Joyce glared at him, breathing hard as he fought to check the headlong run of his rage.
âWho?' he demanded.
âMy own son,' intoned Flynn, it sounded better than son-in-law.
âWill he do it?'
âHe'll do it. I'll see to that,' Flynn assured him.
â
I
t's as safe as a horse and cart,' boomed Flynn, he liked the simile, and repeated it.
âHow safe is a horse and cart when it's up in the clouds?' asked Sebastian, without lowering his eyes from the sky.
âI'm disappointed in you, Bassie. Most young fellows would jump at this chance.' Flynn was literally in excellent spirits. Joyce had come through with three cases of best Beefeater gin. He sat on one of the gasoline drums that lay
beneath the shade of the palm trees above the beach, around him in various attitudes of relaxation lay twenty of his scouts, for it was a drowsy, warm and windless morning. A bright sun burned down from a clear sky, and the white sand was dazzling against the dark green of the sea. The low surf sighed softly against the beach, and half a mile out, a cloud of seabirds were milling and diving on a shoal of bait-fish. Their cries blending with the sound of the sea.
Even though they were a hundred miles north of the Rovuma mouth, deep in German territory, a holiday atmosphere prevailed. Heightened by anticipation of the imminent arrival of the flying-machine they were enjoying themselves â all of them except Sebastian and Rosa. They were holding each other's hands and looking into the southern sky.
âYou must find it for us.' Rosa's voice was low, but not low enough to cover her intensity. For the last ten days, since Flynn had returned from his meeting with Joyce on board the
Renounce
, she had spoken of little else but the German warship. It had become another cup to catch the hatred that overflowed from her.
âI'll try,' said Sebastian.
âYou must,' she said. âYou must.'
âShould be able to get a good view from up there. Like standing on a mountain â only with no mountain under you,' said Sebastian and he felt his skin crawl at the thought.
âListen!' said Rosa.
âWhat?'
âSsh!'
And he heard it, an insect drone that swelled and sank and swelled again. They heard it under the trees also, and some of them came out into the sun and stood peering towards the south.
Suddenly in the sky there was a flash of reflected sunlight off metal or glass, and a shout went up from the watchers.
It came in towards them, low on wobbly wings, the clatter of its engine rising to a crescendo, its shadow racing ahead of it along the white beach. The group of native scouts exploded in panic-stricken retreat, Sebastian dropped on his face in the sand, only Rosa stood unmoving as it roared a few feet over her head, and then rose and banked away in a curve out over the sea.
Sebastian stood up and sheepishly brushed sand from his bush-jacket, as the aircraft levelled in and sank down on to the hard-packed sand near the water's edge. The beat of its engine faded to a spluttering burble, and it waddled slowly towards them, the backwash of the propeller sending a misty plume of sand scudding out behind. The wings looked as though they were about to fall off.
âAll right,' bellowed Flynn at his men who were standing well back in the palm grove. âGet these drums down there.'
The pilot switched off the motor, and the silence was stunning. He climbed stiffly out of the cockpit on to the lower wing, dumpy and awkward in his thick leather jacket, helmet and goggles. He jumped down on to the beach and shrugged out of the jacket, pulled off the helmet and was revealed as the suave young Portuguese lieutenant.
âDa Silva,' he said offering his right hand as Sebastian ran forward to greet him. âHernandez da Silva.'
While Flynn and Sebastian supervised the refuelling of the aircraft, Rosa sat with the pilot under the palms, while he breakfasted on garlic polony and a bottle of white wine that he had brought with him â suitably exotic food for a dashing knight of the air.
Although his mouth was busy, the pilot's eyes were free and he used them on Rosa. Even at a distance of fifty yards Sebastian became aware with mounting disquiet that Rosa was suddenly a woman again. Where before there had been a lifted chin and the straight-forward masculine gaze; now
there were downcast eyes broken with quick bright glances and secret smiles, now there were soft rose colours that glowed and faded beneath the sun-browned skin of her cheeks and neck. She touched her hair with a finger, pushing a strand back behind her ear. She tugged at the front of her bush-jacket to straighten it, then drew her long khaki-clad legs up sideways beneath her as she sat in the sand. The pilot's eyes followed the movement. He wiped the neck of the wine bottle on his sleeve, and then with a flourish offered it to Rosa.
Rosa murmured her thanks and accepted the bottle to sip at it delicately. With the freckles across her cheeks and the skin peeling from her nose she looked as fresh and as innocent as a little girl, Sebastian thought.
The Portuguese lieutenant on the other hand looked neither fresh nor innocent. He was handsome, if you liked the slimy continental type with that slightly jaded tom cat look. Sebastian decided that there was something obscenely erotic about that little black moustache, that lay upon his upper lip and accentuated the cherry-pink lips beneath.
Watching him take the bottle back from Rosa and lift it towards her in salutation before drinking, Sebastian was overcome with two strong desires. One was to take the wine bottle and thrust it down the lieutenant's throat, the other was to get him into the flying-machine and away from Rosa just as quickly as was possible.
âPaci. Paci,' he growled at Mohammed's gang who were slopping gasoline into the funnel on the upper wing. âGet a move on, for cat's sake!'
âGet your clobber into this thing, Bassie, and stop giving orders â you know it just confuses everybody.'
âI don't know where to put it â you'd better tell that greaser to come and show me. I can't speak his language.'
âPut it in the front cockpit â the observer's cockpit.'
âTell that damned Portuguese to come here.' Sebastian dug in stubbornly. Tell him to leave Rosa alone and come here.'
Rosa followed the pilot to the aircraft and the expression of awed respect on her face, as she listened to him throwing out orders in Portuguese, infuriated Sebastian. The ritual of starting the aircraft completed, it stood clattering and quivering on the beach, and the pilot waved imperiously at Sebastian from the cockpit to come aboard.
Instead he went to Rosa and took her possessively in his arms.
âDo you love me?' he asked.
âWhat?' she shouted above the bellow of the engine.
âDo you love me?' he roared.
âOf course I do, you fool,' she shouted back and smiled up into his face before going up on tip-toe to kiss him while the slipstream of the propeller howled around them. Her embrace had passion in it that had not been there these many months, and Sebastian wondered sickly how much of it had been engendered by an outside agency.
âYou can do that when you get back.' Flynn prised him loose from Rosa's grip, and boosted him up into the cockpit. The machine jerked forward and Sebastian clutched desperately to retain his balance, then glanced back. Rosa was waving and smiling, he was not certain if the smile was directed at him or at the helmeted head in the cockpit behind him, but his jealousy was swamped by the primeval instinct of survival.
Clutching with both hands at the sides of the cockpit, even his toes curling in their boots as though to grip the floorboards of the cockpit, Sebastian stared ahead.
The beach disappeared beneath the fuselage in a solid white blur; the palm trees whipped past on one side, the sea on the other; the wind tore at his face and tears streamed back along his cheeks, the machine bumped and bucked
and jounced, and then leaped upwards under him, dropped back to bounce once more and then was airborne. The earth fell away gently beneath them as they soared, and Sebastian's spirits soared with them. His misgivings melted away.
Sebastian remembered at last to pull the goggles down over his eyes to protect them from the stinging wind, and godlike he looked down through them at a world that was small and tranquil.
When at last he looked back over his shoulder at the pilot, this strange and wonderful shared experience of immortality had lifted him above the petty passions of mere men, and they smiled at each other.
The pilot pointed out over the right wing tip, and Sebastian followed the direction of his arm.
Far, far out on the crenellated blue blanket of the sea, tiny beneath vast fluffy piles of thunderhead cloud, he saw the grey shape of the British cruiser Renounce with the pale white feather of its wake fanning on the surface of the ocean behind it.
He nodded and smiled at his companion. Again the pilot pointed, this time ahead.
Still misty in the blue haze of distance, haphazard as the unfitted pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the islands of the Rufiji delta were spilled and scattered between ocean and mainland.
In the rackety little cockpit, Sebastian squatted over his pack and took from it binoculars, pencil and map-case.
I
t was hot. Moist itchy hot. Even in the shade beneath the festooned camouflage-nets the decks of
Blücher
were smothered with hot sticky waves of swamp air. The sweat that oozed and trickled down the glistening bodies of the half-naked men who slaved on her foredeck gave them no relief, for the air was too humid to evaporate the moisture. They moved like sleep-walkers, with slow mechanical determination, manhandling the thick sheet of steel plate into its slings beneath the high arm of the crane.
Even the flow of obscenity from the lips of Lochtkamper, the engineering commander, had dried up like a spring in drought season. He worked with his men, like them stripped to the waist, and the tattoos on his upper arms and across his chest heaved and bulged as they rode on an undulating sea of muscles.
âRest,' he grunted; and they straightened up from their labour, mouths gaping as they sucked in the stale air, massaging aching backs, glowering at the sheet of steel with true hatred.
âCaptain.' Lochtkamper became aware of von Kleine for the first time. He stood against the forward gun-turret, tall in full whites, the blond beard half concealing the cross of black enamel and silver that hung at his throat. Lochtkamper crossed to him.
âIt goes well?' von Kleine asked, and the engineer shook his head.
âNot as well as I had hoped.' He wiped one huge hand across his forehead, leaving a smudge of grease and rust scale on his own face. âSlow,' he said. âToo slow.'
âYou have encountered difficulties?'
âEverywhere,' growled the engineer, and he looked
around at the heat mist and the mangroves, at the sluggish black waters and the mud banks. âNothing works here â the welding equipment, the winch engines, even the men â everything sickens in this obscene heat.'
âHow much longer?'
âI do not know, Captain. I truly do not know.'
Von Kleine would not press him. If any man could get
Blücher
seaworthy, it would be this man. When Lochtkamper slept at all, it was here on the foredeck, curled like a dog on a mattress thrown on the planking. He slept a few exhausted hours amid the whine and groan of the winches, the blue hissing glare of the welding torches and the drum splitting hammering of the riveters, then he was up again bullying, leading, coaxing and threatening.
âAnother three weeks,' Lochtkamper estimated reluctantly. âA month at the most â if all goes as it does now.'
They were both silent, standing together, two men from different worlds drawn together by a common goal, united by respect for each other's ability.
A mile up the channel, movement caught their attention. It was one of the launches returning to the cruiser, yet it looked like a hayrick under its bulky cargo. It came slowly against the sluggish current, sitting so low in the water that only a few inches of freeboard showed, while its load was a great shaggy hump on which sat a dozen black men.
Von Kleine and Lochtkamper watched it approaching.
âI still do not know about that obscene wood, Captain.' Lochtkamper shook his big untidy head again. âIt is so soft, so much ash, it could clog the furnace.'
âThere is nothing else we can do,' von Kleine reminded him.
When
Blücher
entered the Rufiji, her coal-bunkers were almost empty. There was enough fuel for perhaps four thousand miles of steaming. Hardly enough to carry her in
a straight run down into latitude 45° south, where her mother ship, Esther, waited to refuel her, and fill her magazines with shell.
There was not the faintest chance of obtaining coal. Instead von Kleine had set Commissioner Fleischer and his thousand native porters to cutting cordwood from the forests, that grew at the apex of the delta. It was a duty that Commissioner Fleischer had opposed with every argument and excuse he could muster. He felt that in delivering safely to Captain von Kleine the steel plating from Dar es Salaam, he had discharged any obligation that he might have towards the
Blücher.
His eloquence availed him not at all â Lochtkamper had fashioned two hundred primitive axe heads from the steel plate, and von Kleine had sent Lieutenant Kyller up-river with Fleischer to help him keep his enthusiasm for wood-cutting burning brightly.
For three weeks now, the
Blücher's
launches had been plying steadily back and forth. Up to the present they had delivered some five hundred tons of timber. The problem was finding storage for this unwieldy cargo once the coal-bunkers were filled.
âWe will have to begin deck loading the cordwood soon,' von Kleine muttered, and Lochtkamper opened his mouth to reply when the alarm bells began to clamour an emergency, and the loudhailer boomed.
âCaptain to the bridge. Captain to the bridge.'
Von Kleine turned and ran.
On the companion ladder he collided with one of his lieutenants. They caught at each other for balance and the lieutenant shouted into von Kleine's face.
âCaptain â an aircraft. Flying low. Coming this way. Portuguese makings.'
âDamn it to hell!' Von Kleine pushed past him, and bounded up the ladder. He burst on to the bridge, panting.
âWhere is it?' he shouted.
The officer of the watch dropped his binoculars and turned to von Kleine with relief.
âThere it is, sir!' He pointed through a hole in the tangled screen of camouflage that hung like a veranda roof over the bridge.
Von Kleine snatched the binoculars from him and, as he trained them on the distant winged shape in the mist haze above the mangroves, he issued his orders.
âWarn the men ashore. Everybody under cover,' he barked. âAll guns trained to maximum elevation. Pom-poms loaded with shrapnel Machine-gun crews closed up â but no firing until my orders.'
He held the aircraft in the round field of the field glasses.
âPortuguese, all right,' he grunted; the green and red insignia showed clearly against the brown body of the aircraft.
âShe's searching â¦' The aircraft was sweeping back and forth, banking over and turning back at the end of each leg of her search pattern, like a farmer ploughing a field. Von Kleine could make out the head and shoulders of a man crouched forward in the squat round nose of the aircraft. â ⦠Now well find out how effective is our camouflage.'
So the enemy have guessed at last. They must have reported the convoy of steel plate â or perhaps the chopping of the cordwood has alerted them, he thought, watching the aircraft tacking slowly towards him. We could not hope to go undetected for ever â but I did not expect them to send an aircraft.
Then suddenly the thought struck him so hard that he gasped with the danger of it. He whirled and ran to the forward rail of the bridge and peered out through the camouflage net.
Still half a mile distant, trundling slowly down the centre of the channel with the wide rippling V of her wake spread on the current behind her, clumsy as a pregnant hippo with
her load of cordwood, the launch was aimed straight at
Blücher
. From the air she would be as conspicuous as a fat tick on a white sheet.
âThe launch â¦' shouted von Kleine, hail her. Older her to run for the bank â get her under cover.'
But he knew it was useless. By the time she was within hail, it would be too late. He thought of ordering his forward. turrets to fire on the launch and sink her â but discarded the idea immediately, the fall of shell would immediately draw the enemy's attention.
Impatiently he stood gripping the rail of the bridge, and mouthing his anger and his frustration at the approaching launch.