Shout at the Devil

"Fire's out," said the pilot, and Charles made no answer.

He had hoped that the flames would eat their way into one of

Blitcher's magazines and blow her into the same oblivion into which she had sent Orion.

"But she isn't making more than six knots. Orion must have hit her in the engine room." Hopefully the navigating lieutenant went on,

"My bet is that she's got major damage below. At this speed we can expect Pegasus and Renounce to catch up with us by midday tomorrow.

The Germans will stand no chance!"

"Yes," agreed Charles softly.

Summoned by Bloodhound's frantic radio transmissions, Pegasus and

Renounce, the two heavy cruisers of the northern squadron, were racing down the East African coast, cutting through the five hundred miles of water that separated them.

Kyller. Ask the chief how he's making out." Von Kleine was fretting beneath the calm set of his features. Night was Closing, and in the darkness, even the frail little English destroyer was a danger to him.

There was danger all around, danger must each minute be approaching from every quarter of the sea. He must have power on his port side engine before nightfall; it was a matter of survival; he must have speed to carry him south through the hunting packs of the British south to where Esther waited to give him succour, to replace the shells he had fired away, to replenish his coal bunkers which were now dangerously depleted. Then once more Blucher would be a force to reckon with. But first he must have speed.

"Captain." Kyller was beside him again. "Commander Lochtkamper reports they have cleared the oil line to the is main bearing. They have stripped the bearing and there is no damage to the shaft. He is fitting new half shells. The work is well advanced, sir." The words conjured up for von Kleine a picture of half-naked men, smeared to the elbows with black grease, sweating in the confined heat of the drive shaft tunnel as they worked. "How much longer?" he asked.

"He promised full power on both engines within two hours, sir."

Von Kleine sighed with relief, and glanced over his stern at the

British destroyer that was shadowing him. He began to smile.

"I hope, my friend, that you are a brave man. I hope that when you see me increase speed, you will not be able to control your disappointment. I hope tonight you will try with your torpedoes, so that I can crush you, for your eyes always on me are a dangerous embarrassment." He spoke so softly that his lips barely moved, then he turned back to Kyller. "I want all the battle lights checked and reported."

"Aye, aye, sir" Von Kleine crossed to the voice-tubes.

"Gunnery officer," he said. "I want "X" turret guns loaded with star shell and trained to maximum elevation..." He went on listing his preparations for night action and then he ended, "... stand all Your gun crews down. Let them eat and rest. From dusk action stations onwards they will be held in the first degree of readiness."

"commander, sir!" The urgent call startled Commander Charles

Little, and he spilled his mug of cocoa. This was the first period of rest he had allowed himself all day, and now it was interrupted within ten minutes. "What is it?" He flung open the door of the chart room,

and ran out on to the bridge.

"Blucher is increasing speed rapidly."

"It was too cruel a blow, and the exclamation of protest was wrung from Charles. He darted to the voice pipe

"Gunnery officer. Report your target." A moment's delay, and then the reply. "Bearing mark, green oh-oh. Range, one-five-oh-five-oh.

Speed, seventeen knots." It was true. Blucher was under full power again, with all her guns still operable. Orion had died in vain.

Charles wiped his mouth with the open palm of his hand, and felt the brittle stubble of his new beard rasp under his fingers. Beneath the tan, his face was sickly pale with strain and fatigue. There were smears of dark blue beneath his eyes, and in their corners were tiny lumps of yellow mucus. His eyes were bloodshot, and the wisp of hair that escaped from under the brim of his cap was matted on to his forehead by the salt spray, as he peered into the gathering dusk.

The fighting madness which had threatened all that day to overwhelm him, rose slowly from the depth of his belly and his loins.

He no longer struggled to suppress it.

"Turn two points to starboard, pilot. All engines full ahead together." The engine telegraph clanged, and Bloodhound pivoted like a polo pony. It would take her thirty minutes to work up to full speed,

and by that time it would be dark.

"Sound action stations." Charles wanted to attack in the hour of darkness before the moon came up. Through the ship the alarm bells thrilled, and without taking his eyes from the dark dot on the darkening horizon, Charles listened to the reports coming into the bridge, until the one for which he waited, "Torpedo party closed up,

sir!" Now he turned and went to the voice-tube. "Tarps," he said,

"I

hope to give you a chance at Blucher with both port and starboard tubes. I am going to take you in as close as possible." The men grouped around Charles on the bridge listened to him say "as close as possible, and knew that he had Pronounced sentence of death upon them.

Henry Sargent, the navigating lieutenant, was afraid.

Stealthily he groped in the pocket of his overcoat until he found the little silver crucifix that Lynette had given him.

It was warm from his own body heat. He held it tightly.

He remembered it hanging between her breasts on its silver chain,

and the way she had lifted both hands to The chain had the back of her neck as she unclasped it.

caught in the shiny cascade of hair as she had tried to free it,

kneeling on the bed facing him. He had leaned forward to help her, and she had clung to him, pressing the warm smooth bulge of her pregnant stomach against him.

"God protect you, my darling husband," she had whispered. "Please

God bring you back safely to us." And now he was afraid for her and the daughter he had never seen

"Hold your course, damn you!" he snapped at Herbert Cryer, the helmsman.

"Aye, aye, sir," Herbert Cryer replied with just a trace of injured innocence in his tone. No man could hold Bloodhound true when she hurled herself from swell to swell with such abandoned violence,

she must yaw and throw her head that fraction before the helm could correct her. The reprimand was unjustified, Littered in fear and tension.

"Give it a flipping break, mate," Herbert retorted silently.

"You're not the only one who is going to catch it. Tighten up the old arse hole like a bloody officer and a ruddy gentleman." In these wordless exchanges of repartee with his officers, Herbert Cryer was never bested. They were wonderful release for resentments and pent-up emotion, and now because he was also afraid, he became silently lyrical.

"Climb-aboard-Romeo's one-way express to flipping glory."

Commander Little's reputation with the ladies had resulted in him being irreverently but affectionately baptized by his crew. "Come along with us. We're off to shout at the devil, while Charlie kisses his daughter." Herbert glanced sideways at his commander and grinned.

Fear made the grin wolfish, and Charles Little saw it and misinterpreted it. He read it as a tri ark of the same berserk fury that possessed him. The two of them grinned at each other for an instant in complete misunderstanding, before Herbert refocused his attention on Bloodhound's next wild crabbing lunge.

Charles was afraid as well. He was afraid of finding a weakness in himself but this was the fear that had walked at his right hand all his life, close beside him, whispering to him. You must do it you must do it quicker, or bigger than they do, or they'll laugh at you.

You mustn't fail not in one thing, not for one moment, you mustn't fail. You mustn't fail! "This fear was the eternal companion and partner in every venture on which he embarked.

It had stood beside the thirteen-year-old Charles in a duck blind,

while he fired a twelve-gauge shotgun, and wept slow fat tears of agony every time the recoil smashed. into his bruised bicep and shoulder.

It had stooped over him as he lay in the mud hugging a broken collar bone. "Get up!" it hissed at him. "Get up!" It had forced him to his feet and led him back to the unbroken colt to mount again, and again, and again.

So conditioned was he to respond to its voice that when it crouched beside him now, twisted and misshapen on the foot plates of the bridge, its presence almost tangible, and croaked so Charles alone could hear it, "Prove it!" Prove it!"

there was only one course open to Charles Little; a peregrine stooping at a golden eagle, he took his ship in against, the Blitcher.

his turn to starboard was a feint." Otto von Kleine spoke with certainty, staring out to where the dusk had obliterated the frail silhouette of the English destroyer. "Even now he is turning again to cross our stern.

He will attack on our port side."

"Captain, it could be the double bluff," Kyller answered dubiously.

"No." Von Kleine shook his golden beard. "He must try to outline us against the last of the light from the sunset.

He will attack from the east. "A moment longer he frowned in thought, as he anticipated his opponent's moves across the chessboard of the ocean. Kyller, plot me his course, assuming a speed of twenty-five knots, a turn fOUr points to port three minutes after our last sighting, a run of fifteen miles across our stern, and then a turn of four points to starboard. If we hold our present course and speed,

where will he be in relation to us, in ninety minutes" time? Working quickly, Kyller completed the problem. Von Kleine had been mentally checking every step of the calculation. "Yes," he agreed with Kyller's solution, and already he had formulated the orders for change Of Course and speed to place Bloodhound in ambush.

Under full power, Bbloodhound threw a bow -wave ten feet high, and a wake that boiled out for a quarter of a mile behind her, a long,

faintly phosphorescent smear in the darkness.

Aboard Blitcher a hundred pairs of eyes were straining out in to the night, watching for that phosphorescence.

Behind the battle lights on her upper works men waited, in the dimly-lit turrets men waited, on the open bridge, at the masthead, deep in her belly, the crew of Blitcher waited.

Von Kleine had reduced speed to lessen his own wake, and turned away from the land at an angle of forty-five degrees. He wanted to catch the Englishman on his starboard beam, out of torpedo range.

He stood peering out across the dark sea, with the fur lined collar of his overcoat drawn up to his ears. The night was cool. The sea was a black immensity, vast as the sky that was lined in glowing ivory by the whorls and smears of the star patterns.

A dozen men saw it at the same instant; pale, ethereal, seeming to float upon the darkness of the sea like a plume of iridescent mist the wake of the Englishman.

"Star shell!" Von Kleine snapped the order to the waiting guns.

He was alarmed by the English destroyer's proximity.

He had hoped to spot-her at greater range.

High above the ocean, the star shells burst white, so intensely bright as to sear the retina of the eye that looked directly at them. Beneath them the surface of the sea was polished ebony,

sculptured and scooped with the pattern of the swells. The two ships were starkly and crisply lit, steaming on converging courses, already so close to each other that the mile-long, solid white beams of their battle lights jumped out to join, fumbling together like the hands of hesitant lovers.

In almost the same second both ships opened fire, but the banging of Bloodhound's little 4.7-inch guns was lost in the bellow of the cruiser's broadside.

Blitcher was firing over open sights with her guns depressed until the long barrels were horizontal to the surface of the sea. Her first salvo was aimed a fraction high, and the huge shells howled over

Bloodhound's open bridge.

The wind of their passage, the fierce draught of disrupted air they threw out, caught Charles Little and sent him reeling against the compass pinnacle. He felt the ribs below his armpit crack.

The command he shouted at the helm was hoarse with pain.

"Turn four points to port! Steer for the enemy!" and Bloodhound spun like a ballet dancer, and charged straight at Blitcher.

The cruiser's next broadside was high again but now her secondary armament had joined in, and a four-pound shell from one of the quick-firing pom-poms burst on the director tower above Bloodhound's bridge. It swept the exposed area with a buzzing hailstorm of shrapnel, It killed the navigating lieutenant instantly, cutting away the top of his head as though it were the shell of a soft boiled egg.

He fell on the deck and splattered the foot plates with the warm custard of his brains.

A piece of the red-hot shell casing, the size of a thumbnail,

entered the point of Herbert Cryer's right elbow and shattered the bone to splinters. He gasped at the shock and sprawled against the wheel.

"Hold her. Hold her true!" The order from Commander Little was blurred as the speech of a spastic. Herbert Cryer pulled himself up and with his left hand spun the wheel to meet Bloodhound's wild swing,

but with his right arm hanging useless, his steering was clumsy and awkward.

"Steady her, man. Hold her steady!" Again that thick slurring voice, and Cryer was aware of Charles Little beside him, his hands on the helm, helping to hold Bloodhound's frantic head.

"Aye, aye, sir." Cryer glanced at his commander and gasped again.

This time in horror. Razor-sharp steel had sliced off Charles Little's ear, then gone on to cut his cheek away, and expose the bone of his jaw and the white teeth that lined it. A flap of tattered flesh hung down on to his chest, and from a dozen severed blood vessels dark blood dripped and spurted and dribbled.

The two of them crouched wounded over the wheel, with the dead men at their feet, and aimed Bloodhound at the long low bulk of the German cruiser.

Now in the daylight glare of the star shells, the sea around them was thrashed and whipped into seething life by the cacophony of

Blitcher's guns. Tall towers of white water rose briefly and majestically about them, then dropped back to leave the surface troubled and restless with foam.

And Bloodhound drove on until suddenly it seemed she had run into a cliff of solid granite. Beneath their feet, she jarred and bucked violently. A nine-inch shell had taken her full in the bows.

"Port full rudder." Charles Little's voice was sloshy sounding,

wet with the blood that filled his mouth, and together they spun the wheel to full left lock.

But Bloodhound was dying. The shell had split her bows wide open,

torn her plating and fanned it open like the petals of a macabre orchid. The black night sea rushed through her. Already her bows were sinking, slumping wearily, lifting her stern so the rudder no longer had full purchase. But even in death she was trying desperately to obey.

Slowly she swung, inchingly, achingly, she swung.

Charles Little left the helm and tottered towards the starboard rail. His legs were numb and heavy under him, and the weakness of his lost blood drummed in his ears. He reached the rail and clung there, peering down on the torpedo tubes that stood on the deck below him.

The tubes looked like a rack of fat cigars, and with weary jubilation Charles saw that there were men still tending them, crouching behind the sheet of armour plate, waiting for Bloodhound to turn and bring Blucher on to her starboard Irish beam.

"Turn, old girl. Come on! That's it! Turn!" Charles croaked through the blood.

Another shell struck Bloodhound, and she heaved in mortal agony. Perhaps this movement, combined with a chance push of the sea swell, was enough to swing her those last few degrees.

There, full in the track of the torpedo tubes, lit by her scant own star shells and the gun-fire from her turrets, a thousand yards across the black water, lay the German cruiser. Charles heard the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, of the tubes as they fired. He saw the long sharklike shapes of the torpedoes leap out from the deck and strike the water, saw the four white wakes arrowing away in formation, and behind him he heard the torpedo officer's triumphant shout, distorted by the voice-pipe.

"All four fired, and running true!" Charles never saw his torpedoes strike, for one of Blitcher's nine-inch shells hit the bridgework three feet below him. For one brief unholy instant, he stood in the centre of a furnace as hot as the flames of the sun.

von Kleine watched the English destroyer explode. Towering orange flames erupted from her, and a solid ball of black smoke spun upon itself, blooming on the dark ocean like a flower from the gardens of hell. The surface of the sea around her was dimpled by the fall of thrown debris and the cruiser's shells for all of Blucher's guns were still blazing.

"Cease fire," he said, without taking his eyes from the awesome pageant of destruction that he had created.

Another salvo of star shell burst above, and von Kleine lifted his hand to his eyes and pressed his thumb and forefinger into the closed lids, shielding them from the stabbing brilliance of the light. It was finished, and he was tired.

tired, drained of nervous and physical energy, He was overwhelmed by the backwash of fatigue that followed these last two days and nights of ceaseless strain. And he was sad sad for the brave men he had killed, and the terrible destruction he had wrought.

Still holding his eyes, he opened his mouth to give the order that would send Blucher once more thrashing southward, but before the words reached his lips, a wild shout from the look-out interrupted him.

"Torpedoes! Close on the starboard beam!" Long seconds von Kleine hesitated. He had let his brain relax, let the numbness wash over it. The battle was over, and he had dropped back from the high pinnacle of alertness on which he had balanced these last desperate hours. It needed a conscious physical effort to call up his reserves, and during those seconds, the torpedoes fired by Bloodhound in her death throes were knifing in to revenge her.

At last von Kleine snappe out of his o- inertia t at bound his mind. He leaped to the starboard rail of the bridge, and saw in the light of the star shells the pale phosphorescent trails of the four torpedoes. Against the dark water they looked like the tails of meteors on a night sky.

"Full port rudder. All engines full astern together!" he shouted, his voice pitched high with consternation.

He felt his ship swerve beneath him, thrown violently over as the great propellers clawed at the sea to hold her from crossing the path of the torpedoes.

Hopelessly he stood and reviled himself. I should have, anticipated this. I should have known the destroyer had fired.

Helplessly he stood and watched the four white lines drawn swiftly across the surface towards him.

In the last moments he felt a fierce upward surge of hope.

Three of the English torpedoes would miss. That was certain. They would cross Blitcher's bows as she side-stepped.

And the fourth torpedo it was just possible would miss also.

His fingers upon the bridge rail clenched, until it felt as though they must press into the metal. His breath jammed in his throat and choked him.

Ponderously Blucher swung her bows away. If he had given the order for the turn only five seconds earlier... The torpedo struck Blucher five feet below the surface, on the very tip of her curved keel.

The explosion shot a mountain of white water one hundred and fifty feet into the air. It slammed Blucher back onto her haunches with Such violence that Otto von Kleine and his officers were thrown heavily to the steel deck.

Von Kleine scrabbled to his knees and looked forward.

A fine veil of spray, like pearl dust in the light of the star shells, hung over Blucher. As he watched, it subsided slowllY.

All that night they struggled to keep Blucher afloat.

They sealed off her bows with the five-inch steel doors in the watertight bulkhead, and behind those doors they locked thirty German seamen whose battle stations were in the bows. At intervals during the frenzied activity of the night, von Kleine had visions of those men floating facedown in the flooded compartments.

While the pumps clanged throughout the ship to free her of the hundreds of tons of sea-water that washed through her, von Kleine left the bridge and, with his engineer commander and damage control officer, they listed the injuries that Blucher had received.

In the dawn they assembled grimly in the chartroom behind the bridge, and assessed their plight.

"What power can you give me, Lochtkamper?"von Kleine demanded of his engineer.

"I can give you as much as you ask." A reddish-purple bruise covered half the engineer's face where he had been thrown against a steam cock-valve when the torpedo struck.

"But anything over five knots will carry away the watertight bulkheads forward. They will take the full brunt of the sea, Von Kleine swivelled his stool, and looked at the damage control officer. "What repairs can you effect at sea?"

"None, sir. We have braced and propped the watertight bulkhead. We have patched and jammed the holes made by the British cruiser's guns. But I can do nothing about the underwater damage without a dry dock or calm water where I can put divers over the side. We must enter a port." Von Kleine leaned back on his stool and closed his eyes to think.

The only friendly port within six thousand miles was Dares Salaam, the capital of German East Africa, but he knew the British were blockading it. He discarded it from his list of possible refuges.

An island? Zanzibar? The Seychelles? Mauritius?

All hostile territories with no anchorage safe from bombardment by a British squadron.

A river mouth? The Zambezi? No, that was in Portuguese territory, navigable for only the first few miles of its length.

Suddenly he opened his eyes. There was one ideal haven situated in German territory, navigable even by a ship of Blitcher's tonnage for twenty miles. It was guarded from overland approach by formidable terrain, yet he could call upon the German Commissioner for stores and labour and protection.

"Kyller," he said. "Plot me a course for the Kikunya mouth of the Rufiji delta." Five days later the Blitcher crawled painfully as a crippled centipede into the northernmost channel of the Rufiji delta.

She was blackened with battle smoke, her rigging hung in tatters, and at a thousand places shell splinters had pierced her upper works Her bows were swollen and distorted, and the sea washed through her forward compartments and then boiled and spilled out of the ghastly rents in her plating.

As she passed between the forests of mangroves that lined the channel, they seemed to enfold her like welcoming arms.

Overside she lowered two picket boats and these darted ahead of her like busy little water beetles as they sounded the channel, and searched for a secure anchorage. Gradually Blitcher wriggled and twisted her way deeper and deeper into the wilderness of the delta. At a place where the flood waters of the Rufiji had cut a deep bay between two islands, and formed a natural jetty on both sides, the Blitcher came to rest.

herman Fleischer wiped his face and neck with a hand towel and then looked at the sodden material. God, how he hated the Rufiji basin. As soon as he entered its humid and malodorous heat, a thousand tiny taps opened under his skin and out gushed the juices of his body.

The prospect of an extended stay aroused in him a dark : resentment for all things, but especially to this young snob who stood beside him on the foredeck of the steam launch.

Herman darted a glance at him now. Cool he looked, as though he were sauntering down Unter den Linden in June.

The shimmering white of his tropical uniform was unwrinkled and dry, not like the thick corduroy that bunched damply at Herman's armpits and crotch. Mother of a dog, it would start the rash again; he could feel it beginning to itch and he scratched at it moodily, then checked his hand as he saw the lieutenant smile.

"How far are we from Blitcher?" and then as an afterthought he used the lieutenant's surname without rank, "How far, Kyller?" It was as well to keep reminding the man that as the equivalent of a full colonel, he far outranked him.

Around the next bend, Commissioner." Kyller's voice carried the lazy inflection that made Fleischer think of champagne and opera houses, of skiing parties, and boar hunts. "I hope that Captain von Kleine has made adequate preparation to defend her against enemy attack?"

"She is safe." For the first time there was a brittle undertone to Kyller's reply, and Fleischer pounced on it. He sensed an advantage. For the last two days, ever since Kyller had met him at the confluence of the Ruhaha river, Herman had been needling him to find a weakness.

"Tell me, Kyller," he dropped his voice to an intimate, confidential level. "This is in strict confidence, of course, but do you really feel that Captain von Kleine is able to handle this situation? I mean, do you feel that someone else might have been able to reach a more satisfactory result?" Ah! Yes! That was it! Look at him flush, look at the anger stain those cool brown cheeks. For the first time the advantage was with Herman Fleischer. - "Commissioner Fleischer," Kyller spoke softly but Herman exulted to hear his tone. "Captain von Kleine is the most skilful, efficient, and courageous officer under which I have had the honour to serve. he is, furthermore, a gentleman."

"So?" Herman grunted. "Then why is this paragon hiding in the Rufiji basin with his buttocks shot full of holes?" Then he threw back his head and guffawed in triumph.

"At another time, sir, and in different circumstances, I would ask you to withdraw those words." Kyller turned from him and walked to the forward rail. He stood there staring ahead, while the launch chugged around another bend in the river, opening the same dreary vista of dark water and mangrove forest. Kyller spoke without turning his head.

"There is the Blitcher," he said.

There was nothing but the sweep of water and the massed fuzzy heads of the mangroves below a hump of higher ground upon the bank. The laughter faded from Herman's chubby face as he searched, then a small scowl replaced it as he realized that the lieutenant was baiting him. There was certainly no battle cruiser anchored in the water-way.

lieutenant..." he began angrily, then checked himself. The high ground was divided by a narrow channel, not more than a hundred yards wide, fenced in by the mangrove forest, but the channel was blocked by a shapeless and ungainly mound of vegetation. He stared at it uncomprehendingly until suddenly beneath the netting that was festooned with branches of mangroves, he saw the blurred outline of turrets and superstructure.

The camouflage had been laid with fascinating ingenuity.

From a distance of three hundred yards the Blitcher was invisible.

The bubbles came up slowly through the dark water as though it had the same viscosity as warm honey.

They burst on the surface in a boiling white rash.

Captain von Kleine leaned across the foredeck rail of the Blitcher and peered at the disturbance below him, with the absorption of a man attempting to read his own future in the murky mirror of the Rufiji waters. For almost two hours he had waited like this, drawing quietly on a succession of little black cheroots, occasionally easing his body into a more comfortable position.

Although his body was at rest, his brain was busy, endlessly reviewing his preparations and his plans. His preparations were complete, he had mentally listed them and found no omissions.

A party of six seamen had been despatched fifteen miles downstream by picket boat to the entrance of the delta.

They were encamped on a hummock of high ground above the channel to watch the sea for the British blockade squadron.

As Blitcher crept up the channel she had sown the last of her globular multi-horned mines behind her. No British ship could follow her.

Remote as the chances of overland attack seemed, yet von Kleine had set up a system of defence around the Blitcher. Half his seamen were ashore now, spread in a network to guard each of the possible approaches. Fields of fire had been cut through the mangroves for his Maxim guns. Crude fortifications of log and earth had been built and manned, communication lines set up, and he was ready.

After long discussions with his medical officer, von Kleine had issued orders to protect the health of his men. Orders, for the purification of water, the disposal of sanitation and waste, for the issue of five grains of quinine daily to each man, and fifty other safeguards to health and morale.

He had ordered an inventory made of stocks of food and supplies, and he was satisfied that with care he could subsist for a further four months. Thereafter he would be reduced to fishing and hunting, and foraging.

He had despatched Kyller upstream to make contact with the German Commissioner, and solicit his full cooperation.

Four days have(] been spent in hiding the Blitcher under her camouflage, in setting up a complete workshop on the foredeck under sun awnings, so that the engineers could work in comparative comfort.

Now at last they had begun a full underwater appraisal of Blitcher's wounds.

Behind him he heard the petty officer pass an order to the team at the winch. "Bring him up slowly the donkey engine spluttered into life, and the winch clattered and whined shrilly. Von Kleine stirred against the rail and focused his full attention on the water below him.

The heavy line and air pipe reeled in smoothly, then suddenly the surface bulged and the body of the diver was lifted dangling on the line. Black in shiny wet rubber, the three brass-bound cyclopean eyes of his helmet glaring, grotesque as a sea monster, he was swung inboard and lowered to the deck.

Two seamen hurried forward and unscrewed the bolts at the neck, lifted off the heavy helmet, and exposed the head of the engineering commander, Lochtkamper. The heavy face, flat and lined as that of a mastiff, was made heavier than usual by the thoughtful frown it now wore. He looked across at his captain and shook his head slightly.

"Come to my cabin when you are ready, Commander," said von Kleine, and walked away.

"A small glass of cognac?" von Kleine suggested. I'd like that, sir." Commander Lochtkamper looked out of place in the elegance of the cabin.

The hands that accepted the glass were big, knuckles scarred and enlarged by constant violent contact with metal, the skin etched deeply with oil and engine filth. When he sank into the chair at his captain's invitation, his legs seemed to have too many knees.

"WelP asked von Kleine, and Lochtkamper launched into his report. He spoke for ten minutes and von Kleine followed him slowly through the maze of technicalities where strange and irrelevant obscenities grew along the way. In moments of deep concentration such as these, Lochtkamper fell back on the gutter idiom of his native Hamburg, and von Kleine was unable to suppress a smile when he learned that the copulatory torpedo had committed a perversion on one of the main frames, springing the plating whose morals were definitely suspect. The damage sounded like that suffered in a brothel during a Saturday night brawl.

"Can You repair it? "von Kleine asked at last.

It will mean cutting away all the obscenely damaged plating, lifting it to the deck, re cutting it, welding and shaping it. But we will still be short of at least eight hundred obscene square feet of plate, sir."

"A commodity not readily obtainable in the delta of the Rufiji river," von Kleine mused.

"No, sir."

"How long will it take You if I can get the plating for You? "Two months, perhaps. "When can you start?"

"Now, sir."

"Do it then," said von Kleine, and Lochtkamper drained his glass, smacked his lips, and stood up. "Very good cognac." , sir," he complimented his captain, and shambled out of the cabin.

Glaring upward at the massive warship, Herman Fleischer surveyed the battle damage with the uncomprehending curiosity of a landsman. He saw the gaping ulcers where Orion's shells had struck, the black blight where the flames had raged through her, the irregular rash with which the splinters had pierced and peppered her upper works and then he dropped his eyes to the bows.

Work cradles were suspended a few feet above the water, and upon them clutters of seamen were illuminated by the crackling blue glare of the welding torches.

"God in heaven, what a beating!" He spoke with sadistic relish.

Kyller ignored the remark. He was directing the native helmsman of the launch to the landing ladder that had been rigged down the side of Blitcher. Not even the presence of this sweaty peasant, Fleischer, could spoil his pleasure in this moment of homecoming. To Ernst Kyller, the Blitcher was home in the deep sense of the word; it contained all that he valued in life, including the man for whom he bore a devotion surpassing the natural duty of a son to his father.

He was savouring the anticipation of von Kleine's smile and words of commendation for another task well done.

"Ah, Kyller!" Von Kleine rose from behind his desk and moved around it to greet his lieutenant.

"Back so soon? Did you find Fleischer?"

"He is waiting outside, sir."

"Good, good. Bring him in." Herman Fleischer paused in the companion-way and blinked suspiciously around the cabin. His mind was automatically converting the furnishings into Reichsmarks, the rugs were silk Teheran in blue and gold and red, the chairs were in dark buttoned leather, all the heavy furniture, including the panelling, was polished mahogany. The light fittings were worked in brass, the glasses in the liquor cabinet were sparkling diamond crystal flanked by a platoon of bottles that wore the uniforms of the great houses of Champagne and Alsace and the Rhine. There was a portrait in oils opposite the desk of two women, both beautiful golden women, clearly mother and daughter. The portholes were curtained with forest-green velvet, corded and tasselled in gold.

Herman decided that the Count must be a rich man. He had a proper respect for wealth, and it showed in the way he stepped forward, drew himself up, brought his heels together sharply, and then creased his bulging belly in a bow.

"Captain. I came as soon as I received your message." am grateful, Commissioner." Von Kleine returned the salutation. "You will take refreshment?"

"A glass of beer, and..." Herman hesitated, he was certain that somewhere aboard Blucher there must be a treasure trove of rare foods, a bite to eat. I have not eaten since noon." It was now the middle of the afternoon. Von Kleine saw nothing unusual in a two-hour period of abstinence, yet he passed the word for his steward while he opened a bottle of beer for his guest.

"I must congratulate you on your victory over the two English warships, Captain. Magnificent, truly magnificent!" Lying back in one of the leather chairs Fleischer was engaged in mopping his face and neck, and Kyller grinned cynically as he listened to this new tune.

"A victory that was dearly bought," murmured von Kleine, bringing the glass to Fleischer's chair. "And now I need your help."

"Of course! You need only ask." Von Kleine went to his desk, sat down and drew towards him a sheaf of notes. From their chamois leather case, he produced a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and placed them on his nose.

"Commissioner..." he started, but at that moment he completely lost Fleischer's attention. For with a discreet knock the Captain's steward returned with a large, heavily laden carving-plate. He placed it on the table beside Fleischer's chair.

"Sweet Mother of God!" whispered Herman, his eyes glittering, and a fresh sweat of excitement breaking out on his upper lip.

"Smoked salmon!" Neither von Kleine nor Kyller had ever been privileged to watch Herman eat before. They did so now in awed silence. This was a specialist working with skill and dedication. After a while von Kleine made another effort to attract Herman's attention by coughing and rustling his sheaf of notes, but the Commissioner's snuff lings and small moans of sensual pleasure continued. Von Kleine glanced at his lieutenant and lifted a golden eyebrow, Kyller half smiled in embarrassment. It was like watching a man in orgasm, so intimate that von Kleine was obliged to light a cheroot and concentrate his attention on the portrait of his wife and daughter across the cabin.

A gusty sigh signalled Herman's climax, and von Kleine looked at him again. He sagged back in the chair, a vague and dreamy smile playing over the ruddy curves of his face.

The plate was empty, and with the sweet sorrow of a man remembering a lost love, Herman dabbed a forefinger on to the last shred of pink flesh and lifted it to his mouth.

"That was the best salmon I have ever tasted."

"I am pleased that you found it so." Von Kleine's voice crackled a little. He felt slightly nauseated by the exhibition.

"I wonder if I might trouble you for another glass of beer, Captain." Von Kleine nodded at Kyller, and the lieutenant went to refill Fleischer's glass.

"Commissioner. I need at least eight hundred square feet of "/,-inch steel plate delivered to me here. I want it within six weeks," von Kleine said, and Herman Fleischer laughed.

He laughed the way a man laughs at a children's tale of fairies and witches, then suddenly he noticed von Kleine's eyes... and he stopped abruptly.

Tying in Dares So laam harbour under British blockade is the steamer Rheinlander." Von Kleine went on speaking softly and clearly. "You will proceed there as fast as you can.

I will send one of my engineers with you. He will beach the Rheinlander and dismantle her hull. You will then arrange to convey the plating to me here."

"Dares Salaam is one hundred kilometres away." Herman was aghast.

"According to the Admiralty chart it is seventy-five kilometeres," von Kleine corrected him.

"The plating will weigh many tons! "he cried.

"In German East Africa there are many hundreds of thousands of indi genes I doubt not that you will be able to persuade them to serve as porters."

"The route is impossible... and what is more, there is a band of enemy guerrillas operating in the area north of here. Guerrillas led by those same bandits that you allowed to escape from the dhow, off the mouth of this river." In agitation Fleischer had risen from his chair and now he pointed a fat accusing forefinger at von Kleine. "You allowed them to escape. Now they are ravaging the whole province.

If I try to bring a heavily laden, slow moving caravan of porters down from Dares Salaam, word will reach them before I have marched five kilometres. It's madness I won't do it!"

"It seems then, that you have a choice." Von Kleine smiled with his mouth only. "The English marauders, or a firing party on the afterdeck of this ship." "What do you mean? "howled Fleischer.

"I mean that my request is no longer a request, it is now an order. If you defy it, I will immediately convene a court martial." Von Kleine drew his gold watch and checked the time.

"We should be able to dispose of the formalities and shoot you before dark. What do you think, Kyller?"

"It will be cutting things fine, sir. But I think we could manage it." When the Governor of Mozambique had offered Flynn a captaincy in the army of Portugal, there had been an ugly scene. Flynn felt strongly that he deserved at least the rank of colonel. He had suggested terminating their business relationship. The Governor had countered with an offer of major and signalled to his aide de-camp to refill Flynn's glass. Flynn had accepted both offers, but the one under protest. That was seven months ago, a few short weeks after the massacre at Lalapanzi.

Since then Flynn's army, a mixed bag of a hundred native troops, officered by himself, Sebastian and Rosa Oldsmith, had been operating almost continually in German territory.

There had been a raid on the Songea railway siding where Flynn had burned five hundred tons of sugar, and nearly a thousand of millet that was in the warehouses awaiting shipment to Dares Salaam, supplies badly needed by Governor Schee and Colonel Lettow von Vorbeck who were assembling an army in the coastal area.

There had been another brilliant success when they had ambushed and wiped out a band of thirty Askari at a river crossing. Flynn released the three hundred native recruits that the Askari were escorting, and advised them to get the hell back to their villages and forsake any ambitions of military glory using the corpses of the Askari that littered the banks of the ford as tangible argument.

Apart from cutting every telegraph line, and blowing up the railway tracks they came across, three other raids had met with mixed results. Twice they had captured supply columns of bearers carrying in provisions to the massing German forces. Each time they had been forced to run as German reinforcements came up to drive them off. The third effort had been an abject failure, the ignominy of it being compounded by the fact that they had almost had the person of Commissioner Fleischer in their grasp.

Carried on the swift feet of the runners who were part of Flynn's intelligence system came the news that Herman Fleischer and a party of Askari had left Mahenge boma and marched to the confluence of the Ruhaha and Rufiji rivers.

There they had gone aboard the steam launch and disappeared into the fastness of the Rufiji delta on a mysterious errand.

What goes up must come down," Flynn pointed out to Sebastian. "And what goes down the Rufiji must come up again. We will go to the Ruhaha and wait for Herr Fleischer to return." For once there was no argument from either Sebastian or Rosa. Between the three of them it was understood without discussion that Flynn's army existed chiefly to act as the vehicle of retribution. They had made a vow over the grave of the child, and now they fought not so much from a sense of duty or patriotism, but from a burning desire for revenge.

They wanted the life of Herman Fleischer in part payment for that of Maria Oldsmith.

They set out for the Ruhaha river. As happened so often these days, Rosa marched at the head of the column. There was only the long braid of dark hair hanging down her back to show she was a woman, for she was dressed in bush jacket and long khaki cotton trousers that concealed the feminine fullness of her hips. She stepped out long-legged, and from her shoulder the loaded Mauser hung on its strap and bumped lightly against her flank at each pace.

The change in her was so startling as to leave Sebastian bewildered. The new hard line of her mouth, her eyes that gave off the dark hot glow of a fanatic, the voice that had lost the underlying ripple of lighter. She spoke seldom, but when she did, both Flynn and Sebastian were forced to hear her with respect. Sometimes listening to that flat deadly tone Sebastian could feel a prickle of horror under his skin.

They reached the landing-place and the jetty on the Ruhaha river and waited for the launch to return. It came three days later, heralding its approach by the soft chugging of its engine. When it came round the river bend, pushing briskly against the current, headed for the wooden jetty, they were lying in wait for it.

"There he is!" Sebastian's voice was thick with emotion as he recognized the plump grey-clad figure in the bows.

"The swine, oh, the bloody swine!" and he jerked the bolt of his rifle open then snapped it shut.

"Wait!" Rosa's hand closed on his wrist before he could lift the butt to his shoulder.

"I can get him from he reP protested Sebastian.

"No. I want him to see us. I want to tell him first. I want him to know why he must die." The launch swung in broadside to the current, losing its way, until it came in gently to nudge the jetty. Two of the Askari jumped ashore, laying back on the lines to hold her while the Commissioner disembarked.

Fleischer stood on the jetty for a minute, looking back down the river. This action should have warned Flynn, but he did not see its significance. Then the Commissioner shrugged slightly and trudged up the jetty towards the boat, house.

"Tell your men to drop their weapons into the river," said Flynn in his best German as he stood up from the patch of reeds beside the jetty.

Herman Fleischer froze in mid-stride, but his belly quivered and his head turned slowly towards Flynn. His blue eyes seemed to spread until they filled his face, and he made a clucking noise in his throat.

"Tell them quickly, or I will shoot you through the stomach," said Flynn, and Fleischer found his voice. He relayed Flynn's order to the Askari, and there were a series of splashes around the launch as it was obeyed.

Movement in the corner of his eye made Fleischer swing his head, and he was face to face with Rosa Oldsmith.

Beyond her in a half circle stood Sebastian and a dozen armed Africans, but some instinct warned Fleischer that the woman was the danger. There was a merciless quality about her, some undefinable air of deadly purpose. It was to her he addressed his question.

"What do you want?" His voice was husky with apprehension.

"What did he say?" Rosa asked her father.

"He wants to know what you want."

"Ask him if he remembers me." As he heard the question, Fleischer remembered her in her nightdress, kneeling in the fire-light, and with the memory came real fear.

"It was a mistake," he whispered. "The child! I did not order it."

"Tell him..." said Rosa, "tell him that I am going to kill him." And her hands moved deliberately on the Mauser, slipping the safety-catch across, but her eyes never left his face.

"It was a mistake," Herman repeated and he stepped backwards, lifting his hands to ward off the bullet that he knew must come.

At that moment Sebastian shouted behind Rosa, just one word.

"Look!" Around the bend of the Ruhaha river, only two hundred yards from where they stood, another launch swept into view. It came silently, swiftly and at its stubby masthead flew the ensign of the German navy. There were men in crisp white uniforms clustered around the Maxim machine gun in its bows.

Flynn's party stared at it in complete disbelief. Its presence was as unbelievable as that of the Loch Ness monster in the Serpentine or a man-eating lion in St. Paul's Cathedral, and in the long seconds that they stood paralysed the launch closed in quickly on the jetty.

Herman Fleischer broke the spell. He opened his mouth and from the barrel of his chest issued a bellow that rang clearly across the water.

Kyller, they are Englishmen!" Then he moved, with three light steps he danced sideways, incredibly quickly he moved his gross body from under the threatening muzzle of Rosa's rifle and dived from the jetty into the dark green swirl of water below the boards.

The splash of his dive was immediately followed by the tack, tack, tack of the launch's machine gun and the air was filled with the swishing crack of a hundred whips. The launch drove straight in towards them with the Maxim blazing on its bow. Around Flynn, and Rosa and Sebastian the earth erupted in a rapid series of dust fountains, a ricochet howled dementedly, one of the gun-boys spun on his heels in a brief dervish dance and then sprawled down the bank, with his rifle clattering on the wooden boards of the jetty, and the frozen party on the bank exploded into violent movement. Flynn and his black troopers ducked and dodged away up the bank, but Rosa ran forward. She reached the edge of the jetty unscathed through the hailstorm of Maxim fire, there she checked and aimed the Mauser at the wallowing body of Herman Fleischer in the water below her.

"You killed my baby!" Rosa shrieked, and Fleischer looked up at her and knew he was about to die. A Maxim bullet Struck the metal of the rifle, tearing it from Rosa's hands, and she staggered off balance, her arms windmilling as she tottered on the edge of the jetty.

Sebastian reached her as she fell. He caught her and swung her up on to his shoulder, whirled with her and bounded away up the bank, running with all the reserves of his strength unlocked by the key of his terror.

With ten of the gun-boys Sebastian took the rear guard; for that day and the next they skirmished back along the Hill line of the retreat, briefly holding each natural defensive point until the Germans brought up the Maxim gun. Then they dropped back, retreating slowly while Flynn and Rosa made a straight run of it. In the second night Sebastian broke contact with the pursuers and fled north towards the rendezvous at the stream below the ruins of Lalapanzi.

Forty-eight hours later he reached it. In the moonlight he staggered into the camp, and Rosa threw off her blankets and came running to him with a low joyous cry of greeting.

She knelt before him, unlaced and gently drew off each of his boots. While Sebastian gulped the mug of coffee and hot gin that Flynn brewed for him, Rosa bathed and tended the blisters that had burst on his feet. Then she dried her hands, stood and picked up her blankets.

"Come," she said, and together they walked away along the bank of the stream. Behind a curtain of hanging creepers, on a nest of dry grass and blankets, while the jewelled night sky glowed above them, they gave each other the comfort of their bodies for the first time since the death of the child. Afterwards they slept entwined until the low sun woke them. Then they rose and went down the bank together naked into the stream. The water was cold when she splashed him, and she giggled like a little girl and ran through the shallows across the sandbank with the water bursting in a sparkling spray around her legs, drops of it glittering like sequins on her skin, her waist was the neck of a Venetian vase flaring down into full double rounds on her lower body.

He chased and caught her and they fell together and knelt facing each other, spluttering and laughing, and with each gust of laughter her bosom jumped and bounced.

Sebastian leaned forward with the laughter drying in his throat and cupped them in his hands.

Instantly her own laughter ceased, she looked at him a moment, then suddenly her face hardened and she struck his hands away.

"No!" she hissed at him, and jumping to her feet she waded to where her clothing lay on the bank. Swiftly she covered her femininity, and as she strapped the heavy bandolier of ammunition around her body the last soft memory of their loving was gone from her face.

It was that stinking Rufiji water, Herman Fleischer decided, and moved painfully in his maschille as another cramp took him.

The hot hand of dysentery that closed on his stomach added to his mood of dark resentment. His present discomfort was directly linked to the arrival of Blitcher in his territory, the indignities he had experienced at the hands of her captain, the danger he had run into in his brush with the English bandits at the start of this expedition, and since then the constant gruelling work and ever-present fear of another attack, the nagging of the engineer whom von Kleine had placed over him he hated everything to do with that cursed warship, he hated every man aboard her.

The jogging motion of the maschille bearers stirred the contents of his belly, making it gurgle and squeak. he would have to stop again, and he looked ahead for a suitable place in which to find privacy.

Ahead of him the caravan of porters was toiling along the shallow bottom of a valley between two sparsely wooded ridges of shale and broken rock.

The column was spread out in an untidy straggle half a mile long, for it comprised just under a thousand men.

In the van a hundred of them, stripped to loin-cloths were wielding their long pari gas on and shiny with sweat, the scrub. The blades glinting as they rose and fell, the thudding of the blows muted in the lazy heat of afternoon.

Working under the supervision of Gunther Raube, the young engineering officer from Blitcher, they were cutting out the narrow track, widening it for the passage of the bulky objects that followed.

Dwarfing the men that swarmed around them, these four objects rolled slowly along, rocking and swaying over patches of uneven ground.

Now and then halting as they came up against a tree stump or an outcrop of rock, before the animal exertions of two hundred black men could get them rolling again.

Three weeks previously they had beached the freighter Rheinlander in Dares Salaam harbour and dismantled eight slabs of her plating. Then from the metal frames of her hull, Raube had shaped eight enormous wheel rims, fourteen feet in diameter; into each of these he had welded a sheet of -inch plating ten foot square. Using the freighter's bollards as axles, he had linked these eight discs in four pairs. Thus each of these contraptions looked like the wheel and axle assembly of a gigantic Roman chariot.

Herman Fleischer had made a swift recruitment tour, and secured nine hundred able-bodied Volunteers from the town of Dares Salaam and its outlying villages. These nine hundred were now engaged in trundling the four sets of wheels southward towards the RLIfiji delta. While they worked, Herman's Askari stood by with loaded Mousers to discourage any of the volunteers from Succumbing to an attack of homesickness; a malady which was fast reaching epidemic proportions, aggravated as it was by shoulders rubbed raw by contact with harsh sun-heated metal, and by palms whose outer layers of skin had been smeared away on the rough hemp ropes. They had been two weeks at their labours and they were still thirty torturous miles from the river.

Herman Fleischer squirmed again in his maschille as the amoebic dysentery gnawed at his guts.

"Mother of a pig!" he moaned, and then shouted at the bearers, "Quickly, take me to those trees." He pointed to a clump of wild ebony that smothered one of the side draws of the valley.

With alacrity, the maschille bearers swung off the path and trotted up the draw. Within the screen of wild ebony they paused while the Commissioner alighted from the hammock and hurried into the deepest recess of the bush to be alone. Then they drew themselves down with a communal sigh and gave themselves up to a session of African callisthenics.

When the Commissioner came out of retreat he was hungry. It was cool and restful in the shade, an ideal place to take his midafternoon snack. Raube would have to fend for himself for an hour or so. Herman nodded to his personal servant to set up the camp table and open the food box. His mouth was fulll of sausage when the first rifle shot clapped dully in the dusty dry air.

"Where is he?" He must be here. The scouts said he was here. Can you see him?" Rosa Oldsmith spoke through lips that were chapped dry by sun and wind, white flakes of skin had -come loose from the raw red patches of sunburn on her nose, and her eyes were bloodshot from the dust and the glare.

She lay on her stomach behind a bank of shale and coarse grass with the Mauser probing out in front of her.

"Can you see him?" she demanded again impatiently, turning her head towards her father.

Flynn grunted noncommittally, holding the binoculars to his eyes, panning them slowly down the length of the valley then back again to the head of the strange caravan.

There is a white man there, he said.

"Is it Fleischer, is it?

"No," doubtfully Flynn gave the negative. "No, I don't think so." "Look for him. He must be there somewhere."

"I wonder what the hell those things are." Flynn concentrated on the four huge sets of wheels. The lens of the binoculars magnified the heat distortion through the still air, making them change shape and size so that one second they were insignificant and the next they were monstrous.

"Look for Fleischer. Damn those things, look for Fleischer!" Rosa snapped at him.

"He's not with them."

"He must be. He must be there." Rosa rolled on her side and reached out to snatch the binoculars from Flynn's hands. Eagerly she scanned the long column that moved slowly towards them up the valley.

"He must be there. Please God, he must be there," she whispered her hatred through cracked dry lips.

"We will have to attack soon. They are nearly in position now." "We must find Fleischer." Desperately Rosa searched, her knuckles showing white through sun-brown skin as she clutched the binoculars.

"We can't let it go much longer. Sebastian is in position, he will be expecting my signal."

"Wait! You must wait."

"No. We can't let them get closer." Flynn half lifted his body, and called softly.

"Mohammed! Are you ready?"

"We are ready." The reply came from farther down the slope where the line of riflemen lay.

"Remember my words, oh, thou chosen -of Allah. Kill the Askari first and the others will run."

"Your words ring in my ears with the brightness and the beauty of golden bells," Mohammed replied.

"Up yours!" said Flynn and unbuttoned the pocket flap of his tunic. He fumbled out the hand-mirror and held it slanted to catch the sun, deflecting a bright splinter of light towards the far slope of the valley. From the jumble of rock and bush there was an immediate answering flash as Sebastian acknowledged the signal.

"Ah!" Flynn breathed theatrical relief, "I was afraid our Bassie might have fallen asleep over there." And he picked up the Mauser from the rock in front of him.

"Wait," pleaded Rosa. "Please wait."

"We can't. You know we can't if Fleischer is down there then we'll get him. If he isn't, then waiting any longer isn't going to help us."

"You don't care," she accused. "You have forgotten about Maria already."

"No," said Flynn. "No, I haven't forgotten," and he cuddled the Mauser into his shoulder.

There was an Askari he had been watching. A big man who moved ahead of the column. Even at this range Flynn sensed that this man was dangerous. He moved with aleopard's slouching awareness, head cocked and alert.

Flynn picked him up in the notch of the rear sight and rode the pip down his body, aiming low to compensate for the downhill shot, taking him in the belly. He gathered the slack in the trigger, squeezing it up gently. The Mauser cracked viciously and the recoil jumped back into his shoulder.

Incredulously Flynn saw the bullet throw a jump of dust from the slope below the Askari. A clean miss at four hundred yards from a carefully aimed shot By Christ, he was getting old.

Frantically he worked the bolt of the rifle, but already the Askari had ducked for cover, unslinging his rifle as he disappeared into, a bank of grey thorn bush, and Flynn's next shot ripped ineffectively into the coarse dry vegetation.

"Damn it to hell!" howled Flynn, and his voice was small in the storm of gun-fire that blew around him. From both slopes all his riflemen were shooting down into the solid pack of humanity that clogged the valley floor.

For startled seconds the mass of native bearers stood quiescent under the lash of the Mousers, each man frozen in the attitude in which the attack had caught him; bent to the giant wheels, leaning forward against the ropes, pari ga raised to strike at a branch, or merely standing watching while others worked. Every head lifted to stare up at the slopes from which Flynn's hidden rifles menaced them, then with a sound like a rising wind a single voice climbed in a wail of terror, to be lost almost instantly in the babble from a thousand throats.

Without regard for Flynn's orders to single out only the armed Askari, his men were firing blindly into the mass of men around the wheels, bullets striking with a meaty thump, thump, thump, or whining from rock to inflict the ghastly secondary wounds of a ricochet.

Then the bearers broke. Flowing back like flood water along the valley, carrying the Askari whose khaki uniforms bobbed with them like driftwood in the torrent.

Beside Flynn in the don ga Rosa was firing also. Her hands on the rifle incongruously feminine, fingers long and sensitive working the bolt as though it were the shuttle of a loom, weaving death, her eyes slitted behind the gunsight, her lips barely moving as they formed the name which had become her battle hymn.

"Maria! Maria!" With each shot she said it softly.

As he fumbled a fresh clip of cartridges from his bandolier, Flynn glanced sideways at her. Even in this moment of hot excitement Flynn felt the prickle of disquiet as he saw his daughter's face. There was a madness in her eyes, the madness of grief too long sustained, the madness of hatred too carefully nourished.

His rifle was loaded and he switched his attention back to the valley. The scene had changed. From the rush of fear-crazed bearers, the German, whom Flynn had earlier watched through the binoculars, was rallying a defence.

With him was the big Askari, the one that Flynn had missed with his first shot. These two stood to hold the guards who were being carried away on the rush of panic, stricken bearers, stopping them, turning them back, pushing and shoving them into defensive cover around the four huge wheels. Now they were returning the fire of Flynn's men.

"Mohammed! Get that man! The white man get him!" roared Flynn, and fired twice, missing with each shot. But his bullets passed so close that the German dodged back behind the metal shield of the nearest wheel.

"That's done it," lamented Flynn, as his hopes of quick success faded. "They're getting settled in (down there. We are going to have to prise them loose." The prospect was unattractive. Flynn had found from experience that while every man in his motley band was a hero when firing from ambush, and a master in the art of strategic retreat, yet their weak Suit was frontal assault, or any other manoeuvre that involved exposure to the enemy.

Of the hundred under his command, there were a dozen whom he could rely on to obey an order to attack. Flynn was understandably reluctant to issue such an order, for there are few situations more humiliating than bellowing, "Charge!" then having everybody look at you with a "Who, me? You must be joking! "expression

Now he steeled himself to do it, aware that with every second the battle madness of his men was cooling and being replaced by sanity and caution. He filled his lungs and opened his mouth, but Rosa saved him.

She rolled and lifted her knees, coming on to her feet with one fluid motion whose continuation was a catlike leap that carried her over the shale bank and into the open.

Boyish, big-hipped, but graceful the rifle across her hip, firing. Long hair streaming, long legs flying, she went down the slope.

"RosaV roared Flynn in consternation, and jumped up to chase her in an ungainly lumbering run like the charge of an old bull buffalo.

"Fini!" shouted Mohammed, and scampered after his master.

"My goodness!" Sebastian gasped where he lay on the opposite side of the valley. "It's Rosa!" and in a completely reflex response he found himself on his feet and bounding down the rocky slope.

"Akwende!" yelled the man beside him, carried away in his excitement, and before any of them had time to think, fifty of them were up and following. After the first half-dozen paces they were committed, for once they had started to run down the steep incline they could not stop without falling flat on their faces, they could only accelerate.

Down both slopes of the valley, scrambling, sliding on loose stone, pell-mell through thorn bush, screaming, shouting, they poured down on the cluster of Askari around the wheels.

From opposite sides, Rosa and Sebastian were first to reach the perimeter of the German position. Their momentum carried them unscathed through the first line of the defenders, and then with the empty rifle in her hands Rosa ran chest to chest against the big Askari who rose from behind a boulder to meet her. She shrieked as he caught her, and the sound exploded within Sebastian's brain in a red burst of fury.

Twenty yards away Rosa struggled with the man, but she was helpless as a baby in his arms. He lifted her, changing his grip on her body, snatching her up above his head, steadying himself to hurl her down on to the pointed rock behind which he had hidden. There was such animal power in the bunched muscles of his arms, in the thick sweat-slimy neck, in the muscular straddled legs, that Sebastian knew that when he dashed Rosa against the rock he would kill her. Her spine, her ribs must shatter with the force of it; the soft vital organs within her trunk must bruise or burst.

Sebastian went for him. Brushing from his path two lesser men of the bewildered defenders, clubbing the Mauser in his hands because he could not fire for fear of hitting Rosa, silently saving his breath for physical effort, he crossed the distance that separated them and reached them in the moment that the Askari began the first downward movement of his arms.

"Aah!" A gusty grunt was forced up Sebastian's throat by the force with which he swung the rifle, he used it like an axe, swinging it low with the full weight of his body behind it. The blade of the butt hit the Askari across the small of his back, and within his body cavity the kidneys popped like over-ripe satsuma plums. He was dying as he toppled backwards. As he hit the ground Rosa fell on top of him, his body cushioning her fall.

Sebastian dropped the rifle and stooped to gather her in his arms, crouching over her protectively.

Around them Flynn led his men boiling over the defenders, swamping them, knocking the rifles from their hands and dragging them to their feet, laughing in awe of their own courageous assault, chattering in excitement and relief. Sebastian was on the point of straightening up and lifting Rosa to her feet, he glanced around quickly to assure himself that all danger was past and his breathing jammed in his throat.

Ten paces away, kneeling in the shadow of one of the huge steel wheels was the white officer. He was a young man, swarthy for a German, but with pale green eyes. The tropical white of his uniform was patchy with damp sweat stains, and smeared with dust; his cap was pushed back, the gold braid on its peak sparkling with incongruous gaiety, for beneath it the face was taut and angry, the mouth pulled tight by the clenched jaws.

There was a Luger pistol clutched in his right hand. He lifted it and aimed.

"No!" croaked Sebastian, clumsily trying to shield Rosa with his own body, but he knew the German was going to fire.

U5dchenl" cried Sebastian in his schoolboy German.

"Nein shut zen ths em M5dchen!" and he saw the change in the young officer's expression, the pale green glitter of his eyes softening as he responded automatically to the appeal to his chivalry. Yet still the Luger was levelled, and over it Sebastian and the officer stared at each other. All this in seconds, but the delay was enough. While the officer still hesitated, suddenly it was too late, for Flynn stood over him and pressed the muzzle of his rifle into the back of the German's neck.

"Drop it, me beauty. Else I'll shoot your tonsils clean out through your Adam's apple."

Strewn along the floor of the valley were the loads dropped by the native bearers, in their anxiety to leave for far places and fairer climes. Many of the packs had burst open and all had been trampled in the rush, so the contents littered the ground and discarded clothing flapped in the lower branches of the thorn trees.

Flynn's men were looting, a pastime in which they demonstrated a marked aptitude and industry. Busy as jackals around a lion's kill they gleaned the spoils and bickered over them.

The German officer sat quietly against the metal wheel.

In front of him stood Rosa; she had in her hand the Luger pistol. The two of them watched each other steadily and expressionlessly. To one side Flynn squatted and pored over the contents of the German's pockets. Beside him Sebastian was ready to give his assistance.

"He's a naval officer," said Sebastian, looking at the German with interest. "He's got an anchor on his cap bridge."

"Do me a favour, Bassie," pleaded Flynn.

"Of Course." Sebastian was ever anxious to please.

"Shut up!" said Flynn, without looking up from the contents of the officer's wallet which he had piled on the ground in front of him. In his dealings with Flynn, Sebastian had built up a thick layer of scar tissue around his sensitivity.

He went on without a change of tone or expression.

"I wonder what on earth a naval officer is doing in the middle of the bush, pushing these funny contraptions around. "Sebastian examined the wheel with interest, before addressing himself to the German. "Bitte, was it clos?" He pointed at the wheel. The young officer did not even glance at him. He was watching Rosa with almost hypnotic concentration.

Sebastian repeated his question and when he found that he was again ignored he shrugged slightly, and leaned across to lift a sheet of paper from the small pile in front of Flynn.

"Leave it," Flynn slapped his hand away. "I'm reading."

"Can I look at this, then?" He touched a photograph.

"Don't lose it," cautioned Flynn, and Sebastian held it in his lap and examined it. It showed three young men in white overalls and naval peaked caps. They were smiling broadly into the camera with their arms linked together.

In the background loomed the superstructure of a warship, the gun-turrets showed clearly. One of the men in the photograph was their prisoner who now sat against the wheel.

Sebastian reversed the square of heavy cardboard and read the inscription on the back of it.

"Bremerhaven. 6 Aug. 1911 Both Flynn and Sebastian were absorbed in their studies, and Rosa and the German were alone. Completely alone, isolated by an intimate relationship.

Gunther Raube was fascinated. Staring into the girl's face, he had never known this sensation of mingled dread and elation which she invoked within him. Though her expression was flat and neutral, he could sense in her a hunger and a promise. He knew that they were bound together by something he did not understand, between them there was something very important to happen. It excited him, he felt it crawling like a living thing in his loins, ghost-walking along his spine, and his breathing was cramped and painful. Yet there was fear with it, fear that was as cloying as warm olive oil in his belly.

"What is it?" he whispered huskily as a lover. "I do not understand. Tell me." And he sensed that she could not understand his language, but his tone made something move in her eyes.

They darkened like cloud shadow on a green sea, and he saw she was beautiful. With a pang he thought how close he had been to firing the Luger she now held in her hand.

I might have killed her, and he wanted to reach out and touch her. Slowly he leaned forward, and Rosa shot him in the centre of his chest.

The impact of the bullet threw him back against the metal frame of the wheel. He lay there looking at her.

Deliberately, each shot spaced, she emptied the magazine of the pistol. The Luger jumped and steadied and jumped again in her hand. Each blurt of gun-fire shockingly loud, and the wounds appeared like magic on the white front of his shirt, beginning to weep blood as he slumped sideways, and he lay with his eyes still fastened on her face as he died.

The pistol clicked empty and she let it drop from her hand.

Sir Percy held the square of cardboard at arm's length to read the inscription on the back of it.

"Bremerhaven. 6 Aug. 1911"" he said. Across the desk from him his flag-captain sat uncomfortably on the edge of the hard-backed chair. His right hand reached for his pocket, checked, then withdrew guiltily.

"For God's sake, Henry. Smoke that damned thing if you must, grunted Sir Percy.

"Thank You, sir." Gratefully Captain Henry Green completed the reach for his pocket, brought out a gnarled briar and began stuffing it with tobacco.

Laying aside the photograph, Sir Percy took up the bedraggled sheet of paper and studied the crude hand-drawn circles upon it, reading the descriptions that were linked by arrows to the circles. This sample of primitive art had been laboriously drawn by Flynn Patrick O'Flynn as an addendum to his report.

"You say this lot came in the diplomatic bag from the Embassy in Lourenco Marques?"

"That's right, sir."

"Who is this fellow Sir Percy checked the name, "Flynn Patrick O'Flynn?"

"It seems that he is a major in the Portuguese army, sir.) "With a name like that?"

"You find these Irishmen everywhere, sir." The captain smiled. "The commands a group of scouts who raid across the border into German territory. They have built up something of a reputation for derring-do." Sir Percy grunted again, dropped the paper, clasped his hands behind his head and stared across the room at the portrait of Lord Nelson.

"All right, Henry. Let's hear what YOU make of it." The captain held a flaring match to the bowl of his pipe and sucked noisily, waved the match to extinguish it, and spoke through wreaths of smoke.

"The photograph first. It shows three German engineering officers on the foredeck of a cruiser. The one in the centre was the man killed by the scouts." He puffed again.

"Intelligence reports that the cruiser is a "B" class. Nineinch guns in raked turrets."

""B" class?" asked Sir Percy. "They only launched two vessels of that class."

"Battenberg and Blikher, sir." "Blucher!"said Sir Percy softly.

"Blucher!" agreed Henry Green. "Presumed destroyed in a surface action with His Majesty's ships Bloodhound and Orion off the east coast of Africa between 16 and 20 September."

"Go on."

"Well, this officer could have been a survivor from Blitcher who was lucky enough to come ashore in German East Africa and is now serving with von Vorbeck's army.) "Still dressed in full naval uniform, trundling strange round objects about the continent?" asked Sir Percy sceptic ally

"An unusual duty, I agree, sir."

"Now what do you make of these things? "With one finger Sir Percy prodded Flynn's diagram in front of him.

"Wheels," said Green.

"For what?"

"Transporting material."

"What material?"

"Steel plate."

"Now who would want steel plate on the east coast of Africa?"mused Sir Percy.

"Perhaps the captain of a damaged battle cruiser."

"Let's go down into the plotting room." Sir Percy heaved his bulk out of the chair, and headed for the door.

His shoulders hunched, massive jaw jutting, Admiral Howe brooded over the plot of the Indian Ocean.

"Where was this column intercepted?" he asked.

"Here, sir." Green touched the vast map with the pointer.

"About fifteen miles south-east of Kibiti. It was moving southwards towards..." He did not finish the statement but let the tip of the marker slide down on to the complexity of islands that clustered about the mouth of the long black snake that was the Rufrii river.

"Admiralty plot for East Africa, please." Sir Percy turned to the lieutenant in charge of the plot, and the lieutenant selected Volume 11 of the blue-jacketed books that lined the shelf on the far wall.

"What are the sailing directions for the Rufiji mouth?" demanded the Admiral, and the lieutenant began to read.

"Ras Pombwe to Kikunya mouth, including into Rufiji and Rufrii delta (Latitude 8" 17S, Longitude 39" 20"E). For fifty miles the coast is a maze of low, swampy, mangrove-covered islands, intersected by creeks comprising the delta of into Rufiji. During the rainy season the whole area of the delta is frequently inundated.

The coast of the delta is broken by ten large mouths, eight of which are connected at all times with into Rufiji." Sir Percy interrupted peevishly, "What is all this into business?"

"Arabic word for "river", sir."

"Well, why don't they say so? Carry on."

"With the exception of Simba Uranga mouth and Kikunya mouth, all other entrances are heavily shoaled and navigable only by craft drawing one metre or less."

"Concentrate on those two then," grunted Sir Percy, and the lieutenant turned the page.

"Simba Uranga mouth. Used by coasting vessels engaged in the timber trade. There is no defined bar and, in 1911, the channel was reported by the German Admiralty as having a low river level mean of ten fathoms.

"The channel is bifurcated by a wedge-shaped island, Rufiji-ya-wake, and both arms afford secure anchorage to vessels of large burden. However, holding ground is bad and securing to trees on the bank is more satisfactory. Floating islands of grass and weed are common."

"All right!" Sir Percy halted the recitation, and every person in the plotting room looked expectantly at him. Sir Percy was glowering at the plot, breathing heavily through his nose. "Where is Blikher's plaque?" he demanded harshly.

The lieutenant went to the locker behind him, and came back with the black wooden disc he had removed from the plot two months previously. Sir Percy took it from him, and rubbed it slowly between thumb and forefinger. There was complete silence in the room.

Slowly Sir Percy leaned forward across the map and placed the disc with a click upon the glass top. They all stared at it. It sat sinister as a black cancer where the green land met the blue ocean.

"Communications!" grunted Sir Percy and the yeoman of signals stepped forward with his pad ready.

"Despatch to Commodore Commanding Indian Ocean.

Captain Joyce. HMS. Renounce. Maximum Priority. Message reads: Intelligence reports indicate high probability. "You know something, Captain Joyce, this is bloody good gin." Flynn O'Flynn pointed the base of the glass at the ceiling, and in his eagerness to engulf the liquid, he did the same for the slice of lemon that the steward had placed in his glass. He gurgled like an air-locked geyser, his face changed swiftly to a deeper shade of red, then he expelled the lemon and with it a fine spray of gin and Indian tonic in a burst of explosive coughing.

"Are you all right?" Anxiously Captain Joyce leapt across the cabin and began pounding Flynn between the shoulderblades. He had visions of his key tool in the coming operation being asphyxiated before they had started.

"Pips!" gasped Flynn. "Goddamned lemon pips."

"Steward!" Captain Joyce called over his shoulder without interrupting the tattoo he was playing on Flynn's back.

Bring the major a glass of water. Hurry!"

"Water?" wheezed -Flynn in horror and the shock was sufficient to diminish the strength of his paroxysm.

The steward, who from experience could recognize a drinking man when he saw one, rose nobly to the occasion.

He hurried across the cabin with a glass in his hand. A mouthful of the raw spirit effected a near miraculous cure, Flynn lay back in his chair, his face still bright purple but his breathing easing, and Joyce withdrew to the far side of the cabin to inhale with relief the moist warm tropical air that oozed sluggishly through the open porthole. After a close range whiff of Flynn's body smell, it was as sweet as a bunch of tulips.

Flynn had been in the field for six weeks, and during that time it had not occurred to him to -change his clothing. He smelled like a Roquefort cheese.

There was a pause while everybody recovered their breath, then Joyce picked up where he had left off.

"I -was saying, Major, how good it was of you to return so promptly to meet me here."

"I came the moment I received your message. The runner was waiting for us in Wtopo's village. I left my command camped south of the Rovuma, and Pushed through in forced marches. A hundred and fifty miles in three days! Not bad going, hey?"

"Damn good show!" agreed Joyce, and looked across at the other two men in the cabin for confirmation. With the Portuguese Governor's aide-de-camp was a young army lieutenant. Neither of them could understand a word of English. The aide-de-camp was wearing a politely noncommittal expression, and the lieutenant had loosened the top button of his tunic and was lolling on the cabin's day couch with a little black cigarette drooping from his lips. Yet he contrived to look as gracefully insolent as a matador.

"The English captain asks that you recommend me to the Governor for the Star of St. Peter." Flynn translated Captain Joyce's speech to the aide-de-camp. Flynn wanted a medal.

He had been hounding the Governor for one these last six months.

"Will you please tell the English captain that I would be delighted to convey his written citation to the Governor." The aide-de-camp smiled blandly. Through their business association he knew better than to take Flynn's translation literally. Flynn scowled at him, and Joyce sensed the strain in the cabin. He went on quickly.

"I asked you to meet me here to discuss a matter of very great importance." He paused. "Two months ago your scouts attacked a German supply column near the village of Kibiti."

"That's right." Flynn sat up in his chair. "A hell of a fight.

We fought like madmen. Hand-to-hand stuff."

"Quite," Joyce agreed quickly. "Quite so. With this column was a German naval officer..

"didn't do it," interjected Flynn with alarm. "It wasn't me. He was trying to escape. You can't pin -that one on me." Joyce looked startled.

"I beg your pardon."

"He was shot trying to escape and you try and prove different," Flynn challenged him hotly.

"Yes, I know. I have a copy of your report. A pity. A great pity. We would dearly have liked to interrogate the man."

"You calling me a liar?"

"Good Lord, Major O'Flynn. Nothing is further from my mind." Joyce was finding that conversation with Flynn O'Flynn was similar to feeling your way blindfolded through a hawthorn bush. "Your glass is empty, may I offer you a drink?" Flynn's mouth was open to emit further truculent denials, but the offer of hospitality took him unawares and he subsided.

"Thank you. It's damn good gin, haven't tasted anything like it in years. I don't suppose you could spare a case or two?" Again Joyce was startled.

"I'm sure the wardroom secretary will be able to arrange something for you."

"Bloody good stuff," said Flynn, and sipped at his recharged glass. Joyce decided on a different approach.

"Major O'Flynn, have you heard of a German warship, a cruiser, named BBlitcher?"

"Have I?" hell!" bellowed Flynn with such vehemence that Joyce was left in no doubt that he had struck another jarring note. "The bastard sank me!" These words conjured up in the eye of Captain Joyce's mind a brief but macabre picture of a Flynn floating on his back, while a battle cruiser fired on him with nine-inch guns.

"Sank you?" asked Joyce.

"Rammed me! There I was sailing along in this dhow peaceful as anything when up she comes and bang, right up the arse."

"I see," murmured Joyce. "Was it intentional?"

"You bloody tooting it was." "Why.

"Well..."started Flynn, and then changed his mind. "It's a long story."

"Where did this happen?"

"About fifty miles off the mouth of the Rufiji river."

liabilities

"The Rufiji?"Joyce leaned forward eagerly. "Do you know it? Do You know the RUfiji delta?"

"Do I know the Rufiji delta?" chucked Flynn. "I know it like you know the way to YOUr own Thunder Box. I used to do a lot of business there before the war."

"Excellent! Wonderful!" Joyce could not restrain himself from pursing his lips and whistling the first two bars of "Tipperary'. From him this was expression of unadulterated joy.

"Yeah? What's so wonderful about that?" Flynn was immediately suspicious.

"Major O'Flynn. On the basis of your report, Naval Intelligence considers it highly probable that the Blucher is anchored somewhere in the Rufiji delta."

"Who are you kidding? The Blitcher was sunk months ago everybody knows that."

"Presumed sunk. She, and the two British warships that pursued her, disappeared off the face of the earth or more correctly the ocean. Certain pieces of floating wreckage were recovered that indicated that a battle had been fought by the three ships. It was thought that all three had gone down." Joyce paused and smoothed the grey wings of hair along his temples. "But now it seems certain that Blucher was badly damaged during the engagement, and that she was holed up in the delta."

"Those wheels! Steel plating for repairs!" "Precisely, Major, precisely. But..." Joyce smiled at Flynn, thanks to you, they did not get the plating through."

"Yes, they did. "Flynn growled a denial.

"They did?" demanded Joyce harshly.

"Yeah. We left them lying in the veld. My spies told me that after we had gone the Germans sent another party of bearers up and took them away."

"Why didn't you prevent it? ""What the hell for? They've got no value," Flynn retorted.

"The enemy's insistence must have demonstrated their value." "Yeah. The enemy were so insistent they sent up a couple of Maxim guns with the second party. In my book the more Maxims there are guarding something, the less value it is."

"Well, why didn't you destroy them while you had the chance?" Listen, friend, how do you reckon to destroy twenty tons of steel? swallow it perhaps?"

"Do you realize just what a threat this ship will be once it is seaworthy?" Joyce hesitated. "I tell you now in strict confidence that there will be an invasion of German East Africa in the very near future. Can you imagine the havoc if Blitcher were to slip out of the Rufiji and get among the troop convoys?"

"Yeah all of us have got troubles."

"Major." The captain's voice was hoarse with the effort of checking his temper. "Major. I want you to do a reconnaissance and locate the Blucher for us." Is that so?" boomed Flynn. "You want me to go galloping round in the delta when there's a Maxim behind every mangrove tree. It might take a year to search that delta, you've got no idea what it's like in there." "That won't be necessary." Joyce swivelled his chair, he nodded at the Portuguese lieutenant. "This officer is an aviator."

"What's that mean?"

"He is a flyer."

"Yeah? Is that so good? I did a bit of sleeping around when I was young still get it up now and then." Joyce coughed.

"He flies an aircraft. A flying-machine."

"Oh!" said Flynn. He was impressed. "Jeer! Is that so?" He looked at the Portuguese lieutenant with respect.

"With the co-operation of the Portuguese army I intend conductin an aerial reconnaissance of the Rufiji delta.

"You mean flying over it in a flying-machine?"

"Precisely." "That's a bloody good idea." Flynn was enthusiastic. "When can you be ready?"

"What for?"

"For the reconnaissance."

"Now just hold on a shake, friend!" Flynn was aghast.

"You not getting me into one of those flying things." Two hours later they were still arguing on the bridge of HMS. Renounce, as Joyce conned her back towards the land to deposit Flynn and the two Portuguese on the beach from which his launch had picked them up that morning.

The British cruiser steamed over a sea that was oil-slick calm and purple blue, and the land lay as a dark irregular line on the horizon.

"It is essential that someone who knows the delta flies with the pilot. He has just arrived from Portugal, besides which he will be fully occupied in piloting the machine. He must have an observer. "Joyce was trying again.

Flynn had lost all interest in the discussion, he was now occupied with weightier matters.

"Captain," he started, and Joyce recognized the new tone of his voice and turned to him hopefully.

"Captain, that other business. What about it?"

"I'm sorry I don't follow you."

"That gin you promised me, what about it?" Captain Arthur Joyce R.N. was a man of gentle. when.

His face was smooth and unlined, his mouth full but grave, his eyes thoughtful, the streaks of silver grey at his temples gave him dignity. There was only one pointer to his true temperament, his eyebrows grew in one solid continuous line across his face; they were as thick and furry across the bridge of his nose as they were above his eyes. Despite his appearance he was a man of dark and violent temper.

Ten years on his own bridge, wielding the limitless power and authority of a Royal Naval Captain had not mellowed him, but had taught him how to use the curb on his temper.

Since early that morning when he had first shaken Flynn O'Flynn's large hairy. paw, Arthur Joyce had been exercising every bit of restraint he possessed now he had exhausted it all.

Flynn found himself standing speechless beneath the full blaze of Captain Joyce's anger. In a staccato, low-pitched speech, Arthur Joyce told him his opinion of Flynn's courage, character, reliability, drinking habits and sense of personal hygiene.

Flynn was shocked and deeply hurt.

"Listen.. he said.

"YOU listen," said Joyce. "Nothing will give me more pleasure than to see you leave this ship. And when you do so you can rest content in the knowledge that a full report of your conduct will go to my superiors with copies to the Governor of Mozambique, and the Portuguese War Office."

"Hold on!" cried Flynn. Not only was he going to leave the cruiser without the gin, but he could imagine that the wording of Joyce's report would ensure that he never got that medal. They might even withdraw his commission. In this moment of terrible stress the solution came to him.

"There is one man. Only one man who knows the delta better than I do. He's young, plenty of guts and he's got eyes like a hawk." Joyce glared at him, breathing hard as he fought to check the headlong run of his rage.

"Who?"he demanded.

"My own son," intoned Flynn, it sounded better than sonin-law.

"Will he do it?"

"He'll do it. I'll see to that," Flynn assured him.

"It's as safe as a horse and cart," boomed Flynn, he liked the simile, and repeated it.

"How safe is a horse and cart when it's up in the clouds?" asked Sebastian, without lowering his eyes from the sky.

"I'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 all of them except Sebastian and Rosa. They were holding each other's hands and looking into the southern sky.

"You 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.

"I'll try, "said Sebastian.

"You must, "she said. "You must."

"Should be able to get a good view from up there. Like standing on a mountain only with no mountain under you, said Sebastian and he felt his skin crawl at the thought.

"Listen!" said Rosa.

"What?"

"Ssh!" 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.

"All right," bellowed Flynn at his men who were standing well back in the palm grove. "Get 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, (Limpy 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.

"Da Silva," he said offering his right hand as Sebastian ran forward to greet him. "Hernandez 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 polo ny and a bottle of white wine that he had brought with him. 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 torn cat look. Sebastian decided that there was something obscenely erotic about that little black mustache, that lay upon his upper lip and accentiated 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.

"Paci. Paci," he growled at Mohammed's gang who were slopping gasoline into the funnel on the upper wing. "Get a move on, for cat's sake!"

"Get your clobber into this thing, Bassie, and stop giving orders you know it just confuses everybody."

"I don't know where to put it you'd better tell that greaser to come and show me. I can't speak his language."

"Put it in the front cockpit the observer's cockpit."

"Tell 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.

"Do you love me?"he asked.

"What?"she shouted above the bellow of the engine.

"Do you love me?"he roared.

"Of 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.

"You 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, and 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 pate 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.

It was hot. Moist itchy hot. Even in the shade beneath the festooned camouflage-nets the decks of Blitcher 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.

"Rest," 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.

"Captain." 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.

"It goes well?" von Kleine asked, and the engineer shook his head.

, "Not 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. "Slow," he said. "Too slow."

"You have encountered difficulties?" "Everywhere," growled the engineer, and he looked around at the heat mist and the mangroves, at the sluggish black waters and the mud banks.

"Nothing works here the welding equipment, the winch engines, even the men everything sickens in this obscene heat."

"How much longer?"

"I

do not know, Captain. I truly do not know." Von Kleine would not press him. If any man could get Blitcher 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.

"Another three weeks," Lochtkamper estimated reluctantly. "A month at the most 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.

"I still do not know about that obscene wood, Captain." Lochtkamper shook his big untidy head again. "It is so soft, so much ash, it could clog the furnace."

"There is nothing else we can do," von Kleine reminded him.

When Blucher 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 Dares Salaam, he had discharged any obligation that he might have towards the Blitcher. His eloquence availed him not at all, 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 Blitcher'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.

"We 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 loud-hailer boomed.

"Captain 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.

"Captain, an aircraft! Flying low. Coming this way.

Portuguese markings."

"Damn it to hell!" Von Kleine pushed past him, and bounded up the ladder. He burst on to the bridge, panting.

"Where is it?"he shouted.

The officer of the watch dropped his binoculars and turned to von Kleine with relief "There 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.

"Warn the men ashore. Everybody under cover," he barked. "All guns trained to maximum elevation. Pom-poms loaded with shrapnel. Machine-gun crews closed up but no firing until my orders." He held the aircraft in the round field of the field glasses.

"Portuguese, all right," he grunted; the green and red insignia showed clearly against the brown body of the aircraft.

"She's searching. 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. Now we'll find out how effective is our camouflage." So the enemy have guessed at last. They must have reported the convoy of steel plate 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 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 Blitcher. From the air she would be as conspicuous as a fat tick on a white sheet.

"The launch..." shouted von Kleine, hail her. Order her to run for the bank 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 but He 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.

Sebastian hung over the edge Of the cockpit. The wind buffeted him, flapping his jacket wildly about his body, whipping his hair into a black tangle. With his usual dexterity Sebastian had managed to drop the binoculars overboard. They were the property of Flynn Patrick O'Flynn, and Sebastian knew that he would be expected to pay for them. This spoiled Sebastian's enjoyment of the flight to some extent, he already owed Flynn a little over three hundred pounds. Rosa would have something to say also. However, the loss of the binoculars was no handicap, the aircraft was flying too low and was so unstable that the unaided eye was much more effective.

From a height of five hundred feet the mangrove forest looked like a fluffy overstuffed mattress, a sickly fever green in colour, with the channels and the water-ways between them dark gun-metal veins that flashed the sunlight back like a heliograph. The clouds of white egrets that rose in alarm as the aircraft approached looked like drifts of torn paper scraps. A fish eagle hung suspended in silent flight ahead of them, the wide span of its wings flared at the tips like the fingers of a hand. It dipped away, sliding past the aircraft's wing tip so close that Sebastian saw the fierce yellow eyes in its white hooded head.

Sebastian laughed with delight, and then grabbed at the side of the cockpit to steady himself, as the machine rocked violently under him. This was the pilot's method of attracting Sebastian's attention, and Sebastian wished he would think up some other way of doing it.

He looked back angrily shouting in the howl of wind and engine.

"Watch it! YOU Stupid dago." Da Silva was gesticulating wildly, his pink mouth working under the black mustache, his eyes wild behind the panes of his goggles, his right hand stabbing urgently out over the starboard wing.

Sebastian saw it immediately on the wide water-way, the launch was so glaringly conspicuous that he wondered why he had not seen it before, then he recalled that his attention had been concentrated on the terrain directly beneath the aircraft and he exCUsed himself. Yet there was little to justify da Silva's excitement, he thought. This was no battle cruiser, it was a tiny vessel of perhaps twenty-five feet. Quickly he ran his eyes down the channel, following it to the open sea in the blue distance.

It was empty.

He glanced back at the pilot and shook his head. But da Silva's excitement had, if anything, increased. He was making another frenzied hand-signal that Sebastian could not understand. To save- argument Sebastian nodded in agreement, and instantly the machine dropped away under him so that Sebastian's belly was left behind and he clutched desperately at the side of the cockpit once more.

In a shallow turning dive, da Silva took the machine

Down and then levelled out with the landing-wheels almost brushing the tops of the mangroves. They rushed towards the channel, and as the last mangroves whipped away under them da Silva eased the nose down still farther and they dropped to within a few feet of the surface of the water. It was a display of fine flying that was completely wasted on Sebastian. He was cursing da Silva quietly, his eyes starting from their sockets.

A mile ahead of them across the open water bobbed the overladen launch. It was only a few feet below their own level, and they raced towards it with the wash of the propeller blowing a squall of ripples across the surface behind them.

"My God!" The blasphemy was wrung from Sebastian in his distress. He's going to fly right into it!" It was an opinion that seemed to be shared by the crew of the launch. As the machine roared in on them, they began to abandon ship. Sebastian saw two men leap from the high piled load of timber and hit the water with small white splashes.

At the last second da Silva lifted the plane and they hopped over the launch. For a fleeting instant Sebastian stared at a range of fifteen feet into the face of the German naval officer who crouched down over the tiller bar at the stern of the launch. They were then past and climbing sharply, banking and turning back.

Sebastian saw the launch had rounded to, and that her crew were clambering aboard and splashing around her, but da Silva had throttled back and the engine was burbling,. Once more the aircraft dropped towards the river under half power. He levelled out fifty feet above the water, and flew sedately, keeping away from the launch and well towards the northern side of the channel.

"What are you doing?" Sebastian mouthed the question at da Silva. In reply the pilot made a sweeping gesture with his right hand at the thick bank of mangroves alongside.

Puzzled, Sebastian stared into the mangroves. What was the fool doing, surely he didn't think that... There was a hump of high ground on the bank, a hump that rose perhaps one hundred and fifty feet above the level of the river. They came up to it.

Like a hunter following a wounded buffalo, moving carelessly through thin scattered bush which could not possibly give cover to such a large animal, and then suddenly coming face to face with it so close, that he sees the minute detail of crenellation on the massive bosses of the horns, sees the blood dripping from moist black nostrils, and the dull furnace glare of the piggy little eyes in the same fashion Sebastian found the Blitcher.

She was so close he Could see the pattern of rivets on her plating, the joints in the planking of her foredeck, the individual strands of the canopy of camouflage netting spread over her. He saw the men on her bridge, and the gun-crews behind the pom-poms and the Maxim machine guns on the balconies of her upper works From her squatting turrets her big guns gaped at him with hungry mouths, revolving to follow the flight of the machine.

She was monstrous, grey and sinister among the mangroves, crouching in her lair, and Sebastian cried aloud in surprise and alarm, a sound without shape or coherence, and at the same moment the engine of the aeroplane bellowed in full power, as da Silva thrust the throttle wide and hauled the joystick back into his crotch.

As the aircraft rocketed upwards, the deck of the Blitcher erupted in a thunderous volcano of flame. Flame flew in great bell-shaped ejaculations from the muzzles of her Machine guns. Flame spat viciously from the multi-barrelled pom-poms and the machine guns on her upper works

Around the little aircraft the air boiled and hissed, disrupted, churned into violent turbulence by the passage of the big shells.

Something struck the plane, and she was whirled upwards like a burning leaf from a garden bonfire. Wing over wing she rolled, her engine surging wildly, her rigging groaning and creaking at the strain.

Sebastian was flung forward, the bridge of his nose cracked against the edge of the cockpit and instantly twin Jets of blood spurted from his nostrils to douse the front of his jacket.

The machine stood on her tail, propeller clawing ineffectively at the air, engine wailing in over rev. Then she dropped away on one wing and one side swooped sickeningly downwards.

Da Silva fought her, feeling the sloppiness of the stall in her controls come alive again as she regained air-speed. The fluffy tops of the mangroves rushed up to meet him, and desperately he tried to ease her off. She was trying to respond, the fabric wrinkling along her wings as they flexed to the enormous pressure. He felt her lurch again as she touched the top branches, heard above the howl of the engine the faint crackling brush of the vegetation against her belly. Then suddenly, miraculously, she was clear; flying straight and level, climbing slowly up and away from the hungry swamp.

She was sluggish and heavy, and there was something loose under her. It banged and thumped and slapped in the slipstream, jarring the whole fuselage. Da Silva could not dare to manoeuvre her. He held her on the course she had chosen, easing her nose slightly upwards, slowly gaining precious altitude.

At a thousand feet he brought her round in a wide gentle turn to the south, and banging and thumping, one wing heavy, she staggered drunkenly through the sky towards her rendezvous with Flynn O'Flynn.

Flynn stood up with slow dignity from where he had been leaning against the hole of the palm tree.

"Where are you going?" Rosa opened her eyes and looked up at him.

"To do something you can't do for me."

"That's the third time in an hour!" Rosa was suspicious.

"That's why they call it the East African quickstep," said Flynn, and moved off ponderously into the undergrowth.

He reached the lantana bush, and looked around carefully.

He couldn't trust Rosa not to follow him. Satisfied, he dropped to his knees and dug with his hands in the loose sand.

With the air of an old-time pirate unearthing a chest of doubloon he lifted the bottle from its grave, and withdrew the cork. The neck of the bottle was in his mouth, when he heard the muted beat of the returning aircraft. The bottle stayed there a while longer, Flynn's Adam's apple pulsing up and down his throat as he swallowed, but his eyes swivelled upwards and creased in concentration.

With a sigh of intense pleasure he re corked and laid the bottle once more to rest, kicked sand over it, and set course for the beach.

"Can you see them?" he shouted the question at Rosa as he came down through the palms. She was standing out in the open. Her head was thrown back so that the long braid of her hair hung down to her waist behind. She did not answer him, but the set of her expression was hard and strained with anxiety. The men standing about her were silent also, held by an expectant dread.

Flynn looked up and saw it coming in like a wounded bird, the engine stuttering and surging irregularly, streaming a long bluish streak of oily smoke from the exhaust manifold, the wings rocking crazily, and a loose tangle of wreckage hanging and swinging under the belly where one Of the landing wheels had been shot away.

It sagged wearily towards the beach, the broken beat of the engine failing so they could hear the whisper of the wind in her rigging.

The single landing-wheel touched down on the hard sand and for fifty yards she ran true, then with a jerk she toppled sideways. The port wing hit into the sand, slewing her towards the edge of the sea,

her tail came up and over.

There was a crackling, ripping, tearing sound; and in a dust storm of flying spend she cartwheeled, stern over stern.

The propeller tore into the beach, disintegrating in a blur of flying splinters, and from the forward cockpit a human body was flung clear, spinning in the air so that the outflung limbs were the spokes of a wheel. It fell with a splash in the shallow water at the edge of the beach, while the aircraft careened onwards, tearing herself to pieces. A lower wing broke off, the guy wires snapping with a sound like a volley of musketry. The body of the machine slowed as it hit the water, skidding to a standstill on its back, with the surf washing around it. Da Silva hung motionless in the back cockpit, suspended upside down by his safety-straps, his arms dangling.

The next few seconds of silence were appalling.

"Help the pilot! I'll get Sebastian." Rosa broke it at last.

Mohammed and two other Askari ran with her towards where Sebastian was lying awash, a piece of flotsam at the water's edge.

"Come on!" Flynn shouted at the men near him, and lumbered through the soft fluffy sand towards the wreck.

They never reached it.

There was a concussion, a vast disturbance in the air that sucked at their eardrums, as the gasoline ignited in explosive combustion. The machine and the surface of the sea about it were instantly transformed into a roaring, raging sheet of flame.

They backed away from the heat. The flames were dark red laced with satanic black smoke, and they ate the canvas skin from the body of the aircraft, exposing the wooden framework beneath.

In the heart of the flames da Silva still hung in his cockpit, a blackened monkey-like shape as his clothing burned. Then the fire ate through the straps of his harness and he dropped heavily into the shallow water, hissing and sizzling as the flames were quenched.

The fire was still Smouldering by the time Sebastian regained consciousness, and was able to lift himself on one elbow. Muzzily he stared down the beach at the smoking wreckage. The shadows of the palms lay like the stripes of a tiger on the sand that the low evening sun had softened to a drill gold.

"Da Silva?" Sebastian's voice was thick and slurred. His nose was broken and squashed across his face. Although Rosa had wiped most of the blood away, there were still little black crusts of it in his nostrils and at the corners of his mouth. Both his eyes were slits in the swollen plum coloured bruises that bulged from the sockets.

"No!" Flynn shook his head. "He didn't make it."

"Dead?" whispered Sebastian.

"We buried him back in the bush."

"What happened?" asked Rosa. "What on earth happened out there?" She sat close beside him, protective as a mother over her child. Slowly Sebastian turned his head to look at her.

"We found the Blitcher,"he said.

Captain Arthur Joyce, R.N was a happy man. He stooped over his cabin desk, his hands placed open and flat on either side of the spread Admiralty chart. He glowed with satisfaction as he looked down at the hand-drawn circle in crude blue pencil as though it were the signature of the President of the Bank of England on a cheque for a million sterling.

"Good!" he said. "Oh, very good," and he pursed his lips as though he were about to whistle "Tipperary'. Instead he made a sucking sound, and smiled across at Sebastian.

Behind his flattened nose and blue-ringed eyes, Sebastian smiled back at him.

"A damn good show, Oldsmith!" Joyce's expression changed, the little lights of recognition sparkled suddenly in his eyes. "Oldsmith?" he repeated. "I say, didn't you open the bowling for Sussex in the 1911 cricket season?"

"That's right, sir."

"Good Lord! Joyce beamed at him. "I'll never forget Your opening over to Yorkshire in the first match of the season.

You dismissed Graham and Penridge for two runs two for two, hey?"

"Two for two, it was. "Sebastian liked this man.

"Fiery stuff! And then you made fifty-five runs?"

"Sixty-five," Sebastian corrected him. "A record ninth wicket partnership with Clifford Dumont of one hundred and eighty-sixV "Yes! Yes! I remember it well. Fiery stuff! You were damned unlucky not to play for England." oh, I don't know about that," said Sebastian in modest agreement.

"Yes, you were." Joyce pursed his lips again. "Damned unlucky." Flynn O'Flynn had not understood a word of this. He was thrashing around in his chair like an old buffalo in a trap, bored to the point of pain. Rosa Oldsmith had understood no more than he had, but she was fascinated. It was clear that Captain Joyce knew of some outstanding accomplishment of Sebastian's, and if a man like Joyce knew of it it " meant Sebastian was famous. She felt pride swell in her chest and she smiled on Sebastian also.

"didn't know, Sebastian. Why didn't you tell me?" She glowed warmly at him.

"Some other time," Joyce interrupted quickly. "Now we must get on with this other business." And he returned his attention to the chart on the desk.

"Now I want you to cast your mind back. Shut your eyes and try to see it again. Every detail you can remember, every little detail it might be important. Did you see any signs of damage?" Obediently Sebastian closed his eyes, and was surprised at how vividly the acid of fear had engraved the picture of Blitcher on his mind.

"Yes," he said. "There were holes in her. Hundreds of holes, little black ones. And at the front end the bows there were trapezes hanging down on ropes, near the water.

You know the kind- that they use when they paint a high building Joyce nodded at his secretary to record every word of it.

The single fan suspended over the table in the wardroom hummed quietly, the blades stirred the air that was moist and warm as the bedding of a malarial patient.

Except for the soft clink of cutlery on china, the only other sound was that of Commissioner Fleischer drinking his soup. It was thick, green pea soup, scalding hot, so that Fleischer found it necessary to blow heavily on each spoonful before ingesting it with a noise, not of the same volume, but with the delicate tonal quality, of a flushing water closet. During the pause while he crumbled a slice of black bread into his Soup, Fleischer looked -across the board at Lieutenant Kyller.

"So you did not find the enemy flying-machine, then?"

"No." Kyller went on fiddling with his wine glass without looking up. For forty-eight hours he and his patrols had searched the swamps and channels and mangrove forests for the wreckage of the aircraft. He was exhausted and covered with insect bites.

" Fleischer nodded solemnly. "It fell only a short way, but it did not hit the trees. I was sure of that. I have seen sand-grouse do the same thing sometimes when you shoot them with a shotgun. Pow! They come tumbling down like this..." He fluttered his hand in the air, letting it fall awards his soup, then suddenly they do this. "The hand took flight again in the direction of Commander (Engineering) Lochtkamper's rugged Neanderthal face. They all watched it.

"The little bird flies away home. It was bad shooting from so close," said Fleischer, and ended the demonstration by picking up his soup spoon, and the moist warm silence once more gripped the wardroom.

Commander Lochtkamper stoked his mouth as though it were one of his furnaces. The knuckles of both his hands were knocked raw by contact with steel plate and wire rope.

Even when Fleischer's hand had flown into his face, he had not been distracted from his thoughts. His mind was wholly occupied with steel and machinery, weights and points of balance. He wanted to achieve twenty degrees of starboard list on Blucher, so that a greater area of her bottom would be exposed to his welders. This meant displacing one thousand tons of dead weight. It seemed an impossibility unless we flood the port magazines, he thought, and take the guns from their turrets and move them. Then we could rig camels under her... "it was not bad shooting," said the gunnery lieutenant.

"She was flying too close, the rate of track was..." He broke off, wiped the side of his long pointed nose with his forefinger, and regarded balefully the sweat that came away on it. This fat peasant would not understand, he would not waste energy in explaining the technicalities. He contented himself with repeating, "It was not bad shooting."

"I think we must accept that the enemy machine has returned safely to her base," said Lieutenant Kyller. "Therefore we can expect the enemy to mount some form of offensive action against us in the very near future." Kyller enjoyed a position of privilege in the wardroom. No other of the junior officers would have dared to express his opinions so freely. Yet none of them would have made as much sense as Kyller. When he spoke his senior officers listened, if not respectfully, at least attentively. Kyller had passed out sword of honour cadet from Bremerhaven Naval Academy in 1910. His father was a Baron, a personal friend of the Kaiser's, and an Admiral of the Imperial Fleet. Kyller was wardroom favourite, not only because of his dark good looks and courteous manner but also because of his appetite for hard work, his meticulous attention to detail, and his ready mind. He was a good officer to have aboard a credit to the ship.

"What can the enemy do?" Fleischer asked with scorn.

He did not share the general opinion of Ernst Kyller. "We are safe here " what can he do?" Falkland "A superficial study of naval history will reveal, Sir, that the English can be expected to do what you least expect them to do. And that they will do it, quickly, efficiently and with iron purpose." Kyller scratched the lumpy red insect bites behind his left ear.

Hah!" said Fleischer, and sprayed a little pea soup with the violence of his disgust. "The English are fools and cowards at the worst, they will skulk off the mouth of the river. They would not dare come in here after uS." I have no doubt that time will prove You correct, Sir." This was Kyller's phrase of violent disagreement with a senior officer, and from experience Captain von Kleine and his commanders recognized it. They smiled a little.

"This soup is bitter," said Fleischer, satisfied that he had carried the argument. "The cook has used sea-water in it." The accusation was So outrageous, that even von Kleine looked up from his plate.

"Please do not let our humble hospitality delay you, Herr Commissioner. You must be anxious to return up-river to your wood-cutting duties." And Fleischer subsided quickly, hunching over his food.

Von Kleine transferred his gaze to Kyller.

Kyller, you will not be returning with the Herr Commissioner. I am sending Ensign Proust with him this trip.

You will be in command of the first line of defence that I plan to place at the mouth of the delta, in readiness for the English attack. You will attend the conference in my cabin after this meal, please." "Thank you, Sir." His voice was husky with gratitude for the honour his captain was conferring upon him. Von Kleine looked from him to his gunnery lieutenant.

"You also, please, Guns. I want to relieve you of- your beloved upper deck pom-poms."

"You mean to take them off their mountings, sir?" the gunnery lieutenant asked, looking at von Kleine dolefully over his long doleful nose.

"I regret the necessity," von Kleine told- him sympathetically.

Well, Henry. We were right. BBlitcher is there."

"Unfortunately, Sir." Two heavy cruisers tied up indefinitely on blockade service." Admiral Sir Percy thrust out his lower lip lugubriously as he regarded the plaques of Renounce and Pegasus on the Indian Ocean plot. "There is work for them elsewhere."

"There is, at that," agreed Henry Green.

"That request of Joyce's for two motor torpedo-boats "Yes, Sir?" "We must suppose he intends mounting a torpedo attack into the delta." "It looks like it, Sir."

"It might work worth a try anyway. What can we scratch together for him?"

"There is a full squadron at Bombay, and another at Aden, Sir." For five seconds, Sir Percy Howe reviewed the meagre forces with which he was expected to guard two oceans.

With this new submarine menace, he could not detach a single ship from the approaches to the Suez Canal it would have to be Bombay. "Send him an M. T. B. from the" Bombay squadron."

"He asked for two, sir."

"Joyce knows full well that I only let him have half of anything he requests. He always doubles up."

"What about this recommendation for a decoration, sir?"

"The fellow who spotted the Blitcher?"

"Yes, sir."

"A bit tricky Portuguese irregular and all that sort of thing "He's a British subject, sir."

"Then he shouldn't be with the dagos," said Sir Percy.

"Leave it over until the operation is completed. We'll think about it after we've sunk the Blucher." The sunset was blood and roses, nude pink and tarnished gold as the British blockade squadron stood in towards the land.

Renounce led with the commodore's peri ant flying at her masthead. In the smooth wide road of her wake, Pegasus slid d over the water. Their silhouettes were crisp and black against the garish colours of the sunset. There was something prim and old-maidish about the lines of a heavy cruiser none of the solid majesty of a battleship, nor the jaunty devil-may-care rake of a destroyer.

Close in under Pegasus's beam, screened by her hull from the land, like a cygnet swimming beside the swan, rode the motor torpedo-boat.

Even in this light surface chop she was taking in water.

Each wave puffed up over her bows and then streamed back greenish and cream along her decks. The spray rattled against the thin canvas that screened the open bridge.

Flynn O'Flynn crouched behind the screen and cursed the vaunting ambition that had led him to volunteer as pilot for this expedition. He glanced across at Sebastian who stood in the open wing of the bridge, behind the batteries of Lewis guns. Sebastian was grinning as the warm spray flew back into his face and trickled down his cheeks.

Joyce had recommended Sebastian for a Distinguished Service Order.

This was almost more than Flynn could bear.

He wanted one also. He had decided to go along now for that reason alone. Therefore Sebastian was directly to blame for Flynn's present discomfort, and Flynn felt a small warmth of satisfaction as he looked at the flattened, almost negroid contours of Sebastian's new nose. The young bastard deserved it, and he found himself wishing further punishment on his son-in-law.

"Distinguished Service Order and all. he grunted. "A half-trained chimpanzee could have done what he did. Yet who was it who found the wheels in the first place? No, Flynn Patrick, there just ain't no justice in this world, but we'll show the sons of bitches this time..." His thoughts were interrupted by the small bustle of activity on the bridge around him. An Aldis lamp was winking from the high dark bulk of Renounce ahead of them.

The lieutenant commanding the torpedo-boat spelled the message aloud.

"Flag to YN2. D P departure point. Good luck." He was a dumpy amorphous figure in his duffle coat with the collar turned up. "Thanks a lot, old chap and one up your pipe also. No, Signaller, don't make that." He went on quickly, "YN 2 to Flag. Acknowledged!" Then turning to the engine voice-pipe. "Both engines stop," he said.

The beat of her engines faded away, and she wallowed in the trough of the next wave. Renounce and Pegasus sailed on sedately, leaving the tiny vessel rolling crazily in the turbulence of their wakes. A lonely speck five miles off the mouth of the Rufiji delta, too far off for the shore-watchers to see her in the fading evening light.

Lieutenant Ernst Kyller watched through his binoculars as the two British cruisers turned in succession away from the land and coalesced with the darkness that fell so swiftly over the ocean and the land. They were gone.

"Every day it is the same." Kyller let the binoculars fall against his chest and pulled his watch from the pocket of his tunic. "Fifteen minutes before sunset, and again fifteen minutes before sun-up they sail past to show us that they are still waiting."

"Yes, sir," agreed the seaman who was squeezed into the crow's-nest beside Kyller.

"I will go down now. Moon comes up at 11-44 tonight keep awake." "Yes, sir." Kyller swung his legs over the side and groped with his feet for the rungs of the rope ladder. Then he climbed down the palm tree to the beach fifty feet below. By the time he reached it the light had gone, and the beach was a vague white blur down to the green lights of phosphorus in the surf.

The sand crunched like sugar under his boots as he set off to where the launch was moored. As he walked, his mind was wholly absorbed with the details of his defence system.

There were only two of the many mouths of the Rufiji, up which the English could attack. They were separated by a low wedge shaped island of sand and mud and mangrove.

It was on the seaward side of this island that Kyller had sited the four-pounder pom-poms taken from their mountings on Blucher's upper deck.

He had sunk a raft of logs into the soft mud to give them a firm foundation on which to stand, and he had cut out the mangroves so they commanded an arc of fire across both channels. His searchlights he sited with equal care so they could sweep left or right without blinding his gunners.

From Commander Lochtkamper he had solicited alength of four-inch steel hawser. This was rather like an un rehabilitated insolvent raising an unsecured loan from a money-lender, for Commander Locktkamper was not easily parted from his stores. Far up river Ensign Proust had diverted some of his axe-men to felling fifty giant African mahogany trees. They had floated the trunks down on the tide; logs the size of the columns of a Greek these and the cable Kyller had fashioned stretched across both channels, an obstacle that it would rip the belly out of even a a heavy cruiser coming down on it at speed.

Not satisfied with this, for Kyller had highly developed the Teutonic capacity for taking infinite pains, he lifted the fat globular mines with their sinister horns that Blitcher had sown haphazardly behind her on her journey up-river. These he rearranged into near geometrical ranks behind his log boom, a labour that left his men almost prostrated with nervous exhaustion. This work had taken ten days to complete, and immediately Kyller had begun building observation posts. He placed them on every hump of high ground that commanded a view of the ocean, he built them in the tops of the palm trees, and on the smaller islands that stood out at sea. He arranged a system of signals with his observers flags and heliographs for the day, sky-rockets for the night.

During the hours of darkness, two whale boats rowed steadily back and forth along the log boom, manned by seamen who slapped steadily and sulkily at the light cloud of mosquitoes that hal oed their heads, and made occasional brief but vitriolic statements about Lieutenant Kyller's ancestry, present worth and future prospects.

At 2200 hours on the moonless night of 16 June 1915, the British motor torpedo-boat YN2 crept with both engines running dead slow into the centre of Lieutenant Kyller's elaborate reception arrangements.

After the clean cool air on the open sea, the smell was like entering the monkey-house of London Zoo.

The land masked the breeze, and the frolic of the Surface chop died away. As the torpedo-boat groped its way into the delta, the miasma of the swamps spread out to meet her.

"my God, that smell." Sebastian twitched his flattened nose. "It brings back pleasant memories."

"Lovely, isn't it? "agreed Flynn.

"We must be almost into the channel." Sebastian peered into the night, sensing rather than seeing the loom of the mangroves ahead and on either hand.

"I don't know what the hell I'm doing on this barge, grunted Flynn. "This is raving bloody madness. We've got more chance of catching a clap than finding our way up to where Blitcher is anchored." "Faith! Major O'Flynn, and shame on ye!" The commander of the torpedo boat exclaimed in his best musichl brogue. "We put our trust in you and the Lord." His tone changed and he spoke crisply to the helmsman beside him. "Lay her off a point to starboard."

The long nose of the boat, with the torpedo tubes lying like a rack of gigantic champagne bottles on her foredeck, swung fractionally.

The commander cocked his head to listen to the whispered soundings relayed from the leadsman in the bows.

"Twelve fathoms," he repeated thoughtfully. "So far so good Then he turned back to Flynn.

"Now, Major, I heard you shooting the blarney to Captain Joyce about how well you know this river, I think your exact words were, "Like you know the way to your own Thunder Box." You don't seem so certain about it any longer. Why is that?"

"It's dark, "said Flynn sulkily.

"My, so it is. But that shouldn't fluster an old river pilot like you."

"Well, it sure as hell does."

"If we get into the channel and lay up until the moon rises, would that help?"

"It wouldn't do any harm." That exchange seemed to exhaust the subject and for a further fifteen minutes the tense silence on the bridge was spoiled only by the commander's quiet orders to the helm, as he kept his ship within the ten fathom line of the channel.

Then Sebastian made a contribution.

"I say, there's something dead ahead of us." A patch of deeper darkness in the night; a low blurred shape that showed against the faint sheen of the star reflections on the surface. A reef perhaps? No, there was a splash alongside it as an oar dipped and pulled.

"Guard boat!" said the commander, and stooped to the voice-pipe. "Both engines " ahead together." The deck canted sharply under their feet as the bows lifted, the whisper of the engines rose to a dull bellow and the torpedo-boat plunged forward like a bull at the cape.

"Hold on! I'm going to ram it." The commander's voice was pitched at conversational level, and a hubbub of shouts broke out ahead, oars splashed Frantically as the guard boat tried to pull out of their line of charge.

"Steer for them," said the commander pleasantly, and the helmsman put her over a little.

Flash and crack, flash and crack, someone in the guard boat fired a rifle just as the torpedo-boat struck her. It was a glancing blow, taken on her shoulder, that spun the little whale boat aside, shearing off the protruding oars with a crackling popping sound.

She scraped down the gunwale of the torpedo-boat, and then was left astern bobbing and rocking wildly as the larger vessel surged ahead.

Then abruptly it was no longer dark. From all around them sparkling trails of fire shot into the sky and burst in balls of blue, that lit it all with an eerie flickering glow.

"Sky rockets, be Jesus. Guy Fawkes, Guy," said the commander.

They could see the banks of mangrove massed on either hand, and ahead of them the double mouths of the two channels.

"Steer for the southern channel." This time the commander lifted his voice a little, and the ship plunged onward, throwing out white wings of water from under her bows, bucking and jarring as she leapt over the low swells pushed up by the out-flowing tide, so the men on the bridge hung on to the hand rail to steady themselves.

Then all of them gasped together in the pain of seared eyeballs as a solid shaft of dazzling white light struck them.

It leapt out from the dark wedge of land that divided the two channels, and almost immediately two other searchlights on the outer banks of the channels joined in the hunt. Their beams fastened on the ship like the tentacles of a squid on the carcass of a flying fish.

"Get those lights!" This time the commander shouted the order at the gunners behind the Lewis guns at the corners of the bridge. The tracer that hosed out in a gentle arc towards the base of the searchlight beams was anaemic and pinkly pale, in contrast to the brilliance they were trying to quench.

The torpedo-boat roared on into the channel.

Then there was another sound. A regular thump, thump, thump like the working of a distant water pump. Lieutenant Kyller had opened up with his quick-firing pam-pam.

The four-pound tracer emanated from the dark blob of the island. Seeming to float slowly towards the torpedo boat but gaining speed as it approached, until it flashed past with the whirr of a rocketing pheasant.

"Jesus" said Flynn as though he meant it. He sat down hurriedly on the deck and began to unlace his boots.

Still held in the cold white grip of the searchlights, the torpedo-boat roared on with four-pounder shell streaking around her, and bursting in flurries of spray on the surface near her. The long dotted tendrils of tracer from her own Lewis guns still arched out in delicate lines towards the shore, and suddenly they had effect.

The beam of one of the searchlights snapped off as a bullet shattered the glass, for a few seconds the filaments continued to glow dull red as they burned themselves out.

In the relief from the blinding glare, Sebastian Could see ahead, and he saw a sea serpent. It lay across the channel, undulating in the swells, bellied from bank to bank by the push of the tide, showing its back at the top of the swells and then ducking into the troughs; long and sinuous and menacing, Lieutenant Kyller's log boom waited to welcome them.

"Good God, what's that?"

"Full port rudder!" the commander bellowed. "Both engines full astern together." And before the ship could answer her helm or the drag of her propellers, she ran into a log four feet thick and a hundred feet long. A log as unyielding as a reef of solid granite that stopped her dead in the water and crunched in her bows.

The men in the well of her bridge were thrown into a heap of tangled bodies on the deck. A heap from which the bull figure of Flynn Patrick O'Flynn was the first to emerge, On stockinged feet he made for the side of the ship.

"Flynn, where are you going?" Sebastian shouted after him.

"Home,"said Flynn.

"Wait for me. "Sebastian scrambled to his knees.

The engines roaring in reverse pulled the torpedo-boat back off the log-boom, her plywood hull crackling and speaking, but she was mortally wounded. She was sinking with a rapidity that amazed Sebastian. Already her cockpit was flooding.

"Abandon ship, "shouted the commander.

"You damned tooting," said Flynn O'Flynn and leaped in an untidy tangle of arms and legs into the water.

Like a playful seal the torpedo-boat rolled over on its side, and Sebastian jumped. Drawing his breath while he was in the air, steeling himself against the cold of the water.

he was surprised at how warm it was.

from the bridge of HMS. Renounce, the survivors looked like a cluster of bedraggled water rats. In the dawn they floundered and splashed around the edge of the balloon of stained and filthy water where the Rufiji had washed them out, like the effluent from the sewer outlet of a city. Renounce found them before the sharks did, for there was no blood. There was one broken leg, a fractured collar bone and a few cracked ribs but miraculously there was no blood. So from a crew of fourteen, Renounce recovered every man including the two pilots.

They came aboard with their hair matted, their faces streaked, and their eyes swollen and inflamed with engine oil. With a man on either hand to guide them, leaving a trail of malodorous Rufiji water across the deck, they shuffled down to the sick bay, a sodden and sorrow-full looking assembly of humanity.

"Well," said Flynn O'Flynn, "if we don't get a medal for that, then I'm going back to my old job and the hell with them."

"That," said Captain Arthur Joyce, sitting hunched behind his desk, "was not a roaring success." He showed no inclination to whistle "Tipperary'.

"It wasn't even a good try, sir," agreed the torpedo-boat commander. "The Boche had everything ready to throw at our heads."

"log boom!"-" Joyce shook his head, "good Lord, they went out with the Napoleonic War!" He said it in a tone that implied that he was a victim of unfair play.

"It was extraordinarily effective, sir." Yes, it must have been." Joyce sighed. "Well, at the very least we have established that an attack up the channel is not practical."

"During the few minutes before the tide swept us away from the boom I looked beyond it, and I saw what I took to be a mine. I think it certain that the Boche have laid a minefield beyond the boom, sit."

"Thank you, Commander, "Joyce nodded. "I will see to it that their Lordships receive a full account of your conduct.

I consider it excellent." Then he went on, "I would value your opinion of Major O'Flynn and his son do you think they are reliable men?"

"Well the commander hesitated, he did not want to be unfair, they can both swim and the young one seems to have good' eyesight Apart from that I am not really in a position to give a judgement."

"No, I don't suppose you are. Still I wish I knew more about them. For the next phase in this operation I am going to rely quite heavily on them." He stood up. "I think I will talk to them now."

"You mean you actually want someone to go on board Blitcher!" Flynn was appalled.

"I have explained to you, Major, how important it is for me to know exactly what state she is in. I must be able to estimate when she is likely to break out of the delta. I must know how much time I have." Madness, whispered Flynn. "Stark raving bloody madness." He stared at Joyce in disbelief.

"You have told me how well organized is your intelligence system ashore, of the reliable men who work for you. Indeed it is through you that we know that the Germans are cutting c(rdwood and taking it aboard. We know that they have recruited an army of native labourers and are using them not only for wood-cutting, but also for heavy work aboard the Blucher."

"So?" Into that single word Flynn put a wealth of caution.

"One of your men could infiltrate the labour gangs and get aboard Blucher." And Flynn perked up immediately; he had anticipated that Joyce would suggest that Flynn Patrick O'Flynn should personally conduct a survey of Blitcher's damage.

"It might be done." There was alengthy pause while Flynn considered every aspect of the business. "Of course, Captain, my men aren't fighting patriots like you and I. They work for money. They are..." Flynn searched for the word. "They are..."

"Mercenaries?"

"Yes," said Flynn. "That's exactly what they are."

"Hmm," said Joyce. "You mean they would want payment?" "They'd want a big dollop of lolly and you can't blame them, can you?"

"The person you send would have to be a first-class man."

"He would be," Flynn assured him.

"On behalf of His Majesty's Government, I could undertake to purchase a complete and competent report on the disposition of the German cruiser Blitcher, for the sum of he thought about it a moment, one thousand pounds."

"Gold?"

"Gold," agreed Joyce.

"That would cover it nicely." Flynn nodded, then allowed his eyes to move across the cabin to where Sebastian and Rosa sat side by side on the day couch. They were holding hands, and showing more interest in each other than in the bargainings of Flynn and Captain Joyce.

It was a good thing, Flynn decided, that the Wakamba tribe from which Commissioner Fleischer had recruited the majority of his labour force, affected clean-shaven pates. It would be impossible for a person of European descent to dress his straight hair to resemble the woollen cap of an African.

It was also a good thing about the M'senga tree. From the bark of the M'senga tree the fishermen of Central Africa decocted a liquid in which they soaked their nets. It toughened the fibres of the netting and it also stained the skin. Once Flynn had dipped his finger into a basin of the stuff, and despite constant scrubbing, it was fifteen days before the black stain faded.

It was finally a good thing about Sebastian's nose. Its new contours were decidedly negroid.

A thousand pounds!" said Flynn O'Flynn as though it were a benediction, and he scooped another mugful of the black liquid and poured it over Sebastian Oldsmith's clean-shaven scalp. "Think of it, Bassie, me lad, a thousand pounds! Your half share of that is five hundred.

Why! You'll be in a position to pay me back every penny you owe me. You'll be out of debt at last." They were camped on the Abati river, one of the tributaries of the Rufiji. Six miles downstream was Commissioner Fleischer's wood-cutting camp.

"It's money for jam," opined Flynn. He was sitting comfortably in a riempie chair beside the galvanized iron tub, in which Sebastian Oldsmith squatted with his knees drawn up under his chin. Sebastian had the dejected look of a spaniel taking a bath in flea shampoo. The liquid in which he sat was the colour and viscosity of strong Turkish coffee and already his face and body were a dark purply chocolate colour.

Sebastian isn't interested in the money," said Rosa Oldsmith. She knelt beside the tub and, tenderly as a mother bathing her infant, she was ladling the M'senga juice over Sebastian's shoulders and back.

"I know, I know!" Flynn agreed quickly. "We are all doing our duty. We all remember little Maria may the Lord bless and keep her tiny soul. But the money won't hurt us either." Sebastian closed his eyes as another mugful cascaded over his head.

Rub it into the creases round your eyes and under your chin," said Flynn, and Sebastian obeyed. "Now, let's go over it again, Bassie, so you don't get it all balled up. One of Mohammed's cousins is boss-boy of the gang loading the timber into the launches. They are camped on the bank of the Rufiji. Mohammed will slip you in tonight, and tomorrow his cousin will get you on to one of the launches going down with a load for Blitcher. All you've got to do is keep your eyes open. Joyce just wants to know what work they are doing to repair her; whether or not they've got the boilers fired; things like that. You understand?" Sebastian nodded glumly.

"You'll come back up-river tomorrow evening, slip out of camp soon as it's dark and meet us here. Simple as a pimple, right?" "Right," murmured Sebastian.

"Right then. Out you get and dry off." As the dry wind from the uplands blew over his naked body, the purply tint of the dye faded into a matt chocolate.

Rosa had modestly moved away into the grove of Manila trees behind the camp. Every few minutes Flynn came across to Sebastian and touched his skin.

"Coming along nicely," he said, and, "Nearly done," and, "Jeer, you look better than real." Then finally in Swahili, "Right, Mohammed, mark his face." Mohammed squatted in front of Sebastian with a tiny gourd of cosmetics; a mixture of animal fat and ash and ochre. With his fingers he daubed Sebastian's cheeks and nose and forehead with the tribal patterns. His head held on one side in artistic concentration, making soft clucking sounds of concentration as he worked, until at last Mohammed was satisfied.

"He is ready."

"Get the clothes," said Flynn. This was an exaggeration.

Sebastian's attire could hardly be called clothing.

A string of bark around his neck from which was suspended a plugged duiker horn filled with snuff, a cloak of animal skin that smelled of wood-smoke and man-sweat, draped over his shoulders.

"It stinks!" said Sebastian cringing from contact with the garment. "And it's probably got lice."

"The real thing," agreed Flynn jovially.

"All right, Mohammed. Show him how to fit the istopo the hat."

"I don't have to wear that also," Sebastian protested, staring in horror as Mohammed came towards him, grinning.

"Of course you've got to wear it." Impatiently Flynn brushed aside his protest.

The hat was a hollow six-inch length cut from the neck of a calabash gourd. An anthropologist would have called it a penis-sheath.

It had two purposes: firstly to protect the wearer from the scratches of thorns and the bites of insect pests, and secondly as a boost to his masculinity.

Once in position it looked impressive, enhancing Sebastian's already considerable muscular development.

Rosa said nothing when she returned. She took one long startled look at the hat and then quickly averted her gaze, but her cheeks and neck flared bright scarlet.

"For God's sake, Bassie. Act like you proud of it. Stand up straight and take your hands away. Flynn coached his son-in-law.

Mohammed knelt to slip the rawhide sandals on to Sebastian's feet,

and then han-] him the small blanket roll tied with a bark string.

Sebastian slung it over one shoulder, then picked up the long-handled throwing-spear.

Automatically he grounded the butt and leaned his weight on the shaft; lifting his left leg and placing the sole of his foot against the calf of his right leg, he stood in the stork posture of rest.

In every detail he was a Wakamba tribesman.

"You'll do," said Flynn.

In the dawn, little wisps of river mist swirled around

Commissioner Fleischer's legs as he came down the bank and on to the improvised jetty of logs.

He ran his eyes over the two launches, checking the ropes that held down the cargoes of timber. The launches sat low in the water,

their exhausts puttering and blowing pale blue smoke that drifted away across the slick surface of the river.

"Are you ready?" he called to his sergeant of Askari.

"The men are eating, Bwana Mkuba."

"Tell them to hurry," growled

Fleischer. It was a futile order and he stepped to the edge of the jetty, unbuttoning his trousers. He urinated noisily into the river,

and the circle of men who squatted around the three-legged pot on the jetty watched him with interest, but without interrupting their breakfast.

With leather cloaks folded around their shoulders against the chill air off the water, they reached in turn into the pot and took a handful of the thick white maize porridge, moulding it into a mouth-size ball and then with the thumb forming a cup in the ball,

dipping the ball into the smaller enamel dish and filling the depression with the creamy yellow gravy it contained, a tantalizing mixture of stewed catfish and tree caterpillars.

It was the first time that Sebastian had tasted this delicacy. He sat with the others and imitated their eating routine, forcing himself to place a lump of the spiced maize meal in his mouth. His gorge rose and gagged him, it tasted like fish oil and new-mown grass, not really offensive it was just the thought of those fat yellow caterpillars.

But had he been eating ham sandwiches, his appetite would not have been hearty.

His stomach was cramped with apprehension. He was a spy. A word from one of his companions, and Commissioner Fleischer would shout for the hanging ropes. Sebastian remembered the men he had seen in the monkey-bean tree on the bank of this same river, he remembered the flies clustered on their swollen, lolling tongues. It was not a mental picture conducive to enjoyment of breakfast.

Now, pretending to eat, he watched Commissioner Fleischer instead.

It was the first time he had done so at leisure. The bulky figure in grey corduroy uniform, the pink boiled face with pale golden eyelashes,

the full petulant lips, the big freckled hands, all these revolted him.

He felt his uneasiness swamped by a revival of the emotions that had possessed him as he stood beside the newly filled grave of his daughter on the heights above Lalapanzi.

"Black pig-animals," shouted Herman Fleischer in Swahili, as he rebuttoned his clothing. "That is enough! You do nothing but eat and sleep. It is time now for work." He waddled across the logs of the jetty, into the little circle of porters. His first kick sent the three-legged pot clattering, his second kick caught Sebastian in the back and threw him forward on to his knees.

"Rasch!" He aimed another kick at one of them, but it was dodged,

and the porters scattered to the launches.

Sebastian scrambled up. He had been kicked only once before in his life, and Flynn O'Flynn had learned not to do it again. For

Sebastian there was nothing so humiliating as the contact of another man's foot against his person, also it had hurt.

Herman Fleischer had turned away to chivvy the others, so he did not see the hatred nor the way that Sebastian snarled at him, crouching like aleopard. Another second and he would have been on him. He might have killed Fleischer before the Askari shot him down but he never made the attempt.

A hand on his arm. Mohammed's cousin beside him, his" voice very low.

"Come! Let it pass. They will kill us also." And when Fleischer turned back the two of them had gone to the launch.

On the run down-river, Sebastian huddled with the others. Like them, drawing his cloak over his head to keep off the sun, but unlike them, he did not sleep. Through half-hooded eyes he was still watching

Herman Fleischer, and his thoughts were hate-Ugly.

Even with the current, the run in the deep-laden launches took almost four hours, and it was noon before they chugged around the last bend in the channel and turned in towards the mangrove forests.

Sebastian saw Herman Fleischer swallow the last bite of sausage and carefully repack the remainder into his haversack. He stood up and spoke to the man at the rudder, and both of them peered ahead.

"We have arrived," said Mohammed's cousin, and removed his cloak from over his head. The little huddle of porters stirred into wakefulness and Sebastian stood up with them. all This time he knew what to look for, and he saw the muzzy silhouette of the Blucher skulking under her camouflage. From low down on the water she looked mountainous, and Sebastian's spine tingled as he remembered when last he had seen her from this angle, driving down to ram them with those axe-sharp blows. But now she floated awry, listing heavily.

"The boat leans over to one side."

"Yes," agreed Mohammed's cousin. "The Allemand wanted it so. There has been a great carrying of goods within her, they have moved everything to make the boat lean over."

"Why?" The man shrugged and pointed with his chin. "They have lifted her belly from the water, see how they work with fire on the holes in her skin." Tiny as beetles, men swarmed on the exposed hull,

and even in the bright glare of midday, the welding torches flared and sparkled with blue-white flame. The new plating was conspicious in its coat of dull brown zinc oxide paint, against the battleship-grey of the original hull.

As the launch approached, Sebastian studied the work carefully.

He could see that it was nearing completion, the welders were running closed the last seams in the new plating. Already there were painters covering the oxide red with the matt grey final coat.

The pock marks of the shell splinters in her upper-works following had been closed, and here again men hung on the flimsy trapezes of rope and planks, their arms lifting and falling as they plied the paint brushes.

An air of bustle and intent activity gripped the Blitcher.

Everywhere men moved about fifty different tasks, while the uniforms of the officers were restless white spots roving about her decks.

"They have closed all the holes in her belly?" Sebastian asked.

"All of them," Mohammed's cousin confirmed. "See how she spits out the water that was in her womb." And he pointed again with his chin. From a dozen outlet vents, Blitcher's pumps were expelling solid streams of brown water as she emptied the flooded compartments.

"There is smoke from her chimneys," Sebastian exclaimed, as he noticed for the first time the faint shimmer of heat at the mouths of her stacks.

"Yes. They have built fire in the iron boxes deep inside her. My brother Walaka. works there now. He is helping to tend the fires. At first the fires were small, but each day they feed them higher."

Sebastian nodded thoughtfully, he knew it took time to heat cold furnaces without cracking the linings of fireclay.

The launch nosed in and bumped against the cliff-high side of the cruiser.

"Come, said Mohammed's cousin. "We will climb up and work with the gangs carrying the wood down into her. You will see more up there." A new wave of dread flooded over Sebastian. He didn't want to go up there among the enemy. But already his guide was scrambling up the catwalk that hung down Blucher's flank.

Sebastian adjusted his penis-sheath, hitched up his cloak, took a deep breath and followed him.

orrietirries it goes like that. In the beginning everything is an obscene shambles; nothing but snags and accidents and delays. Then suddenly everything drops into place and the job is finished." Standing under the awning on the foredeck, Commander (Engineering) Lochtkamper was a satisfied man, as he looked around the ship.

"Two weeks ago it looked as though we would still be messing around when the war was over but now!"

"You have done well," von

Kleine understated the facts.

"Again you have justified my confidence. But now I have another task to add to your burdens."

"What is it, Captain?" Lochtkamper kept his voice noncommittal, but there was a wariness in his eyes.

"I want to alter the ship's profile change it to resemble that of a British heavy cruiser."

"How?"

"A dummy stack abaft the radio office. Canvas on a wooden frame. Then mask "a turret, and block in the dip of our waist. If we run into the British blockade squadron in the night, it may give us the few extra minutes that will make the difference between success or failure." Von Kleine spoke again as he turned away, "Come, I will show you what I mean." Lochtkamper fell in beside him and they started aft, an incongruous pair; the engineer swaddled in soiled overalls, long arms dangling, shambling along beside his captain like a trained ape. Von Kleine tall over him, his tropical whites crisp and sterile, hands clasped behind his back and golden beard bowed forward on to his chest, leaning slightly against the steeply canted angle of the deck.

He spoke carefully. "When can I sail, Commander? I must know precisely. Is the work so far advanced that you can say with certainty?" Lochtkamper was silent, considering his reply as they picked their way side by side through the milling jostle of seamen and native porters.

"I will have full pressure on my boilers by tomorrow night,

another day after that to complete the work on the hull, two more days to adjust the trim of the ship and to make the alterations to the superstructure," he mused aloud.

Then he looked up. Von Kleine was watching him. "Four days, "he said. "I will be ready in four days."

"Four days. You are certain of that?"

"Yes."

"Four days," repeated von Kleine, and he stopped in midstride to think. This morning he had received a message from

Governor Schee in Dares Salaam, a message relayed from the Admiralty in Berlin. Naval Intelligence reported that three days ago a convoy of twelve troop ships, carrying Indian and South African infantry, had left Durban harbour.

Their destination was not known, but it was an educated guess that the British were about to open a new theatre of war. The campaign in

German West Africa had been brought to a swift and decisive conclusion by the South Africans. Botha and Smuts had launched a double-pronged offensive, driving in along the railroads to the German capital of

Windhoek. The capitulation of the German West African army had released the South African forces for work elsewhere. It was almost certain that those troopships were trundling up the east coast at this very moment, intent on a landing at one of the little harbours that dotted the coast of East Africa. Tonga perhaps, or Kilwa Kvinje possibly even Dares Salaam itself.

He must have his ship seaworthy and battle-ready to break out through the blockade squadron, and destroy that convoy.

"The big job will be readjusting the ship's trim. There is much to be done. Stores to be manhandled, shell from the magazines, the guns remounted..." Lochtkamper interrupted his thoughts. "We will need labour."

"I will order Fleischer to bring all his forced labour down to assist with the work," von Kleine muttered. "But we must sail in four days. The moon will be right on the night of the thirtieth, we must break out then." The saintly face was ruffled by the force of his concentration, he paced slowly, the golden beard slink on his chest as he formulated his plans, speaking aloud. Kyller has buoyed the channel. He must start clearing the minefield at the entrance. We can cut the boom at the last moment and the current will sweep it aside."

They had reached the waist of the cruiser. Von Kleine was so deep in his thoughts that it took Lochtkamper's restraining hand on his arm, to return him to reality.

"Careful, sir." With a start von Kleine looked up. They had walked into a knot, of African porters. Wild tribesmen, naked beneath their filthy leather cloaks, faces daubed with yellow ochre. They were man-handling the faggots of cordwood that were coming aboard from the launch that lay alongside Blitcher. One of the heavy bundles was suspended from the boom of the derrick, it was swaying twenty feet above the deck and von Kleine had been about to walk under it.

Lochtkamper's warning stopped him.

While he waited for them to clear away the faggot, von Kleine idly watched the native gang of workers.

One of the porters caught his attention. He was taller than his companions, his body sleeker, lacking the bunched and knotty Muscle.

His legs also were sturdier and finely moulded. The man lifted his head from his labours, and von Kleine looked into his face. The features were delicate; the lips not as full as, the forehead broader and deeper than, the typical African.

But it was the eyes that jerked von Kleine's attention back from the troop convoy. They were brown, dark brown and shifty. Von Kleine had learned to recognize guilt in the faces of his subordinates, it showed in the eyes. This man was guilty. It was only an instant that von Kleine saw it, then the porter dropped his gaze and stooped to take a grip on the bundle of timber. The man worried him, left him feeling vaguely uneasy, he wanted to speak with him question him. He started towards him.

"Captain! Captain!" Commissioner Fleischer had come puffing up the catwalk from the launch, plump and sweaty; he was pawing von

Kleine's arm.

"I must speak with you, Captain."

"Ah, Commissioner," von Kleine greeted him coolly, trying to avoid the damp Paw. "One moment, please.

"I wish to.

"It is a matter of the utmost importance. Ensign Proust -."

"In a moment, Commissioner." Von Kleine pulled away, but Fleischer was determined. He stepped in front of von Kleine, blocking his path.

"Ensign Proust, the cowardly little prig..." and von Kleine found himself embroiled in a long report about Ensign Proust's lack of respect for the dignity of the Commissioner. He had been insubordinate, he had argued with Herr Fleischer, and further he had told Herr Fleischer that he considered him "fat'.

"I will speak to Proust," said von Kleine. It was a trivial matter and he wanted no part of it. Then Commander Lochtkamper was beside them. Would the Captain speak to the Herr Commissioner about labour for the handling of ballast? They fell into a long discussion and while they talked, the gang of porters lugged the bundle of timber aft and were absorbed by the bustling hordes of workmen.

Sebastian was sweating with fright; trembling, giddy with fright.

Clearly he had sensed the German officer's suspicions. Those cold blue eyes had burned like dry ice. Now he stooped under his load, trying to shrink himself into insignificance, trying to overcome the grey clammy sense of dread that threatened to crush him.

"He saw you, wheezed Mohammed's cousin, shuffling along beside

Sebastian.

"Yes." Sebastian bent lower. "Is he still watching?" The old man glanced back over his shoulder.

"No. He speaks with Mafuta, the fat one."

"Good." Sebastian felt a lift of relief. "We must get back on the launch."

"The loading is almost finished, but we must first speak with my brother. He waits for us." They turned the corner of the aft gun-turrets. On the deck was a mountain of cordwood. Stacked neatly and lashed down with rope. Black men swarmed over it, between them spreading a huge green tarpaulin over the wood pile.

They reached the wood pile and added the faggots they carried to the stack. Then, in the custom of Africa, they paused to rest and talk. A man clambered down from the wood pile to join them, a sprightly old gentleman with woolly grey hair, impeccably turned out in cloak and penis sheath Mohammed's cousin greeted him with courteous affection, and they took snuff together.

"This man is my brother, "he told Sebastian. "His name is Walaka.

When he was a young man he killed a lion with a spear. It was a big lion with a black mane." To Sebastian this information seemed to be slightly irrelevant, his fear of discovery was making him nervously impatient. There were Germans all around them, big blond Germans bellowing orders as they chivvied on the labour gangs, Germans looking down on them from the tall superstructure above them, Germans elbowing them aside as they passed. Sebastian found it difficult to concentrate.

His two accomplices were involved in a family discussion.

It seemed that Walaka's youngest daughter had given birth to a fine son, but that during his absence aleopard had raided Walaka's village and killed three of his goats. The new grandson did not seem to compensate Walaka for the loss of his goats. He was distressed.

"Leopards are the excrement of dead lepers," he said, and would have enlarged on the subject but Sebastian interrupted him.

"Tell me of the things you have seen on this canoe. Say swiftly,

there is little time. I must go before the Allemand comes for all of us with the ropes." Mention of the ropes brought the meeting to order,

and Walaka launched into his report.

There were fires burning in the iron boxes in the belly of the canoe. Fires of such heat that they pained the eye when the door of the box was opened, fires with a breath like that of a hundred bush fires, fires that consumed... "Yes, Yes." Sebastian cut short the lyrical description.

"What else?" There had been a great carrying of goods, moving of them to one side of the canoe to make it lean in the water.

They had carried boxes and bales, unbolted machinery and guns.

See how they had been moved. They had taken from the rooms under her roof a great quantity of the huge bullets, also the white bags of powder for the guns and placed them in other rooms on the far side.

"What else?" There was more, much more to tell. Walaka enthused about meat which came out of little tins, of lanterns that burned without wick, flame or oil, of great wheels that spun, and boxes of steel that screamed and hummed, of clean fresh water that gushed from the months of long rubber snakes, sometimes cold and at other times hot as though it had been boiled over a fire. There were marvels so numerous that it confused a man.

"These things I know. Is there nothing else that you have seen?"

Indeed there was. The Allemand had shot three native porters, lining them up and covering their eyes with strips of white cloth. The men had jumped and wriggled and fallcii in a most comical fashion, and after-wards the GerJulius had washed the blood from the deck with water from the long snakes. Since then none of the other porters had helped themselves to blankets and buckets and other small movables the price was exorbitant.

Walaka's description of the execution had a chilling effect on

Sebastian. He had done what he had come to do and now his urge to leave Blitcher became overpowering. It was helped on by a German petty officer who joined the group uninvited.

"You lazy black baboons," he bellowed. "This is not a bloody

Sunday-school outing move, you swine, move!" And his boots flew. Led by Mohammed's cousin they left Walaka without farewell and scampered back along the deck. Just before they reached the entry port,

Sebastian checked. The two German officers stood where he had left them, but now they were looking up at the high smoke stacks. The tall officer with the golden beard was describing sweeping motions with his outstretched hand, talking while the stocky one listened intently.

Mohammed's cousin scurried past them and disappeared over the side into the launch, leaving Sebastian hesitant and reluctant to run the gauntlet of those pale blue eyes.

"Manali, come quickly. The boat swims, you will be left!"

Mohammed's cousin called from down below, his voice faint but urgent above the chug of the launch's engine.

Sebastian started forward again, his stomach a cold lump under his ribs. A dozen paces and he had reached the entry port.

The German officer turned and saw him. He challenged with raised voice, and came towards Sebastian, one arm outstretched as though to hold him.

Sebastian whirled and dived down the catwalk. Below him the launch was casting off her lines, water churning back from her propeller.

Sebastian reached the grating at the bottom of the catwalk. There was a gap of ten feet between him and the launch. He jumped, hung for a moment in the air, then hit the gunwale of the launch. His clutching fingers found a grip while his legs dangled in the warm water.

Mohammed's Cousin caught his shoulder and dragged him aboard.

They tumbled together in a heap on the deck ofthelaunch.

"Bloody kaffir," said Herman Fleischer and stooped to cuff them both heavily around the ears. Then he went back to his seat in the stern, and Sebastian smiled at him with something close to affection.

After those deadly blue eyes, Herman Fleischer seemed as dangerous as a teddy-bear.

Then he looked back at Blitcher. The German officer stood at the top of the catwalk, watching them as they drew away, and set a course upstream. Then he turned away from the rail and disappeared.

Sebastian sat on the day couch in the master cabin of HMS.

Renounce, he sagged against the arm-rest and fought off the grey waves of exhaustion that washed over his mind.

He had not slept in thirty hours. After his escape from Blucher there had been the long launch journey up-river during which he had remained awake and jittery with the after-effects of tension.

After disembarking he had sneaked out of Fleischer's camp,

avoiding the Askari guards, and trotted through the moonlight to meet

Flynn and Rosa.

A hurried meal, and then all three of them had mounted on bicycles supplied with the compliments of the Royal Navy, and ridden all night along a rough elephant path to where they had left a canoe hidden among the reeds on the bank of one of the Rufiji tributaries.

In the dawn they had paddled out of one of the unguarded channels of the delta and made their rendezvous with the little whaler from

HMS. Renounce.

Two long days of activity without rest, and Sebastian was groggy. Rosa sat beside him on the couch. She leaned across and touched his arm, her eyes dark with concern.

Neither of them was taking any part in the conference in which the other persons in the crowded cabin were deeply involved.

Joyce sat as chairman, and beside him an older heavier man with bushy grey eyebrows and a truculent jaw, hair brushed in streaks across his pate in an ineffectual attempt to conceal his baldness. This was

Armstrong, Captain of HMS. Pegasus, the other cruiser of the blockade squadron.

"Well, it looks as though Blitcher has made good her damage, then.

If she has fired her boilers, we can expect her to break out any day now von Kleine would not burn up good fuel to keep his stokers warm."

He said it with relish, a fighting man anticipating a good hard fight.

"There's a message I'd like to give her from Bloodhound and Orion an old account to settle." But Joyce also had a message, one that had its original the desk of Admiral Sir Percy Howe, Commander-in-Chief, South

Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In part this message read: "The safety of your squadron considered secondary to containing Blitcher. Risk involved in delaying until Blucher leaves the delta before engaging her is too high. Absolutely imperative that she be either destroyed or blocked at her present anchorage. Consequences of Blitcher running blockade and attacking the troop convoy conveying landing forces to invasion of Tonga will be catastrophic. Efforts being made to send you two tramp steamers to act as block ships, but failing their arrival,

and failing also effective offensive action against B14cher before 30

July 1915, you are hereby ordered to scuttle Renounce and Pegasus in the channel of the Rufiji to block Blitcher's exit." It was a command that left Captain Arthur Joyce sick with dread. To scuttle his splendid ships a thought as repulsive and loathsome as that of incest, of patricide, of human sacrifice. Today was 26 July, he had four days in which to find an alternative before the order became effective, "She'll come out at night, of course, bound to!" Armstrong's voice was thick with battle lust. "This time she'll not have an old girl and a baby like Orion and

Bloodhound to deal with." His tone changed slightly. "We'll have to look lively. New moon in three days so Blitcher will have dark nights.

There could be a change in the weather..." Armstrong was looking a little worried now, we'll have to tighten up."

"Read this," said

Joyce, and passed the flimsy to Armstrong. He read it.

"My God!" he gasped. "Scuttle. Oh, my God!"

"There are two channels that Blitcher could use." Joyce spoke softly. "We would have to block both of them Renounce and Pegasus!"

"Jesus God!" swore

Armstrong in horror. "There must be another way.

"I think there is" said Joyce, and looked across at Sebastian.

"Mr. Oldsmith," he spoke gently, "would it be possible for you to get on board the German cruiser once again?" There were tiny lumps of yellow mucus in the corner of Sebastian's bloodshot eyes, but the stain that darkened his skin concealed the rings of fatigue under them.

"I'd rather not, old chap." He ran his hand thoughtfully over his shaven scalp and the stubble of new hair rasped under his fingers. "It was one of the most unpleasant hours of my life."

"Quite," said Captain

Joyce. "Quite so! I wouldn't have asked you, had I not considered it to be of prime importance." Joyce paused and pursed his lips to whistle softly the first bar of Chopin's "Funeral March', then he sighed and shook his head. "If I were to tell you that you alone have it in your power to save both the cruisers of this squadron from destruction and to protect the lives of fifteen thousand British soldiers and seamen. how would you answer then?" Glumly, Sebastian sagged back against the couch and closed his eyes.

"Can I have a few hours sleep first?" It was exactly the size of a box of twenty-four Monte Crista Havana Cigars, for that had been its contents before Renounce's chief engine room artificer and the gunnery lieutenant had set to work on it.

It lay on the centre of Captain Joyce's desk, while the artificer explained its purpose to the respectful audience that stood around him.

"It's very simple," started the artificer in an accent that was as bracing as the fragrance of heather and highland whisky.

"It would have to be. " commented Flynn O'Flynn,... for Bassie to understand it."

"All you do is lift the lid." The artificer suited action to the words, and even Flynn craned forward to examine the contents of the cigar box. Packed neatly into it were six yellow sticks of gelignite, looking like candles wrapped in grease-proof paper. There was also the flat dry cell battery from a bull's eye lantern, and a travelling-clock in a pigskin case. All of these were connected by loops and twists of fine copper wire. Engraved into the metal of the clock base were the words: "To my dear husband Arthur,

With love, Iris.

Christmas 1914." Captain Arthur Joyce stilled a sentimental pang of regret with the thought that Iris would understand.

"Then..." said the artificer, clearly enjoying the hold he had on his audience, "... you wind the knob on the clock." He touched it with his forefinger, "... close the lid," he closed it, "... wait twelve hours, and BoomV The enthusiasm with which the Scotsman simulated an explosion blew a fine spray of spittle across the desk,

and Flynn withdrew hurriedly out of range.

"Wait twelve hours?" asked Flynn, dabbing at the droplets on his cheeks. "Why so long?"

"I ordered a twelve-hour delay on the fusing of the charge." Joyce answered the question. "If Mr. Oldsmith is to gain access to the Blitcher's magazines, he will have to infiltrate the native labour gangs engaged in transferring the explosives. Once he is a member of the gang he might find difficulty in extricating himself and getting away from the ship after he has placed the charge. I am sure that Mr. Oldsmith would be reluctant to make this attempt unless we could ensure that there is time for him to escape from Blucher, when his efforts... ah," he sought the correct phraseology, ah... come to fruition." Joyce was pleased with this speech, and- he turned to

Sebastian for endorsement. "Am I correct in my, assumption, Mr.

Oldsmith?" Not to be outdone in verbosity, Sebastian pondered his reply for a second. Five hours of deathlike sleep curled in Rosa's arms had refreshed his body and sharpened his wit to the edge of a Toledo steel blade.

"Indubitably,"he replied, and beamed in triumph.

They sat together in the time when the sun was dying and bleeding on the clouds. They sat together on a kaross of monkey skin in a thicket of wild ebony, at the head of one of the draws that wrinkled down into the valley of the Rufiji. "They sat in silence. Rosa bent forward over her needlework, as she stitched a concealed pocket into the filthy cloak of leather that lay across her lap. The pocket would hold the cigar box. Sebastian watched her, and his eyes upon her were a caress. She pulled the last stitch tight, knotted it, then leaned forward to bite the thread.

"There!" she said. "It's finished." And looked up into his eyes.

"Thank you," said Sebastian. They sat together quietly and Rosa reached out to touch his shoulder. The muscle under the black stained skin was rubber hard, and warm.

"Come."

she said and drew his head down to her so that their cheeks touched, and they held each other while the last light faded.

The African dusk thickened the shadows in the wild ebony, and down the draw a jackal yipped plaintively.

"Are you ready?" Flynn stood near them, a dark bulky figure, with

Mohammed beside him.

"Yes. "Sebastian looked up at him.

"Kiss me, "whispered Rosa, and come back safely." Gently

Sebastian broke from her embrace. He stood tall above her, and draped the cloak over his naked body. The cigar box hung heavily between his shoulder blades.

"Wait for me,"he said, and walked away.

Flynn Patrick O'Flynn moved restlessly under his single blanket and belched. Heartburn moved acid sour in his throat, and he was cold.

The earth under him had long since lost the warmth it had sucked from yesterday's sun. A small slice of the old moon gave a little silver light to the night.

Unsleeping he lay and listened to the soft sound of Rosa sleeping near him. The sound irritated him, he lacked only an excuse to waken her and make her talk to him. Instead he reached into the haversack that served as his pillow and his fingers closed round the cold smooth glass of the bottle.

A night-bird hooted softly down the draw, and Flynn released the bottle and sat up quickly. He placed two fingers between his lips and repeated the night-bird's cry.

Minutes later Mohammed drifted like a small black ghost into camp and came to squat beside Flynn's bed.

"see you, Fini."

"You I see also, Mohammed. It went well?"

"It went well."

"Manali has entered the camp of the Allemand?"

"He sleeps now beside the man who is my cousin, and in the dawn they will go down the RLIfiji, to the big boat of the Allemand once again."

"Good!"

grunted Flynn. "You have done well." Mohammed coughed softly to signify that there was more to tell.

"What is it? "Flynn demanded.

"When I had seen Manali safely into the care of my cousin, I came back along the valley and..." he hesitated, "... perhaps it is not fitting to speak of such matters at a time when our Lord Manali goes unarmed and alone into the camp of the Allemand."

"Speak," said Flynn.

"As I walked without sound, I came to a place where this valley falls down to the little river called Abati. You know the place?"

"Yes, about a mile down the draw from here."

"That is the place." Mohammed nodded. "It was here that I saw something move in the night. It was as though a mountain walked." A silver of ice was thrust down Flynn's spine, and his breathing snagged painfully in his throat.

"Yes?" he breathed.

"It was a mountain armed with teeth of ivory that grew from its face to touch the ground as it walked."

"Plough the Earth." Flynn whispered the name, and his hand fell on to the rifle that lay loaded beside his bed.

"It was that one." Mohammed nodded again. "He feeds quietly,

moving towards the Rufiji. But the voice of a rifle would carry down to the ears of the Allemand."

"I won't fire," whispered Flynn. "I just want to have a look at him. I just want to see him again." And the hand on the rifle shook like that of a man in high fever.

the sun pushed up and sat fat and fiery as molten gold, on the hills of the Rufiji basin. Its warmth lifted streamers of mist from the swamps and reed beds that bounded the Abati river, and they smoked like the ashes of a dying fire.

Under the fever trees the air was still cool with the memory of the night, but the sun sent long yellow shafts of light probing through the branches to disperse and warm it.