of the detonator and bringing them to explosion point. He felt panic as he looked wildly at the tons of cordite and shell around him. He wanted to run, to fight his way out and up into the open air. He made the first move, and then froze.
The commotion in the alleyway had subsided miraculously, and now only one voice was raised. It came from just outside the doorway, using the curt inflection of authority. Sebastian had heard that voice repeatedly during that long day, and he had come to dread it. It heralded danger.
‘Get them back to work immediately,’ snapped Lieutenant Kyller as he stepped over the threshold into the magazine. He drew a gold watch from the pocket of his tunic and read the time. ‘It is five minutes after seven. There is still almost half an hour before you knock off.’ He tucked the watch away, and swept the magazine with a gaze that missed no detail. He was a tall young man, immaculate in his tropical whites. Behind him the two guards were hurriedly straightening their dishevelled uniforms and trying to look efficient and intelligent.
‘Yes, sir,’ they said in unison.
For a moment Kyller’s eyes rested on Sebastian. It was probably because Sebastian was the finest physical specimen among the bearers, he stood taller than the rest of them – as tall as Kyller himself. But Sebastian felt his interest was deeper. He felt that Kyller was searching beneath the stain on his skin, that he was naked of disguise beneath those eyes. He felt that Kyller would remember him, had marked him down in his memory.
That shelf.’ Kyller turned away from Sebastian and crossed the magazine. He went directly to the shelf on which Sebastian had placed his time charge, and he patted the cordite cylinders that Sebastian had handled. They were slightly awry. ‘Have it repacked immediately,’ said Kyller.
‘Right away, sir,’ said the fat guard.
Again Kyller’s eyes rested on Sebastian. It seemed that he was about to speak, then he changed his mind. He stooped through the doorway and disappeared.
Sebastian stood stony still, appalled by the order that Kyller
had given. The fat guard grimaced sulkily.
‘Christ, that one is a busy bastard.’ And he glared at the cordite shelf. ‘There’s nothing wrong there.’ He crossed to it and fiddled ineffectually. After a moment he asked the guard at the door, ‘Has Kyller gone yet?’
‘Yes. He’s gone down the companion-way into the sick-bay.’
‘Good!’ grunted the fat one. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to waste half an hour repacking this whole batch.’ He hunched his shoulders, and screwed up his face with effort. There was a bagpipe squeal, and the guard relaxed and grinned. That one was for Lieutenant Kyller, God bless him!’
– 79 –
Darkness was falling, and with it the temperature dropped a few degrees into the high eighties and created an illusion that the faint evening breeze was chilly. Sebastian hugged his cloak around his body, and shuffled along in the slow column of native labourers that dribbled over the side of the German battle cruiser into the waiting launches.
He was exhausted both in body and in mind from the strain of the day’s labour in the magazine, so that he went down the catwalk and took his place in the whaler, moving in a state of stupor. When the boat shoved off and puttered up the channel towards the labour camp on the nearest island, Sebastian looked back at Blücher with the same dumb stare as the men who squatted beside him on the floorboards of the whaler. Mechanically he registered the fact that Commissioner Fleischer’s steam launch was tied up alongside the cruiser.
‘Perhaps the fat swine will be aboard when the whole lot blows to hell,’ he thought wearily. ‘I can at least hope for that.’
He had no way of knowing who else Herman Fleischer had taken aboard the cruiser with him. Sebastian had been below decks toiling in the handling room of the magazine when the launch arrived from up-river, and Rosa Oldsmith had been ushered up the catwalk by the Commissioner in person.
‘Come along, Mädchen. We will take you to see the gallant captain of this fine ship.’ Fleischer puffed jovially as he mounted the steps behind her. ‘I am sure there are many interesting things that you can tell him.’
Bedraggled and exhausted with grief, pale with the horror of her father’s death, and with cold hatred for the man who had engineered it, Rosa stumbled as she stepped from the catwalk on to the deck. Her hands were still bound in front of her so she could not check herself. She fell forward, letting herself fall uncaring, and with mild surprise felt hands hold and steady her.
She looked up at the man who had caught her, and in her confusion of mind she thought it was Sebastian. He was tall and dark and his hands were strong. Then she saw the peaked uniform cap with its golden insignia, and she jerked away from him in revulsion.
‘Ah! Lieutenant Kyller.’ Commissioner Fleischer spoke behind her. ‘I have brought you a visitor – a lovely lady.’
‘Who is she?’ Kyller was appraising Rosa. Rosa could not understand a word that was spoken. She stood in quiet acceptance, her whole body drooping.
‘This …’ answered Fleischer proudly, ‘ … is the most dangerous young lady in the whole of Africa. She is one of the leaders of the gang of English bandits that raided the column bringing down the steel plate from Dar es Salaam. It was she who shot and killed your engineer. I captured her and her father this morning. Her father was the notorious O’Flynn.’
‘Where is he?’ Kyller snapped.
‘I hanged him.’
‘You hinged him?’ demanded Kyller. ‘Without trial?’
‘No trial was necessary.’
‘Without interrogating him?’
‘I brought in the woman for interrogation.’
Kyller was angry now, his voice crackled with it.
‘I will leave it to Captain von Kleine to judge the wisdom of your actions,’ and he turned to Rosa; his eyes dropped to her hands, and, with an exclamation of concern, he took her by the wrist.
‘Commissioner Fleischer, how long has this woman been bound?’
Fleischer shrugged. ‘I could take no chances on her escaping.’
‘Look at this!’ Kyller indicated Rosa’s hands. They were swollen, the fingers puffy and blue, sticking out stiffly, dead-looking and useless.
‘I could take no chances.’ Fleischer. bridled at the implied criticism.
‘Give me your knife,’ Kyller snapped at the petty officer in charge of the gangway, and the man produced a large clasp knife. He opened it and handed it to the lieutenant.
Carefully Kyller ran the blade between Rosa’s wrists and sawed at the rope. As her bonds dropped away Rosa cried out in pain, fresh blood flowing into her hands.
‘You will be lucky if you have not done her permanent damage,’ Kyller muttered furiously as he massaged Rosa’s bloated hands.
‘She, is a criminal. A dangerous criminal,’ growled Fleischer.
‘She is a woman, and therefore deserving of your consideration. Not of this barbarous treatment.’
‘She will hang.’
‘Her crimes she will answer for, in due course – but until she has stood trial she will be treated as a woman.’
Rosa did not understand the harsh German argument that raged around her. She stood quietly and her eyes were fastened on the knife in Lieutenant Kyller’s hand.
The hilt brushed her fingers as he worked to restore the circulation of her blood. The blade was long and silver bright, she had seen how keen was its edge by the way in which it had cut through the rope. As she stared at it, it seemed to her fevered fancy that there were two names engraved in the steel of the blade. The names of the two persons she had loved. The names of her father and her child.
With an effort she tore her gaze from the knife and looked at the man she hated. Fleischer had come close up to her, as though to take her away from Lieutenant Kyller’s attention. His face was flushed with anger and the fold of flesh under his chin wobbled flabbily as he argued.
Rosa flexed her fingers. They were still numb and stiff, but she could feel the strength flowing back into them. She let her gaze drop down to Fleischer’s belly.
It jutted out round and full, soft-looking under the grey corduroy tunic, and again her fevered imagination formed a picture of the blade going into that belly. Slipping in silently, smoothly, burying itself to the hilt and then drawing upwards to open the flesh like a pouch. The picture was so vivid that Rosa shuddered with the intense sensual pleasure of it.
Kyller was completely occupied with Fleischer. He felt the girl’s fingers slide into the cupped palm of his right hand, but before he could pull away she had scooped the knife deftly from his grip. He lunged at her, but she pirouetted lightly away from him. Her knife hand dropped and then darted forward, driven by the full weight of her body at the bulging belly of Herman Fleischer.
Rosa thought that because he was fat he would be slow. She expected him to be stunned by the unexpected attack, to stand and take the knife in his vitals.
Herman Fleischer was fully alert before she even started her dust He was fast as a striking mamba, and strong beyond credibility. He did not make the mistake of intercepting the knife with his bare hands. Instead he struck her right shoulder with a clenched fist the size of a carpenter’s mallet. The force of the blow knocked her sideways, deflecting the blade from its target. Her arm from the shoulder downwards was paralysed, and the knife flew from her hand and slithered away across the deck.
‘Ja!’ roared Fleischer triumphantly. ‘Ja! So! Now you see how I was right to tie the bitch. She is vicious, dangerous.’
And he lifted the huge fist again to smash it into Rosa’s face as she crouched, hugging her hurt shoulder and sobbing with pain and disappointment.
‘Enough!’ Kyller stepped between them. ‘Leave her.’
‘She must be tied up like an animal – she is dangerous,’ bellowed Fleischer, but Kyller put a protective arm around Rosa’s bowed shoulders.
‘Petty Officer,’ he said. ‘Take this woman to the sick-bay. Have Surgeon Commander Buchholz see to her. Guard her carefully, but be gentle with
her. Do you hear me?’ And they took her away below.
‘I must see Captain von Kleine,’ Fleischer demanded. ‘I must make a full report to him.’
‘Come,’ said Kyller, ‘I will take you to him.’
– 80 –
Sebastian lay on his side beside the smoky little fire with his cloak draped over him. Outside he heard the night sounds of the swamp, the faint splash of a fish or a crocodile in the channel, the clink and boom of the tree frogs, the singing of insects, and the lap and sigh of wavelets on the mud bank below the hut.
The hut was one of twenty crude open-sided shelters that housed the native labour force. The earth floor was thickly strewn with sleeping bodies. The sound of their breathing was a restless murmur, broken by the cough and stir of dreamers.
Despite his fatigue, Sebastian was not sleeping, he could not relax from the state of tension in which he had been held all that day. He thought of the little travelling-clock ticking away in its nest of high explosive, measuring out the minutes and the hours, and then his mind side-stepped and went to Rosa. The muscles of his arms tightened with longing. Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow I will see her and we will go away from this stinking river. Up into the sweet air of the highlands. Again his mind jumped. Seven o’clock, seven o’clock tomorrow morning and it will be over. He remembered Lieutenant Kyller’s voice as he stood in the doorway of the magazine with the gold watch in his hand. ‘ … The time is five minutes past seven …’ he had said. So that Sebastian knew to within a few minutes when the time fuse would explode.
He must stop the porters going aboard Blücher in the morning. He had impressed on old Walaka that they must refuse to turn out for the next day’s shift. They must …
‘Manali! Manali!’ his name was whispered close by in the gloom, and Sebastian lifted himself on one elbow. In the flickering light from the fire there was a shadowy figure, crawling on hands and knees across the earthen floor, and searching the faces of the sleeping men.