‘Manali, where are your
‘Who is it?’ Sebastian answered softly, and the man jumped up and scurried to where he lay.
‘It is I, Mohammed.’
‘Mohammed?’ Sebastian was startled. ‘Why are you here? You should be with Fini at the camp on the Abati.’
‘Fini is dead.’ Mohammed’s whisper was low with sorrow, so low that Sebastian thought he had misunderstood.
‘What? What did you say?’
‘Fini is dead. The Allemand came with the ropes. They hung him in the fever trees beside the Abati, and when he was dead they left him for the birds.’
‘What talk is this?’ Sebastian demanded.
‘It is true,’ mourned Mohammed. ‘I saw it, and when the Allemand had gone, I cut the rope and brought him down. I wrapped him in my own blanket and buried him in an ant-bear hole.’
‘Dead? Flynn dead? It isn’t true!’
‘It is true, Manali.’ In the red glow of the camp-fire Mohammed’s face was old and raddled and gaunt. He licked his lips. ‘There is more, Manali. There is more to tell.’
But Sebastian was not listening. He was trying to force his mind to accept the reality of Flynn’s death, but it balked. It would not accept the picture of Flynn swinging at the rope’s end, Flynn with the rope burns at his throat and his face swollen and empurpled, Flynn wrapped in a dirty blanket and crammed into an ant-bear hole. Flynn dead? No! Flynn was too big, too vital – they could not kill Flynn.
‘Manali, hear me.’
Sebastian shook his head, bemused, denying it. It could not be true.
‘Manali, the Allemand, they have taken Little Long Hair. They have bound her with ropes and taken her.’
Sebastian winced, and jerked away as though he had been struck open-handed across the face.
‘No!’ He tried to close his mind against the words.
‘They caught her this morning early as she went to Fini. They took her down-river in the small boat, and she is now on the great ship of the Allemand.’
‘Blücher? Rosa is aboard the Blücher?’
‘Yes. She is there.’
‘No. Oh, God, no!’
In five hours Blücher would blow up. In five hours Rosa would die. Sebastian swung his head and looked out into the night, he looked through the open side of the hut, down the channel to where Blücher lay at her moorings half a mile away. There was a dim glow of light across the water from the hooded lanterns on Blücher’s main deck. But her form was indistinguishable against the dark mass of the mangroves. Between her and the island, the channel was a smooth expanse of velvety blackness on which the reflections of the stars were scattered sequins of light.
‘I must go to her,’ said Sebastian. ‘I cannot let her die there alone.’ His voice gathered strength and resolve. ‘I cannot let her die. I’ll tell the Germans where to find the charge – I’ll tell them …’ Then he faltered. ‘I can’t. No, I can’t. I’d be a traitor then, but, but …’
He threw aside his cloak.
‘Mohammed, how did you come here? Did you bring the canoe? Where is it?’
Mohammed shook his head. ‘No. I swam. My cousin brought me close to the island in the canoe, but he has gone away. We could not leave the canoe here, lest the Askari find it. They would have seen the canoe.’
‘There isn’t a boat on the island – nothing,’ muttered Sebastian. The Germans were careful to guard against desertion. Each night the labour force was marooned on the island – and the Askari patrolled the mud banks.
‘Mohammed, hear me now.’ Sebastian reached across and laid his hand on the old man’s shoulder. ‘You are my friend. I thank you that you have come to tell me these things.’
‘You are going to Little Long Hair?’
‘Yes.’
‘Go in peace, Manali.’
‘Take my place here, Mohammed. When the guards count tomorrow morning, you will stand for me.’ Sebastian tightened his grip on the bony shoulder. ‘Stay in peace, Mohammed.’
His blackened body blending into the darkness, Sebastian crouched beneath the spread branches of a clump of pampa scrub, and the Askari guard almost brushed against him as he passed. The Askari slouched along with his rifle slung so that the barrel stood up behind his shoulder. The constant patrolling had beaten a path around the circumference of the island, the guard followed it mechanically. Half asleep on his feet, completely unaware of Sebastian’s presence. He stumbled in the darkness and swore sleepily, and moved on.
Sebastian crossed the path on his hands and knees, then stretched out on his belly into a reptilian slither as he reached the mud bank. Had he tried to walk across it, the glutinous mud would have sucked so loudly around his feet that every guard within a hundred yards would have heard him.
The mud coated his chest and belly and legs with its coldly loathsome, clinging oiliness, and the reek of it filled his nostrils so he gagged. Then he was into the water. The water was blood warm, he felt the tug of the current and the bottom dropped away beneath him. He swam on his side, careful that neither legs nor arms should break the surface. His head alone showed, like the head of a swimming otter, and he felt the mud washing off his body.
He swam across the current, guided by the distant glimmer of Blücher’s deck lights. He swam slowly, husbanding his strength, for he knew he would need all of it later.
His mind was filled with layers of awareness. The lowest layer was a lurking undirected terror of the dark water in which he swam, his dangling legs were vulnerable to the scaly predators which infested the Rufiji river. The current must be carrying his scent down to them. Soon they would come hunting up to find him. But he kept up the easy stroke of arms and legs. It was a chance, one chance of the many he was taking and he tried to ignore it and grapple with the practical problems of his attempt. When he reached Blücher, how was he to get aboard her? Her sides were fifty feet high, and the catwalks were the only means of access. These were both heavily guarded. It was a problem without solution, and yet he harried it.
Over this was a thick layer of hopeless sorrow. Sorrow for Flynn.
But the uppermost layer was thickest, strongest. Rosa, Rosa and Rosa.
He found with surprise that he was saying it aloud.
‘Rosa!’ with each forward thrust of his body through the water.
‘Rosa!’ each time he drew breath.
‘Rosa!’ as his legs kicked out and pushed him towards the Blücher.
He did not know what he would do if he reached her. Perhaps there was some half-formed idea of escaping with her, of fighting his way out of Blücher with his woman. Getting her away before that moment when the ship would vanish in a holocaust of flame. He did not know, but he swam on quietly.
Then he was under Blücher’s side. The towering mass of steel blotted out the starry night sky, and he stopped swimming and hung in the warm water looking up at her.
There were small sounds. The hum of machinery within her, the faint clang of metal struck against metal, the low guttural murmur of voices at her gangway, the thump of a rifle butt against the wooden deck, the soft wash of water around the hull – and then a closer, clearer sound, a regular creak and tap, creak and tap.
He swam in towards the hull, searching for the source of this new sound. It came from near the bows, creak and tap. The creak of rope, and the tap of wood against the steel hull. He saw it then, just above his head. He almost cried out with joy.
The cradles! The platforms still suspended above the water on which the welders and the painters had worked.
He reached up and gripped the wooden edge and drew himself on to the platform. He rested a few seconds and then began to climb the rope. Hand over hand, gripping the rope between the insides of his bare feet, he went up.
His head came level with the deck and he hung there, searching carefully. Fifty yards away he saw two seamen at the gangway. Neither was looking his way.
At intervals the hooded lanterns threw puddles of yellow light upon the deck, but ther
e were concealing shadows beyond them. It was dark around the base of the forward gun-turrets, and there were piles of material, abandoned welding equipment, heaps of rope and canvas in the shadows which would hide him when he had crossed the deck.
Once more he checked the two guards at the gangway, their backs were turned to him.
Sebastian filled his lungs and steeled himself to act. Then with one fluid movement he drew himself up and rolled over the side. He landed lightly on his feet and darted across the exposed deck into the shadows. He ducked down behind a pile of canvas and rope netting, and struggled to control his breathing. He could feel his legs trembling violently under him, so he sat down on the planking and huddled against the protecting pile of canvas. River water trickled from his shaven pate over his forehead and into his eyes. He wiped it away.
‘Now what?’ He was aboard Blücher, but what should he do next?
Where would they hold Rosa? Was there some sort of guard-room for prisoners? Would they put her in one of the officer’s cabins? The sick-bay?
He knew roughly where the sick-bay was located. While he was working in the magazine he had heard the one German guard say, ‘He has gone down the companion-way to the sick-bay.’
It must be somewhere just below the forward magazine – oh, God! If they had her there she would be almost at the centre of the explosion.
He came up on his knees, and peered over the pile of canvas. It was lighter now. Through the screen of camouflage netting, he could see the night sky had paled a little in the east. Dawn was not far off. The night had passed so swiftly, morning was on its way and there were but a few scant hours before the hands of the travelling-clock completed their journey, and made the electrical connection that would seal the Blücher’s fate, and the fate of all those aboard her.
He must move. He rose slowly and then froze. The guards at the gangway had come to attention. They stood stiffly with their rifles at the slope, and into the light stepped a tall, white-clad figure.
There was no mistaking him. It was the officer that Sebastian had last seen in the forward magazine. Kyller, they had called him, Lieutenant Kyller.
Kyller acknowledged the salutes of the two guards, and he spoke with them a while. Their voices were low and indistinct. Kyller saluted again, and then left them. He came down the deck towards the bows; he walked briskly, and his face below the peak of his cap was in darkness.
Sebastian crouched down again, only his eyes lifted above the piled canvas. He watched the officer and he was afraid.
Kyller stopped in mid-stride. He half stooped to look at the deck at his feet, and then in the same movement, straightened with his right hand dropping to the holstered pistol on his belt.
‘Guard!’ he bellowed. ‘Here! At the double!’
On the holystoned white planking, the wet footprints that Sebastian had left behind him glittered in the lantern light. Kyller stared in the direction that they led, coming directly towards Sebastian’s hiding-place.
The boots of the two guards pounded heavily along the deck. They had unslung their rifles as they ran to join Kyller.
‘Someone has come aboard here. Spread out and search …’ Kyller shouted at them, as he closed in on Sebastian.
Sebastian panicked. He jumped up and ran, trying to reach the corner of the gun-turret.
There he is!’ Kyller’s voice. ‘Stop! Stop or I’ll fire.’
Sebastian ran. His legs driving powerfully, his elbows pumping, head down, bare feet slapping on the planking, he raced through shadow.
‘Stop!’ Kyller was balanced on the balls of his feet, legs braced, right shoulder thrust forward and right arm outflung in the classic stance of the pistol marksman. The arm dropped slowly and then kicked up violently, as the shot spouted from the Luger in a bell of yellow flame. The bullet spanged against the plating of the turret and then glanced off in whining ricochet.
Sebastian felt the wind of the bullet pass his head and he jinked his run. The corner of the turret was very close, and he dodged towards it.
Then Kyller’s next shot blurted loudly in the night, and simultaneously something struck Sebastian a heavy blow under his left shoulder-blade. It threw him forward off balance and he reeled against the turret, his hands scrabbled at the smooth steel without finding purchase. His body flattened against the side of the turret, so that the blood from the exit hole that the bullet had torn in his breast sprayed on to the pale grey, painted turret.
His legs buckled and he slid down, slowly, still trying to find purchase with the hooked claws of his fingers, so that as his knees touched the deck he was in the attitude of devout prayer. Forehead pressed against the turret, kneeling, arms spread high and wide.
Then the arms sank down, and he slid sideways, collapsed onto the deck and rolled on to his back.
Kyller came and stood over him. The pistol hanging slackly in the hand at his side.
‘Oh, my God,’ there was genuine regret in Kyller’s voice. ‘It’s only one of the porters. Why did the fool run! I wouldn’t have fired if he had stood.’
Sebastian wanted to ask him where Rosa was. He wanted to explain that Rosa was his wife, that he loved her, and that he had come to find her.
He concentrated his vision on Kyller’s face as it hung over him, and he summoned his school-boy German, marshalling the sentences in his mind.
But as he opened his mouth the blood welled up in his throat and choked him. He coughed, racking, and the blood bubbled through his lips in a pink froth.
‘Lung shot!’ said Kyller, and then to the guards as they came up, ‘Get a stretcher. Hurry. We must take him down to the sick-bay.’
– 81 –
There were twelve bunks in Blücher’s sick-bay, six down each side of the narrow cabin. In eight of them lay German seamen; five malaria cases and three men injured in the work of repairing her bows.
Rosa Oldsmith was in the bunk farthest from the door. She lay behind a movable screen, and a guard sat outside the screen. He wore a pistol at his belt and was wholly absorbed in a year-old variety magazine, the cover of which depicted a buxom blonde woman in a black corset and high boots, with a horse whip in one hand.
The cabin was brightly lit and smelled of antiseptic. One of the malarial cases was in delirium, and he laughed and shouted. The medical orderly moved along the rows of bunks carrying a metal tray from which he administered the morning dosages of quinine. The time was 5 a.m.
Rosa had slept only intermittently during the night. She lay on top of the blankets and she wore a striped towelling dressing-gown over the blue flannel nightgown. The gown was many sizes too large and she had rolled back the cuffs of the sleeves. Her hair was loose on the pillows, and damp at the temples with sweat. Her face was pale and drawn, with bluish smudges of fatigue under her eyes, and her shoulder ached dully where Fleischer had struck her.
She was awake now. She lay staring up at the low roof of the cabin, playing over in her mind fragments from the happenings of the last twenty-four hours.
She recalled the interrogation with Captain von Kleine. He had sat opposite her in his luxuriously furnished cabin, and his manner had been kindly, his voice gentle, pronouncing the English words with blurring of the consonants and a hardening of the vowel sounds. His English was good.
‘When did you last eat?’ he asked her.
‘I am not hungry,’ she replied, making no attempt to conceal her hatred. Hating them all – this handsome, gentle man, the tall lieutenant who stood beside him, and Herman Fleischer who sat across the cabin from her, with his knees spread apart to accommodate the full hang of his belly.
‘I will send for food.’ Von Kleine ignored her protest and rang for his steward. When the food came, she could not deny the demands of her body and she ate, trying to show no enjoyment. The sausage and pickles were delicious, for she had not eaten since the previous noon.
Courteously von Kleine turned his attention to a discussion with Lieutenant Kyller until she had finished, but when the stew
ard removed the empty tray he came back to her.
‘Herr Fleischer tells me you are the daughter of Major O’Flynn, the commander of the Portuguese irregulars operating in German territory?’
‘I was until he was hanged, murdered! He was injured and helpless. They tied him to a stretcher …’ Rosa flared at him, tears starting in her eyes.
‘Yes,’ von Kleine stopped her, ‘I know. I am not pleased. That is now a matter between myself and Commissioner Fleischer. I can only say that I am sorry. I offer you my condolence.’ He paused and glanced at Herman Fleischer. Rosa could see by the angry blue of his eyes that he meant what he said.
‘But now there are some questions I must ask you …’
Rosa had planned her replies, for she knew what he would ask. She replied frankly and truthfully to anything that did not jeopardize Sebastian’s attempt to place the time fuse aboard Blücher.
What were she and Flynn dog when They where captured? Keeping the Blücher under surveillance. Waiting to signal her departure to the blockading cruisers.
How did the British know that Blücher was in the Rufiji? The steel plate, of course. Then confirmation by aerial reconnaissance.
Were they contemplating offensive action against Blücher? No, they would wait until she sailed.
What was the strength of the blockade squadron? Two cruisers that she had seen, she did not know if there were other warships waiting over the horizon.
Von Kleine phrased his questions carefully, and listened attentively to her replies. For an hour the interrogation continued, until Rosa was yawning openly, and her voice was slurred with exhaustion. Von Kleine realized that there was nothing to be learned from her, all she had told him he already knew or had guessed.
‘Thank you,’ he finished. ‘I am keeping you aboard my ship. There will be danger here, for soon I will be going out to meet the British warships. But I believe that it will be better for you than if I handed you over to the German administration ashore.’ He hesitated a moment and glanced at Commissioner Fleischer. ‘In every nation there are evil men, fools and barbarians. Do not judge us all by one man.’