by Wilbur Smith
Herr Fleischer struggled upright in his chair and stared at the messenger. The pink of his complexion slowly became cross-veined with red and purple.
‘Kalani says also: “Since their coming the voices of their guns have never ceased to speak along the Rufiji river, and there has been a great killing of elephants so that in the noonday the sky is dark with the birds that come for the meat.”’
Herr Fleischer was thrashing around in his chair, speech was locked in his throat and his face had swollen so it threatened to burst like an over-ripe fruit.
‘Kalani says further: “Two white men are on the island. One is a man who is very thin and young and is therefore of no account. The other white man Kalani has seen only at a great distance but by the redness of this man’s face, and by his bulk, he knows in his heart it is Fini.”’
At the name Herr Fleischer became articulate, if not coherent – he bellowed like a bull in rut. The messenger winced, such a bellow from the Bwana Mkuba usually preceded a multiple hanging.
‘Sergeant!’ The next bellow had form, and Herr Fleischer was on his feet, struggling to clinch the buckle of his belt.
‘Rasch!’ he roared again. O’Flynn was in German territory again; O’Flynn was stealing German ivory once more – and compounding the insult by flying the Union Jack over the Kaiser’s domain.
‘Sergeant, where the thunder of God are you?’ With incredible speed for a fat man Herr Fleischer raced down the long length of the veranda. For three years now, ever since his arrival in Mahenge, the name of Flynn O’Flynn had been enough to ruin his appetite, and produce in him a condition very close to epilepsy.
Around the corner of the veranda appeared the sergeant of the Askari, and Herr Fleischer braked just in time to avert collision.
‘A storm patrol,’ bellowed the Commissioner, blowing a cloud of spittle in his agitation. ‘Twenty men. Full field packs, and one hundred pounds of ammunition. We leave in an hour.’
The sergeant saluted and doubled away across the parade ground. A minute later a bugle began singing with desperate urgency.
Slowly, through the black mists of rage, reason returned to Herman Fleischer. He stood with shoulders hunched, breathing heavily through his mouth, and mentally digested the full import of Kalani’s message.
This was not just another of O’Flynn’s will-o’-the-wisp forays across the Rovuma from Mozambique. This time he had sailed brazenly into the Rufiji delta, with a full-scale expedition, and hoisted the British flag. A queasy sensation, not attributable to the pickled pork, settled on Herr Fleischer’s stomach. He knew the makings of an international incident when he saw one.
This, perhaps, was the goad that would launch the fatherland on the road to its true destiny. He gulped with excitement. They had flapped that hated flag in the Kaiser’s face just once too often. This was history being made, and Herman Fleischer stood in the centre of it.
Trembling a little, he hurried into his office, and began drafting the report to Governor Schee that might plunge the world into a holocaust from which the German people would rise as the rulers of creation.
An hour later, he rode out of the boma on a white donkey with his slouch uniform hat set well forward on his head to shield his eyes from the glare. Behind him his black Askari marched with their rifles at the slope. Smart in their pillbox kepis with the backflaps hanging to the shoulder, khaki uniforms freshly pressed, and putteed legs rising and falling in unison, they made as gallant a show as any commander could wish.
A day and a half march would bring them to the confluence of the Kilombero and Rufiji rivers where the Commissioner’s steam launch was moored.
As the buildings of Mahenge vanished behind him, Herr Fleischer relaxed and let his ample backside conform to the shape of the saddle.
– 6 –
‘Now, have you got it straight?’ Flynn asked without conviction. The past eight days of hunting together had given him no confidence in Sebastian’s ability to carry out a simple set of instructions without introducing some remarkable variation of his own. ‘You go down the river to the island, and you load the ivory onto the dhow. Then you come back here with all the canoes to pick up the next batch.’ Flynn paused to allow his words to absorb into the spongy tissue of Sebastian’s head before he went on. ‘And for Chrissake don’t forget the gin.’
‘Right you are, old chap.’ With eight days’ growth of black beard, and the skin peeling from the tip of his sunburned nose, Sebastian was beginning to fit the role of ivory poacher. The wide-brimmed terai hat that Flynn had loaned him came down to his ears, and the razor edges of the elephant grass had shredded his trouser legs and stripped the polish from his boots. His wrists and the soft skin behind his ears were puffy and speckled with spots of angry red where the mosquitoes had drunk deep, but he had lost a little weight in the heat and the ceaseless walking, so now he was lean and hard-looking.
They stood together under a monkey-bean tree on the bank of the Rufiji, while at the water’s edge the bearers were loading the last tusks into the canoes. There was a purple-greenish smell hanging over them in the steamy heat, a smell which Sebastian hardly noticed now – for the last eight days had seen a great killing of elephant and the stink of green ivory was as familiar to him as the smell of the sea to a mariner.
‘By the time you get back tomorrow morning the boys will have brought in the last of the ivory. We’ll have a full dhow-load and you can set off for Zanzibar.’
‘What about you? Are you staying on here?’
‘Not bloody likely. I’ll light out for my base camp in Mozambique.’
‘Wouldn’t it be easier for you to come along on the dhow? It’s nearly two hundred miles to walk.’ Sebastian was solicitous; in these last days he had conceived a burning admiration for Flynn.
‘Well, you see, it’s like this …’ Flynn hesitated. This was no time to trouble Sebastian with talk of German gunboats waiting off the mouth of the Rufiji. ‘I have to get back to my camp, because …’ Suddenly inspiration came to Flynn O’Flynn ‘Because my poor little daughter is there all alone.’
‘You’ve got a daughter?’ Sebastian was taken by surprise.
‘You damn right I have.’ Flynn experienced a sudden rush of paternal affection and duty. ‘And the poor little thing is there all alone.’
‘Well, when will I see you again?’ The thought of parting from Flynn, of being left to try and find his own way to Australia saddened Sebastian.
‘Well,’ Flynn was tactful. ‘I hadn’t really given that much thought.’ This was a lie. Flynn had thought about it ceaselessly for the last eight days. He was eagerly anticipating waving farewell to Sebastian Oldsmith for all time.
‘Couldn’t we …’ Sebastian blushed a little under his sun-reddened cheeks. ‘Couldn’t we sort of team up together? I could work for you, sort of as an apprentice?’
The idea made Flynn wince. He almost panicked at the thought of Sebastian permanently trailing along behind him and discharging his rifle at random intervals. ‘Well now, Bassie boy,’ he clasped a thick arm around Sebastian’s shoulders, ‘first you sail that old dhow back to Zanzibar and old Kebby El Keb will pay you out your share. Then you write to me, hey? How about that? You write me, and we’ll work something out.’
Sebastian grinned happily. ‘I’d like that, Flynn. I’d truly like that.’
‘All right, then, off you go. And don’t forget the gin.’
With Sebastian standing in the bows of the lead canoe, the double-barrelled rifle clutched in his hands, and the terai hat pulled down firmly over his ears, the little flotilla of heavily laden canoes pulled out from the bank and caught the current. Paddles dipped and gleamed in the evening sunlight as they arrowed away towards the first bend downstream.
Still standing unsteadily in the frail craft, Sebastian looked back and waved his rifle at Flynn on the bank.
‘For Chrissake, be careful with that goddamn piece,’ Flynn bellowed too late. The rifle fired, and the recoil toppled Sebasti
an sprawling onto the pile of ivory behind him. The canoe rocked dangerously while the paddlers struggled to keep it from capsizing, and then disappeared around the bend.
Twelve hours later, the canoes reappeared around the same bend, and headed towards the lone monkey-bean tree on the bank. The canoes rode lightly, empty of ivory, and the paddlers were singing one of the old river chants.
Freshly shaved, wearing a clean shirt and his other pair of boots, a case of Flynn’s liquor between his knees, Sebastian peered eagerly ahead for his first glimpse of the big American.
A fine blue tendril of camp-fire smoke smeared out across the river, but there were no figures waving a welcome from the bank. Suddenly Sebastian frowned as he realized that the silhouette of the monkey-bean tree had altered. He wrinkled his eyes, peering ahead uncertainly.
Behind him rang the first cry of alarm from his boatmen. ‘Allemand!’ And the canoe swerved under him.
He glanced back and saw the other canoes wheel away in tight circles aimed downstream, the boatmen jabbering in terror as they leaned forward to thrust against the paddles.
His own canoe was in swift pursuit of the others as they darted beyond the bend.
‘Hey!’ Sebastian shouted at the sweat-shiny backs of his paddlers. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
They gave him no answer but the muscles beneath their black skins bunched and rippled in their frantic efforts to drive the canoe faster.
‘Stop that immediately!’ Sebastian yelled at them. ‘Take me back, dash it all. Take me to the camp.’
In desperation Sebastian lifted the rifle and aimed at the nearest man. ‘I’m not joking,’ he yelled again. The native glanced over his shoulder into the gaping twin muzzles and his face, already twisted with fear, now convulsed into a mask of terror. They had all developed a healthy reverence for the way Sebastian handled that rifle.
The man stopped paddling, and one by one the others followed his example. Sitting frozen under the hypnotic eyes of Sebastian’s rifle.
‘Back!’ said Sebastian and gestured eloquently upstream. Reluctantly the man nearest him dipped his paddle and the canoe turned broadside across the current. ‘Back!’ Sebastian repeated and the men dipped again.
Slowly, warily, the single canoe crept upstream towards the monkey-bean tree and the grotesque new fruit that hung from its branches.
The hull slid in onto the firm mud and Sebastian stepped ashore.
‘Out!’ he ordered the boatmen and gestured again. He wanted them well away from the canoe for he knew that, otherwise, the moment his back was turned they would set off downstream again with renewed enthusiasm. ‘Out!’ and he herded them up the steep bank into Flynn O’Flynn’s camp.
The two bearers who had died of gunshot wounds lay beside the smouldering fire. But the four men in the monkey-bean tree had been less fortunate. The ropes had cut deeply into the flesh of their necks and their faces were swollen, mouths wide in the last breath that had never been taken. On the lolling tongues the flies crawled like metallic green bees.
‘Cut them down!’ Sebastian roused himself from the nausea that was bubbling queasily up from his stomach. The boatmen stood paralysed and Sebastian felt anger now mixed with his revulsion. Roughly he shoved one of the men towards the tree. ‘Cut them down,’ he repeated, and thrust the handle of his hunting knife into the man’s hand. Sebastian turned away as the native shinned up into the fork of the tree with the knife blade damped between his teeth. Behind him he heard the heavy meaty thuds as the dead men dropped from the tree. Again his stomach heaved, and he concentrated on his search of the trampled grass around the camp.
‘Flynn!’ he called softly. ‘Flynn. I say Flynn! Where are your There were the prints of hobnailed boots in the soft earth, and at one place he stooped and picked up the shiny brass cylinder of an empty cartridge case. Stamped into the metal of the base around the detonator cap were the words Mauser Fabriken. 7 mm.
‘Flynn!’ more urgently now as the horror of it came home to him. ‘Flynn!’ and he heard the grass rustle near him. He swung towards it, half raising the rifle.
‘Master!’ and Sebastian felt disappointment swoop in his chest.
‘Mohammed. Is that you, Mohammed?’ and he recognized the wizened little figure with the eternal fez perched on the woolly head as it emerged. Flynn’s chief gun-boy, the only one with a little English.
‘Mohammed,’ with relief, and then quickly, ‘Fini? Where is Fini?’
‘They shot him, master. The Askari came in the early morning before the sun. Fini was washing. They shot him and he fell into the water.’
‘Where? Show me where.’
Below the camp, a few yards from where the canoe was drawn up, they found the pathetic little bundle of Flynn’s clothing. Beside it was a half-consumed cake of cheap soap and a metal hand-mirror. There were the deep imprints of naked feet in the mud, and Mohammed stooped and broke off one of the green reeds at the water’s edge. Wordlessly he handed it to Sebastian.. A drop of blood had dried black on the leaf, and it crumbled as Sebastian touched it with his thumb-nail.
‘We must find him. He might still be alive. Call the others. We’ll search the banks downstream.’
In an agony of loss, Sebastian picked up Flynn’s soiled shirt and crumpled it in his fist.
– 7 –
Flynn shucked off his pants and the filthy bush-shirt. Shivering briefly in the chill of dawn, he hugged himself and massaged his upper arms while he peered into the shallow water, searching the bottom for the telltale chicken-wire pattern that would mean a crocodile was buried in the mud waiting for him.
His body was porcelain-white where clothing had protected it from the sun, but his arms were chocolate-brown, and a deep vee of the same brown dipped down from his throat onto his chest. Above it the battered red face was creased and puffy with sleep, and his long, greying hair was tangled and matted. He belched thunderously, and grimaced at the taste of old gin and pipe tobacco, then, satisfied that no reptile lay in ambush, he stepped into the water and lowered his massive hams to sit waist-deep. Snorting, he scooped water with his cupped hands over his head, then lumbered out onto the bank again. Sixty seconds is a long time to stay in a river like the Rufiji, for the crocodiles come quickly to the sound of splashing.
Naked, dripping, hair plastered down across his face, Flynn began to soap himself, working up a thick lather at his crotch and tenderly massaging his abundant genitalia, he washed away the sloth of sleep and his appetite stirred. He called up at the camp, ‘Mohammed, beloved of Allah and son of his prophet, shake your black arse out of the sack and get the coffee brewing.’ Then as an afterthought, he added, ‘And put a little gin in it.’
Soapsuds filled Flynn’s armpits, and coated the melancholy sag of his belly when Mohammed came down the bank to him. Mohammed was balancing a large enamel mug from which curled little wisps of aromatic steam, and Flynn grinned at him, and spoke in Swahili. ‘Thou art kind and merciful; this charity will be writ against your name in the Book of Paradise.’
He reached for the mug but before his fingers touched it, there was a fusillade of gun-fire above them and a bullet hit Flynn high up in the thigh. It spun him sideways so he sprawled half in mud and half in water.
Lying stunned with the shock, he heard the rush of Askari into the camp, heard their shouted triumph as they clubbed with the gun-butt those who had survived the first. volley. Flynn wriggled into a sitting position.
Mohammed was coming to him anxiously.
‘Run,’ grunted Flynn. ‘Run, damn you.’
‘Lord …’
‘Get out of here.’ Savagely Flynn lashed out at him, and Mohammed recoiled. The rope, you fool. They’ll give you the rope and wrap you in a pigskin.’
A second longer Mohammed hesitated, then he ducked and scampered into the reeds.
‘Find Fini,’ roared a bull voice in German. ‘Find the white man.’
Flynn realized then that it was a stray bullet that had hit him – per
haps even a ricochet. His leg was numb from the hip down, but he dragged himself into the water. He could not run, so he must swim.
‘Where is he? Find him!’ raged the voice, and suddenly the grass on the bank burst open and Flynn looked up.
For the first time they confronted each other. These two who had played murderous hide-and-seek for three long years across ten thousand square miles of bush.
‘ja!’ Fleischer’s jubilant bellow as he swung and sighted the pistol at the man in the water below him. ‘This time!’ aiming carefully, steadying the Luger with both hands.
The brittle snapping sound of the shot, and the slap of the bullet into the water a foot from Flynn’s head were followed by Fleischer’s snarl of disappointment.
Filling his lungs, Flynn ducked below the surface. Frog-kicking with his good leg, trailing the wounded one, he turned with the current and swam. He swam until his trapped breath threatened to explode his chest, and coloured lights Cashed and twinkled behind his clenched eyelids. Then he clawed to the surface. On the bank Fleischer was waiting for him with a dozen of his Askari. There he is!’ as Flynn blew like a whale thirty yards downstream. Gun-fire crackled and the water whipped and leaped and creamed around Flynn’s head.
‘Shoot straight!’ Howling in frustration and blazing wildly with the Luger, Fleischer watched the head disappear and Flynn’s fat white buttocks break the surface for an instant as he dived. Sobbing with anger and exertion, Fleischer turned his fury on the Askari around him. ‘Pigs! Stupid black pig dogs!’ And he swung the empty pistol against the nearest head, knocking the man to his knees. Intent on avoiding the flailing pistol, none of them were ready when Flynn surfaced for the second time. A desultory volley kicked fountains no closer than ten feet to Flynn’s bobbing head, and he dived again.
‘Come on! Chase him!’ Herding his Askari ahead of him, Fleischer trotted along the bank in pursuit. Twenty yards of good going, then they came to the first swamp hole and waded through it to be confronted by a solid barrier of elephant grass. They plunged into it and were swallowed so they no longer had sight of the river.