T
he rowers had long since lost any enthusiasm they might have had for the task. They kept at it only in response to offers of bodily violence by Flynn â and the example set by Sebastian, who worked tirelessly. The thin layer of fat that had sheathed Sebastian's muscles was long since consumed, and his sun-baked body was a Michelangelo sculpture as he leaned and dug and pulled the oar.
Six days they had dragged the raft across the southward push of the current. Six days of sun-blazing calm, with the sea flattening, until now in the late afternoon, it looked like an endless sheet of smooth green velvet.
âNo,' said Mohammed. That means,
The two porcupines make love under the blanket.'
âOh!' Sebastian repeated the phrase without interrupting the rhythm of his rowing. Sebastian was a dogged pupil of Swahili, making up in determination what he lacked in brilliance. Mohammed was proud of him, and opposed any attempt by the other members of the crew to usurp his position as chief tutor.
âThat's all right about the porcupines shagging themselves to a standstill,' grunted Flynn. âBut what does this mean ⦠?' and he spoke in Swahili.
âIt means,
Big winds will Now across the sea,'
interpreted Sebastian, and glowed with achievement.
âAnd I'm not joking either.' Flynn stood up, crouching to favour his bad leg, and shaded his eyes to peer into the east. âYou see that line of cloud?'
Laying aside the oar, Sebastian stood beside him and flexed the aching muscles of his back and shoulders. Immediately all activity ceased among the other rowers.
âKeep going, me beauties!' growled Flynn, and reluctantly they obeyed. Flynn turned back to Sebastian. âYou see it?'
âYes.' It was drawn like a kohl line across the eyelid of a Hindu woman, smeared black along the horizon.
âWell, Bassie, there's the wind you've been griping about. But, my friend, I think it's a little more than you bargained for.'
Â
Â
In the darkness they heard it coming from far away, a muted sibilance in the night. One by one, the fat stars were blotted out in the east as dark cloud spread out to fill half the midnight sky.
A single gust hit the raft and flogged the makeshift sail with a clap like a shotgun. and the sleepers woke and sat up.
âHang on to those fancy underpants,' muttered Flynn, âor you'll get them blown right up Your backside.'
Another gust, another lull, but already there was the boisterous slapping of small waves against the sides of the raft.
âI'd better get that sail down.'
âYou had, and all,' agreed Flynn, âand while you're at it, use the rope to fix life-lines for us.' In haste, spurred on by the rising hiss of the wind, they lashed themselves to the slats of the deck.
The main force of the wind spun the raft like a top, splattering them with spray; the spray was icy cold in the warm rush of the wind. The wind was steady now and the raft moved uneasily â the jerky motion of an animal restless at the prick of spurs.
âAt least it will push us towards the land,' Sebastian shouted across at Flynn.
âBassie, boy, you think of the cutest things,' and the first
wave came aboard. smothering Flynn's voice, breaking over their prostrate bodies, and then streaming out through the slatted deck. The raft wallowed in dismay, then gathered itself to meet the next rush of the sea.
Under the steady fury of the wind, the sea came up more swiftly than Sebastian believed was possible. Within minutes the waves were breaking over the raft with such weight as to squeeze the breath from their lungs, submerging them completely, driving the raft under before its buoyancy reasserted itself and lifted it, canting crazily, and they could gasp for air in the smother of spray.
Waiting for the lulls, Sebastian inched his way across the deck until he reached Flynn. âHow are you bearing up?' he bellowed.
âGreat, just great,' and another wave drove them under.
âYour leg?' spluttered Sebastian as they came up.
âFor Chrissake, stop yapping,' and they went under again.
It was completely dark, no star, no sliver of moon, but each line of breaking water glowed in dull, phosphorescent malevolence as it dashed down upon them, warning them to suck air and cling with cramped fingers hooked into the slats.
For all eternity Sebastian lived in darkness, battered by the wind and the wild, flying water. The aching chill of his body dulled out into numbness. Slowly his mind emptied of conscious thought, so when a bigger wave scoured them, he heard the tearing sound of deck slats pulling loose, and the lost wail as one of the Arabs was washed away into the night sea â but the sound had no meaning to him.
Twice he vomited sea water that he had swallowed, but it had no taste in his mouth, and he let it run heedlessly down his chin and warm on to his chest, to be washed away by the next torrential wave.
His eyes burned without pain from the harsh rake of windflung spray, and he blinked them owlishly at each
advancing wave. It seemed, in time, that he could see more clearly, and he turned his head slowly. Beside him, Flynn's face was a leprous blotch in the darkness. This puzzled him, and he lay and thought about it but no solution came, until he looked beyond the next wave, and saw the faint promise of a new day show pale through the black massed cloud-banks.
He tried to speak, but no sound came for his throat was swollen closed with the salt, and his tongue was tingling numb. Again, he tried. âDawn coming,' he croaked, but beside him Flynn lay like a corpse frozen in rigor mortis.
Â
Â
Slowly the light grew over that mad, grey sea but the scudding black cloud-banks tried desperately to oppose its coming.
Now the seas were more awesome in their raging insanity. Each mountain of glassy grey rose high above the raft, shielding it for a few seconds from the whip of the wind, its crest blowing off like the plume of an Etruscan helmet, before it slid down, collapsing upon itself in the tumbling roar of breaking water.
Each time, the men on the raft shrank flat on the deck, and waited in bovine acceptance to be smothered again beneath the white deluge.
Once, the raft rode high and clear in a freak flat of the storm, and Sebastian looked about him. The canvas and rope, the coconuts and the other pathetic accumulation of their possessions were all gone. The sea had ripped away many of the deck slats so that the metal floats of the raft were exposed; it had torn the very clothing from them so they were clad in sodden tatters. Of the seven men who had ridden the raft the previous day, only he and Flynn, Mohammed and one more, were left â the other three were gone, gobbled up by the hungry sea.
Then the storm struck again, so that the raft reeled and reared to the point of capsizing.
Â
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Sebastian sensed it first in the altered action of the waves; they were steeper, marching closer together. Then, through the clamour of the storm, a new sound, like that of a cannon fired at irregular intervals with varying charges of gunpowder. He realized suddenly that he had been hearing this sound for some time, but only now had it penetrated the stupor of his fatigue.
He lifted his head, and every nerve of his being shrieked in protest at the effort. He looked about, but the sea stood up around him like a series of grey walls that limited his vision to a circle of fifty yards. Yet that discordant boom, boom, boom, was louder now and more insistent.
In the short, choppy waves, a side-break caught the raft and tossed it high â lifting him so he could see the land; so close that the palm trees showed sharply, bending their stems to the wind and threshing their long fronds in panic. He saw the beach, grey-white in the gloom and, beyond it, far beyond it, rose the watery blue of the high ground.
These things had small comfort for him when he saw the reef. It bared its black teeth at him, snarling through the white water that burst like cannon-fire upon it before cascading on into the comparative quiet of the lagoon. The raft was riding down towards it.
âFlynn,' he croaked. âFlynn, listen to me!' but the older man did not move, His eyes were fixed open and only the movement of his chest, as he breathed, proved him still alive. âFlynn.' Sebastian released one of his clawed hands from its grip on the wooden slatting. âFlynn!' he said, and struck him across the cheek.
âFlynn!' The head turned towards Sebastian, the eyes blinked, the mouth opened, but no voice spoke.
Another wave broke over the raft. This time the cold, malicious rush of it stirred Sebastian, roused a little of his failing strength. He shook the water from his head. âLand,' he whispered. âLand,' and Flynn stared at him dully.
Two lines of surf away, the reef showed its ragged back again. Clinging with only one hand to the slatting, Sebastian fumbled the knife from its sheath and hacked clumsily at the life-line that bound him to the deck. It parted. He reached over and cut Flynn's line, sawing frantically at the wet hemp. That done, he slid back on his belly until he reached Mohammed and freed him also. The little African stared at him with bloodshot eyes from his wrinkled monkey face.
âSwim,' whispered Sebastian. âMust swim,' and resheathing the knife, he tried to crawl over Mohammed to reach the Arab but the next wave caught the raft, rearing up under it as it felt the push of the land, rearing so steeply that this time the raft was overturned and they were thrown from it into the seething turmoil of the reef.
Sebastian hit the water flat, and was hardly under before he had surfaced again. Beside him, close enough to touch, Flynn emerged. In the strength born of the fear of death, Flynn caught at Sebastian, locking both arms around his chest. The same wave that had capsized them had poured over the reef and covered it completely, so that where the coral fangs had been was now only a frothy area of disturbed water. In it bobbed the debris of the raft, shattered into pieces against the reef. The mutilated corpse of the Arab was still roped to a piece of the wreckage. Flynn and Sebastian were locked like lovers in each other's arms and the next wave, following close upon the first, lifted them, and shot them forward over the submerged reef.
In one great swoop that left their guts behind them, they were carried over the coral which could have minced them into jelly, and tumbled into the quiet lagoon. With them went little Mohammed, and what remained of the raft.
The lagoon was covered by a thick scum of wind spume, creamy as the head of a good beer. So when the three of them staggered waist-deep towards the beach, supporting each other with arms around shoulders, they were coated with white froth. It made them look like a party of drunken snowmen returning home after a long night out.
M
ohammed squatted with a pile of madafu, the shiny green coconuts, beside him. The beach was littered with them, for the storm had stripped the trees. He worked in feverish haste with Sebastian's hunting knife, his face frosted with dried salt, mumbling to himself through cracked and swollen lips, shaving down through the white, fibrous material of the shell until he exposed the hollow centre filled with its white custard and effervescent milk. At this point the madafu was snatched from his hands by either Flynn. or Sebastian. His despair growing deeper, he watched for a second the two white men drinking with heads thrown back, throats pulsing as they swallowed, spilled milk trickling from the corners of their mouths, eyes closed tight in their intense pleasure; then he picked up another nut and got to work on it. He opened a dozen before he was able to satiate the other two, and he held the next nut to his own mouth and whimpered with eagerness.
Then they slept. Bellies filled with the sweet, rich milk, they sagged backwards on the sand and slept the rest of that day and that night, and when they woke, the wind had
dropped, although the sea still burst like an artillery bombardment on the reef.
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âNow,' said Flynn, âwhere, in the name of the devil and all his angels, are wet Neither Sebastian nor Mohammed answered him. âWe were six days on the raft. We could have drifted hundreds of miles south before the storm pushed us in.' He frowned as he considered the problem. âWe might even have reached Portuguese Mozambique. We could be as far as the Zambezi river.'
Flynn focused his attention on Mohammed. âGo!' he said. âSearch for a river, or a mountain that you know. Better still, find a village where we can get food â and bearers.'
âI'll go also,' Sebastian volunteered.
âYou wouldn't know the difference between the Zambezi and the Mississippi,' Flynn grunted impatiently. âYou'd be lost after the first hundred yards.'
Mohammed was gone for two days and a half, but Sebastian and Flynn ate well in his absence.
Under a sun shelter of palm fronds they feasted three times a day on crab and sand-clams, and big green rock-lobster which Sebastian fished from the lagoon, baking them in their shells over the fire that Flynn coaxed from two dry sticks.
On the first night the entertainment was provided by Flynn. For some years now, Flynn's intake of gin had averaged a daily two bottles. The abrupt cessation of supply resulted in a delayed but classic visitation of
delirium tremens
. He spent half the night hobbling up and down the beach brandishing a branch of driftwood and hurling obscenities at the phantoms that had come to plague him. There was one purple cobra in particular which pursued him doggedly, and it was only after Flynn had beaten it
noisily to death behind a palm tree, that he allowed Sebastian to lead him back to the shelter and seat him beside the camp-fire. Then he got the shakes. He shook like a man on a jack-hammer. His teeth rattled together with such violence that Sebastian was sure they must shatter. Gradually, however, the shakes subsided and by the following noon he was able to eat three large rock-lobsters and then collapse into a death-like sleep.
He woke in the late evening, looking as well as Sebastian had ever seen him, to greet the returning Mohammed and the dozen tall Angoni tribesmen who accompanied him. They returned Flynn's greeting with respect. From Beira to Dar es Salaam, the name âFini' was held in universal awe by the indigenous peoples. Legend credited him with powers far above the natural order. His exploits, his skill with the rifle, his volcanic temper and his seeming immunity from death and retribution, had formed the foundation of a belief that Flynn had carefully fostered. They said in whispers around the night fires when the women and the children were not listening that âFini' was in truth a reincarnation of the Monomatapa. They said further that in the intervening period between his death as the Great King and his latest birth as âFini', he had been first a monstrous crocodile, and then
Mowana Lisa
, the most notorious man-eating lion in the history of East Africa, a predator responsible for at least three hundred human killings. The day, twenty-five years previously, that Flynn had stepped ashore at Port Amelia was the exact day that
Mowana Lisa
had been shot dead by the Portuguese Chef D'Post at Sofala. All men knew these things â and only an idiot would take chances with âFini' â hence the respect with which they greeted him now.
Flynn recognized one of the men. âLuti,' he roared, âyou scab on an hyena's backside!'
Luti smiled broadly, and bobbed his head in pleasure at being singled out by Flynn.
âMohammed,' Flynn turned to his man. âWhere did you find him? Are we near his villager
âWe are a day's march away.'
âIn which direction?'
âNorth.'
âThen we are in Portuguese territory!' exalted Flynn. âWe must have drifted down past the Rovuma river.'
The Rovuma river was the frontier between Portuguese Mozambique and German East Africa. Once in Portuguese territory, Flynn was immune from the wrath of the Germans. All their efforts at extraditing him from the Portuguese had proved unsuccessful, for Flynn had a working agreement with the Chef D'Post, Mozambique, and through him with the Governor in Lorenço Marques. In a manner of speaking, these two officials were sleeping partners in Flynn's business, and were entitled to a quarterly financial statement of Flynn's activities, and an agreed percentage of the profits.
âYou can relax, Bassie boy. Old Fleischer can't touch us now. And in three or four days we'll be home.'
The first leg of the journey took them to Luti's village. Lolling in their maschilles, hammock-like litters slung beneath a long pole and carried by four of Luti's men at a synchronized jog trot, Flynn and Sebastian were borne smoothly out of the coastal lowland into the hills and bush country.
The litter-bearers sang as they ran, and their deep melodious voices, coupled with the swinging motion of the maschille, lulled Sebastian into a mood of deep contentment. Occasionally he dozed. Where the path was wide enough to allow the maschilles to travel side by side, he lay and chatted with Flynn, at other times he watched the changing country and the animal life along the way. It was better than London Zoo.
Each time Sebastian saw something new, he called across for Flynn to identify it.
In every glade and clearing were herds of the golden-brown impala; delicate little creatures that watched them in wide-eyed curiosity as they passed.
Troops of guinea-fowl, like a dark cloud shadow on the earth, scratched and chittered on the banks of every stream.
Heavy, yellow eland, with their stubby horns and swinging dewlaps, trotting in Indian file, formed a regal frieze along the edge of the bush.
Sable and roan antelope; purple-brown waterbuck, with a perfect circle of white branded on their rumps; buffalo, big and black and ugly; giraffe, dainty little klip-springer, standing like chamois on the tumbled granite boulders of a kopje. The whole land seethed and skittered with life.
There were trees so strange in shape and size and foliage that Sebastian. could hardly credit them as existing. Swollen baobabs, fifty feet in circumference, standing awkwardly as prehistoric monsters, fat pods filled with cream of tartar hanging from their deformed branches. There were forests of msasa trees, leaves not green as leaves should be, but rose and chocolate and red. Fever trees sixty feet high, with bright yellow trunks, shedding their bark like the brittle parchment of a snake's skin. Groves of mopani, whose massed foliage glittered a shiny, metallic green in the sun; and in the jungle growth along the river banks, the lianas climbed up like long, grey worms and hung in loops and festoons among the wild fig and the buffalo-bean vines and the tree ferns.
âWhy haven't we seen any sign of elephant?' Sebastian asked.
âMe and my boys worked this territory over about six months ago,' Flynn explained. âI guess they just moved on a little â probably up north across the Rovuma.'
In the late afternoon they descended a stony path into a valley, and for the first time Sebastian saw the permanent
habitations of man. In irregular shaped plots, the bottom land of the valley was cultivated, and the rich black soil threw up lush green stands of millet, while on the banks of the little stream stood Luti's village; shaggy grass huts, shaped like beehives, each with a circular mud-walled granary standing on stilts beside it. The huts were arranged in a rough. circle around an open space where the earth was packed hard by the passage of bare feet.
The entire population turned out to welcome Flynn: three hundred souls, from hobbling old white heads with grinning toothless gums, down to infants held on mothers' naked hips, who did not interrupt their feeding but clung like fat black limpets with hands and mouth to the breast.
Through the crowd that ululated and clapped hands in welcome, Flynn and Sebastian were carried to the chiefs hut and there they descended from the maschilles.
Flynn and the old chief greeted each other affectionately; Flynn because of favours received and because of future favours yet to be asked for, and the chief because of Flynn's reputation and the fact that wherever Flynn travelled, he usually left behind him large quantities of good, red meat.
âYou come to hunt elephant?' the chief asked, looking hopefully for Flynn's rifle.
âNo.' Flynn shook his head. âI return from a journey to a far place.'
âFrom where?'
In answer, Flynn looked significantly at the sky and repeated, âFrom a far place.'
There was an awed murmur from the crowd and the chief nodded sagely. It was clear to all of them that âFini' must have been to visit and commune with his
alter ego,
Monomatapa.
âWill you stay long at our village?' again hopefully.
âI will stay tonight only. I leave again in the dawn.'
âAh!' Disappointment. âWe had hoped to welcome you with a dance. Since we heard of your coming, we have prepared.'
âNo,' Flynn repeated. He knew a dance could last three or four days.
âThere is a great brewing of palm wine which is only now ready for drinking,' the chief tried again, and this time his argument hit Flynn like a charging rhinoceros. Flynn had been many days without liquor.
âMy friend,' said Flynn, and he could feel the saliva spurting out from under his tongue in anticipation. âI cannot stay to dance with you but I will drink a small gourd of palm wine to show my love for you and your village.' Then turning to Sebastian he warned, âI wouldn't touch this stuff, Bassie, if I were you â it's real poison.'
âRight,' agreed Sebastian. âI'm going down to the river to wash.'
âYou do that,' and Flynn lifted the first gourd of palm wine lovingly to his lips.
Sebastian's progress to the river resembled a Roman triumph. The entire village lined the bank to watch his necessarily limited ablutions with avid interest, and a buzz of awe went up when he disrobed to his underpants.
âBwana Manali,' they chorused. âLord of the Red Cloth,' and the name stuck.
As a farewell gift the headman presented Flynn with four gourds of palm wine, and begged him to return soon â bringing his rifle with him.
They marched hard all that day and when they camped at nightfall, Flynn was semi-paralysed with palm wine, while Sebastian shivered and his teeth chattered uncontrollably.
From the swamps of the Rufiji delta, Sebastian had brought with him a souvenir of his visit â his first full go of malaria.
They reached Lalapanzi the following day, a few hours
before the crisis of Sebastian's fever. Lalapanzi was Flynn's base camp and the name meant âLie Down', or more accurately, The Place of Rest'.
It was in the hills on a tiny tributary of the great Rovuma river, a hundred miles from the Indian Ocean, but only ten miles from German territory across the river. Flynn believed in living close to his principal place of business.
Had Sebastian been in full possession of his senses, and not wandering in the hot shadow land of malaria, he would have been surprised by the camp at Lalapanzi. It was not what anybody who knew Flynn O'Flynn would have expected.
Behind a palisade of split bamboo to protect the lawns and gardens from the attentions of the duiker and steenbok and kudu, it glowed like a green jewel in the sombre brown of the hills. Much hard work and patience must have gone into damming the stream, and digging the irrigation furrows, which suckled the lawns and flower-beds and the vegetable gardens. Three indigenous fig trees dwarfed the buildings, crimson frangipani burst like fireworks against the green kikuyu grass, beds of bright barberton daisies ringed the gentle terraces that fell away to the stream, and a bougain-villaea creeper smothered the main building in a profusion of dark green and purple.
Behind the long bungalow, with its wide, open veranda, stood half a dozen circular rondavels, all neatly capped with golden thatch and gleaming painfully white, with burned limestone paint, in the sunlight.