The African Queen

by C. S. Forester

  Allnutt was already leaping about the boat, picking things up and putting them down again. It was more of an effort for him to speak calmly.

  “They’ll see the funnel and the awning,” he said, in a lucid interval. Putting up the funnel and the awning stanchions had been part of the spring cleaning of yesterday.

  For answer Rose tore the ragged awning down again from its supports.

  “You’ve got plenty of time to get the funnel down,” she said. “They won’t be able to see it yet, and the reeds are between them and us. I’ll see about the stanchions. Give me a screwdriver.”

  Rose had the sense and presence of mind to realize that if a ship the size of the Königin Luise was only a dot to them, they must be less than a dot to it.

  With the top hamper stowed away, the African Queen had a freeboard of hardly three feet; they would be quite safe among the reeds unless they were looked for specially—and Rose knew that the Germans would have no idea that the African Queen was on the Lake. She looked up and watched the Königin Luise carefully. She was nearer, coasting steadily southward along the margin of the Lake. From one dot she had grown into two—her white hull being visible under her high bridge. It would be fully an hour before she opened up the mouth of the river and could see the African Queen against the reeds.

  “Let’s get the boat in now,” she said.

  They swung her round so that her bows pointed into the reeds. Pulling and tugging with the boat hooks against the reed roots they got her half way in, but all her stern still projected out into the channel.

  “You’ll have to cut some of those reeds down. How deep is the mud?” said Rose.

  Allnutt probed the mud about the African Queen’s bows and dubiously contemplated the result.

  “Hurry up,” snapped Rose, testily, and Allnutt took his knife and went over the bows among the reeds. He sank in the mud until the surface water was up to his armpits. Floundering about, he cut every reed within reach as low as he could manage it. Then, holding the bow painter, with Rose’s help he was able to pull himself out of the clinging mud, and lay across the foredeck while Rose worked the African Queen up into the space he had cleared.

  “There’s still a bit sticking out,” said Rose. “Once more will do it.”

  Allnutt splashed back among the reeds and went on cutting. When he had finished and climbed on board again, between the two of them they hauled the boat up into the cleared space. The reeds which the bows had thrust aside when they entered began to close again round the stern.

  “It would be better if we were a bit farther in still,” said Rose, and without a word Allnutt went in among the reeds once more.

  This time the gain was sufficient. The African Queen lay in thick reeds; about her stern was a thin but satisfactory screen of the reeds at the edge, which, coming back to the vertical, made her safe against anything but close observation even if—as was obviously unlikely—the Königin Luise should see fit to come up the reed-bordered channel to the delta.

  Standing on the gunwale, Rose and Allnutt could just see over the reeds. The Königin Luise was holding steadily on her course, a full mile from the treacherous shoals of the shore. She was nearly opposite the mouth of the channel now, and she showed no signs of turning. They watched her for five minutes. She looked beautiful in her glittering white paint against the vivid blue of the water. A long pennant streamed from the brief pole mast beside her funnel; at her stern there floated the flag of the Imperial German Navy with its black cross. On her deck in the bows they could just discern the six-pounder gun which gave the Germans the command of Lake Wittelsbach. No Arab dhow, no canoe, could show her nose outside the creeks and inlets of the Lake unless the Königin Luise gave permission.

  She was past the channel now, still keeping rigidly to the south. There was clearly no danger of discovery; she was on a cruise of inspection round the Lake, just making certain that there was no furtive flouting of authority. Rose watched her go, and then got down heavily into the sternsheets.

  “My malaria’s started again,” she said, wearily.

  Her face was drawn and apprehensive as a result of the ache she had been enduring in her joints, and her teeth were already chattering. Allnutt wrapped her in the rugs and made what preparations he could for the fever which would follow.

  “Mine’s begun too,” he said then. Soon both of them were helpless and shivering, and moaning a little, under the blazing sun.

  Chapter 14

  WHEN the attack was over in the late afternoon, Rose got uncertainly to her feet again. Allnutt was only now coming out of the deep, reviving sleep which follows the fever of malaria in fortunate persons. The first thing Rose did was what everyone living in a boat comes to do after an unguarded interval. She stood up and looked about her, craning her neck over the reeds so as to sweep the horizon.

  Down in the south she saw it again, that smudge of smoke and that white speck. She formed and then discarded the idea that the Königin Luise was still holding her old course. The gunboat was returning; she must have cruised down out of sight to the south and then begun to retrace her course. Allnutt came and stood beside her, and without a word they watched the Königin Luise gradually grow larger and more distinct as she came back along the coast. It was Allnutt who broke the silence.

  “D’you fink she’s looking for us?” he asked, hoarsely.

  “No,” said Rose, with instant decision. “Not at all. She’s only keeping guard on the coast.”

  Rose was influenced more by faith than by judgment. Her mission would be too difficult to succeed if the Germans were on the lookout for them, and therefore it could not be so.

  “Hope you’re right,” said Allnutt. “Matter of fact, I fink you are myself.”

  “She’s going a different way now!” said Rose, suddenly.

  The Königin Luise had altered her course a trifle, and was standing out from the shore.

  “She’s not looking for us, then,” said Allnutt.

  They watched her as she steered across the Lake, keeping just above their horizon, heading for the islands which they could see straight opposite them.

  “Wonder what she’s goin’ to do?” said Allnutt, but all the same it was he who first noticed that when she came to a stop.

  “She’s anchoring there for the night,” said Allnutt. “Look!”

  The flag at the stern disappeared, as is laid down as a rule to be followed at sunset in the Imperial Instructions for Captains of Ships of the Imperial German Marine.

  “Did you ’ear anything then?” asked Allnutt.

  “No.”

  “I fort I ’eard a bugle.” Allnutt could not possibly have heard a bugle over four miles of water, not even in the stillness which prevailed, but undoubtedly there were bugles blowing on the Königin Luise at approximately that time. Even though the crew of the Königin Luise consisted only of six white officers and twenty-five coloured ratings, everything was done on board as befitted the exacting standards of the navy of which the ship was a part.

  “Well, there they are,” said Allnutt. “And there they’ll stop. That’s a good anchorage out there among the islands. We’ll see ’em go in the morning.”

  He got down from the gunwale while Rose yet lingered. The sun had set in a sudden blaze of colour, and it was almost too dark to see the distant white speck. She could not accept as philosophically as Allnutt the inevitability of their present inaction. They were on the threshold of events. They must make ready, and plan, and strike their blow for England, even though any scheme seemed more fantastic now than when viewed from the misty distance of the upper Ulanga.

  “We ought to have been ready for them to-day,” said Rose, turning bitterly to Allnutt, the glow of whose cigarette she could just see in the dark.

  Allnutt puffed at his cigarette, and then brought out a surprisingly helpful suggestion.

  “Coo,” he said, “don’t you worry. I been thinking. They’ll come ’ere agine, you just see if they don’t. You know what the
se Germans are. They lays down systems and they sticks to ’em. Mondays they’re at one plice, Tuesdays they’re somewhere else, Wednesdays p’raps, they’re ’ere—I dunno what dye it is to-dye. Saturday nights I expect they goes in to Port Livingstone an’ lays up over Sunday. Then they start agine on Monday, same ole round. You know.”

  Allnutt was without doubt the psychologist of the two. What he said was so much in agreement with what Rose had seen of official German methods that she could not but think there must be truth in it. He went on to press home his point by example.

  “Up at the mine,” he said, “Old Kaufman, the inspector, ’oo ’ad the job of seeing that the mine was being run right—an’ a fat lot o’ good all those rules of theirs was, too—’e used to turn up once a week regular as clockwork. Always knew when ’e was coming, the Belgians did, an’ they’d ’ave everything ready for ’im. ’E’d come in an’ look round, and ’ave a drink, an’ then off ’e’d go agine wiv ’is Askaris an’ ’is bearers. Used to mike me laugh even then.”

  “Yes, I remember,” said Rose, absently. She could remember how Samuel had sometimes chafed against the woodenness of German rules and routine. There could be no doubt that if the Königin Luise had once moored amongst these islands she would do so again. Then—her plan was already formed.

  “Charlie,” she said, and her voice was gentle.

  “Yerss, old girl?”

  “You must start getting those torpedoes ready. To-morrow morning, as soon as it’s light. How long will it take?”

  “I can get the stuff into the tubes in no time, as you might say. Dunno about the detonators. Got to mike ’em, you see. Might take a coupler dyes easy. Matter of fact, I ’aven’t thought about ’em prop’ly. Then we got to cut those ’oles in the bows—that won’t tike long. Might ’ave it all done in a coupler dyes. Everything. If we don’t ’ave malaria too bad. Depends on them detonators.”

  “All right.” There was something unnatural about Rose’s voice.

  “Rosie, old girl,” said Allnutt. “Rosie.”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “I know what you’re thinkin’ about doing. You needn’t try to ’ide it from me.”

  Had it not been for the discordant cockney accent Allnutt’s voice in its gentleness might have been that of some actor in a sentimental moment on the stage. He took her hand in the darkness and pressed it, unresponsive as it was.

  “Not now, you needn’t ’ide it, darling,” he said. Even at that moment his cockney self-consciousness came to embarrass him, and he tried to keep the emotion out of his voice. For them there was neither the unrestraint of primitive people nor the acquired self-control of other classes of society.

  “You want to tike the African Queen out at night next time the Louisa’s ’ere, don’t you, old girl?” said Allnutt.

  “Yes.”

  “I fink it’s the best chance we got of all,” said Allnutt. “We oughter manage it.”

  Allnutt was silent for a second or two, making ready for his next argument. Then he spoke.

  “You needn’t come, old girl. There ain’t no need for us both to—to do it. I can manage it meself, easy.”

  “Of course not,” said Rose. “That wouldn’t be fair. It’s you who ought to stay behind. I can manage the launch on my own as far as those islands. That’s what I was meaning to do.”

  “I know,” said Allnutt, surprisingly. “But it’s me that ought to do it. Besides, with them beggars—”

  It was an odd argument that developed. Allnutt was perfectly prepared by now to throw away the life that had seemed so precious to him. This plan of Rose’s which had already materialized so far and so surprisingly had become like a living thing to him—like a piece of machinery, would perhaps be a better analogy in Allnutt’s case. There would be something wrong about leaving it incomplete. And somehow the sight of the Königin Luise cruising about the lake “as bold as brass” had irritated Allnutt. He was aflame with partisanship. He was ready for any mad sacrifice which would upset those beggars’ apple cart—presumably Allnutt’s contact with the German nation had been unfortunate; the Germans were a race it was easy to hate if hatred came easily, as it did in those days. There was a fierce recklessness about him in odd contrast with his earlier cowardice.

  Perhaps no one can really understand the state of mind of a man who volunteers in war for duty that may lead to death, but that such volunteers are always forthcoming has been proved by too many pitiful events in history.

  Allnutt tried to reason with Rose. Although they had both of them tacitly dropped their earlier plan of sending the African Queen out on her last voyage with no crew on board—Rose knew too much about the launch’s little ways by now—Allnutt tried to argue that for him there would be no serious risk. He could dive off the stern of the boat a second before the crash, as soon as he was sure that she would attain the target. Even if he were at the tiller (as privately he meant to be, to make certain), the explosion right up in the bows might not hurt him—Allnutt had the nerve to suggest that even when he had a very sound knowledge of the power of explosives and could guess fairly accurately what two hundredweight of high explosive would do if it went off all at once. In fact, Allnutt was on the point of arguing that blowing up the Königin Luise would be a perfectly safe proceeding for anybody, until he saw what a loophole that would leave for Rose’s argument.

  It all ended, as was inevitable, in their agreeing in the end that they would both go. There was no denying that their best chance of success lay in having one person to steer and one to tend the engine. It was further agreed between them that when they were fifty yards from the Königin Luise one of them would jump overboard with the lifebuoy; but Allnutt thought that it was settled that Rose should do the jumping, and Rose thought that it would be Allnutt.

  “Not more’n a week from now,” said Allnutt, meditatively.

  They had a feeling of anticipation which if not exactly pleasurable was not really unpleasant. They had been working like slaves for weeks now at imminent risk of their lives to this one end, and they had grown so obsessed with the idea that they could not willingly contemplate any action which might imperil its consummation. And in Rose there burned the flame of fanatical patriotism as well. She was so convinced of the rightness of the action she contemplated, and of the necessity for it, that other considerations—even Charlie’s safety—weighed with her hardly at all. She could reconcile herself to Charlie’s peril as she might have reconciled herself if he were seriously ill, as something quite necessary and unavoidable. The conquest of German Central Africa was vastly, immeasurably more important than their own welfare—so immeasurably more important that it never occurred to her to weigh the one against the other. She glowed, she actually felt a hot flush, when she thought of the triumph of England.

  She rose in the darkness, with Allnutt beside her, and looked over the vague reeds across the lake. There were stars overhead, and stars faintly reflected in the water. The moon had not yet risen. But right over there, there was a bundle of faint lights which were neither stars not their reflections. She clasped Allnutt’s arm.

  “That’s them, all right,” said Allnutt.

  Rose only realized then what a practical sailor would have thought of long before, that if the Germans took the precaution of hiding all lights when they were anchored the task of finding them on a dark night might well be impossible. Yet as they were in the only ship on the lake, and forty miles from their nearest earthbound enemy, there was obviously no need for precaution.

  The sight of those lights made their success absolutely certain, at the moment when Rose first realized that it might have not been quite so certain. She felt a warm gratitude towards the fate which had been so kind. It was in wild exaltation that she clasped Allnutt’s arm. In all the uncertainty of future peril and all the certainty of future triumph she clung to him in overwhelming passion. Her love for him and her passion for her country were blended inextricably, strangely. She kissed him in the starlight as Joa
n of Arc might have kissed a holy relic.

  Chapter 15

  IN the morning they saw the Königin Luise get under way and steam off to the northward again on her interminable patrolling of the lake.

  “We’ll be ready for her when she comes back,” said Rose, tensely.

  “Yerss,” said Allnutt.

  With Rose’s help he extricated the two heavy gas cylinders from the bottom of the boat and slid them back handily to the waist. They were foul with rust, but so thick was the steel that they could have borne months more of such exposure without weakening. Allnutt turned on the taps, and all the air was filled with an explosive hissing, as the gas poured out and the pressure gauge needles moved slowly back to zero. When the hissing had subsided Allnutt got to work with his tools and extracted the whole nose-fitting from each cylinder. There was left a round blank hole in each, opening into the empty dark within.

  Very carefully they prized open the boxes of explosive. They were packed with what looked like fat candles of pale yellow wax, each wrapped in oiled paper. Allnutt began methodically and cautiously to pack the cylinders with them, putting his arm far down into the interior.

  “M’m,” said Allnutt. “It’d be better if they weren’t loose like this.”

  He looked around the boat for packing material, and was momentarily at a loss. His ingenuity had been sharpened by all the recent necessity to employ makeshifts.

  “Mud’s the stuff,” he announced.

  He went up into the bows and, leaning over the side, he began to scoop up handfuls of the black mud from the bottom, and slapped them down upon the foredeck to become nearly dry in the sun.

  “I’ll do that,” said Rose, as soon as she realized what he intended.

  She squeezed the water from the stinking black mud, and then spread the handfuls on the hot deck, and worked upon them until they were nearly hard. Then she carried the sticky mass back to Allnutt and set herself to preparing more.