by JRL Anderson
‘I’ve got four men coming over,’ he said. ‘They’ll come in a big canoe that can take the two of us, and if we help paddle it will be very fast. They’re not coming directly here, but to a little clearing about a quarter of a mile upstream, where you can get a boat into the bank. There’s a bush path from that clearing to here. I don’t want our man to see a strange canoe and perhaps take fright. When my boys have got across one of them is coming here for instructions, the other three will wait with the canoe. What do you think he’ll do?’
‘Maybe he needs rest, or maybe he just doesn’t like the idea of the river passage at night – anyway, he seems quite happy to stay in his old quarters,’ I said. ‘I suppose there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be happy – he thinks he’s made himself a millionaire, and he doesn’t know that we’re on his track. I think he’ll set off about half an hour before first light, to be well out of sight of the village by dawn and to have the cool of the morning to do the best part of the ten or twelve miles to Otaro Falls. I don’t see what else he can do unless he decides to walk to Fort Edward, in which case you and your boys are more than capable of tracking him. But he said he was going by river, and it seems the obvious thing to do. What do you reckon to do?’
‘Well, we’ve got to follow him. I think he’ll use the small canoe that I went across in. It’s in good condition. There’s not much room for kit, but he won’t want much except his diamonds. We’ll let him get ahead, and follow in our big canoe. It’s possible he may go ashore somewhere before getting to Otaro Falls, but the river people with us will see at once where a canoe has gone into the bank – they’ve marvellous eyes for anything like that.
‘Don’t take any notice, but my man from the canoe has come,’ the sergeant went on. I’d not heard the whisper of a rustle, but a dark figure was standing beside us. The sergeant continued talking to me. ‘I think we’ll hold our canoe where it is now, and I think I’ll get our friend here to take you to it. I’ll ask him to come back after delivering you, and then he can help me keep watch, and perhaps I can get a little sleep. You can safely go to sleep in the big canoe. As soon as we see the diamond man set off, we’ll run back to join you and the canoe. It’s barely a quarter of a mile away, and with our paddlers we can soon catch him up.’
*
The path to the clearing ran well away from the old plantation house, and it didn’t take long to get to the canoe. My guide had a hurried word with his companions in a language I could make nothing of, but he must have explained things to their satisfaction for I was welcomed on board with every sign of friendliness. The canoe was broadside to the bank, moored bow and stern. It was about the size of the big canoe in which we had come from Ilginaro, but without any canopy – it was a working cargo-boat. There was plenty of room aft, and although the hull was not floored as our passenger-canoe had been, I could lie down at length quite comfortably. One of the men folded a blanket as a pillow for me, and although we were in the tropics we were still fairly high above sea level, and I was glad of a thin blanket as a covering. As soon as I was settled, my guide went back to keep watch with the sergeant.
Whether that tough young man was able to get any sleep I don’t know – maybe he was as practical about it as that cold-blooded brute sleeping away happily beside his diamonds. I was tired and glad to lie down, but I couldn’t get to sleep, and gave up trying, content to lie and watch the star-filled sky. The stars were like diamonds, usually a pleasing metaphor, but as I thought of it I shivered under my blanket. What was wrong with diamonds? Nothing – they are among the most beautiful of created things, bringing a star-like brilliance to the terrestrial world. The evil was in man’s cupidity.
With these reflections, and thought chasing thought about the unanswered questions concerning Miss Sutherland and the man we were hunting, the night passed. It would begin to get light around five thirty in the morning. At four I suggested that the bow of the canoe should be unmoored, so that we could be ready for a quick getaway. One of the men knew a little English, and he was enough of a riverman to understand my reasoning. Stern to the bank, held only by a loose hitch, we could be away in seconds.
At about a quarter to five the sergeant and the fourth man turned up. ‘He’s packed whatever he wants and carried it down to the small canoe,’ the sergeant said. ‘He has one rifle with him, and a pistol in a holster. He will be leaving in a few minutes, I think.’
‘Let’s get out into the stream, then, where we can see. Can the paddlers hold the canoe against the stream?’
‘Oh, yes, and dark as it is, we should be able to see a moving shape on the water. He’ll be facing forward, and even if he looks upstream before he starts I don’t think he will be able to see us if we’re not moving.’
The skill with which the paddlers held the canoe against the river was impressive. There was no splash – it was a matter of sheer muscular effort, and an occasional quick turn of a paddle blade. Although it was still night the river itself was not wholly dark, the water seeming to have a dull gleam of its own. As my eyes grew accustomed to the difference of light in midstream from the blackness of the bush I thought I could make out roughly where the river-crossing was, and soon a patch of denser darkness moved away from it. ‘He’s off,’ the sergeant whispered. ‘We’ll let him have five minutes’ start, and then follow. If we need to, we can move two or three times as fast as he can.’
That five minutes seemed eternity. It also seemed crazy, deliberately letting the man we were hunting move away from us. But of course it made sense. We had the advantage of numbers and speed, but our quarry was more heavily armed than we were. Our men had pangas and two of them had spears, but our sole firearm was the sergeant’s revolver. That had nothing like the range of the rifle. We couldn’t know what he would do if he realised that he was being followed, but given his ruthless determination it was quite on the cards that he could put an end to the pursuit by picking us off one by one with his rifle. And although we were letting him get out of sight, it seemed unlikely that he would leave the river. There was only one way he could go.
It was still dark when we passed the village on the far bank, and after that there was nothing but forest until we came to the Otaro Falls. There were long reaches where the river ran straight, but seldom for more than a mile. Between the straight reaches it curled and twisted, and at one point almost doubled back on itself for a bit. There were occasional islands, but all seemed to lie near one or other bank, and in this part of the river there was never any doubt about the channel. Pilotage was easy, though more subtle knowledge was required to get full advantage from the current.
At dawn we were entering a long, straight reach, and the sergeant said confidently, ‘I can see him’. A moment or so later I could make out a small speck on the river ahead, and it looked as if we were gaining on him. The sergeant observed this, too, and asked the paddlers to try to keep to the speed of a one-man canoe. We slowed down a little, and the speck was soon out of sight again. The sergeant and I were not expected to paddle, though there were paddles for us if our effort was required. The sergeant stayed in the bow, peering ahead, I remained aft with my folded blankets as cushions. For me at any rate it was a comfortable way of hunting.
When we were about halfway to Otaro Falls we met another big canoe coming upstream, and then one with two paddlers. ‘There’ll be more traffic on the river now,’ the sergeant said. ‘I think we can safely move up and get nearer to him. But you, Colonel, will you please keep lying down? He won’t think anything of another cargo-canoe on the river, but if he sees a European in it he may get worried.’
It was an undignified position in which to continue the hunt, but the sergeant was right. I lay flat in the bottom of the canoe.
The paddlers put on a bit of speed and soon the single canoe was not more than about two hundred yards ahead of us. We held this position, but moved over towards the left bank so that it did not look as if we were directly on his tail. The paddlers began singing, a Ga river chant th
at like the old sea-shanties had the beat where the men singing it needed to put out strength. There was a soloist – our aft paddler – who was presumably singing some sort of narrative in a monotonous high-pitched voice, and then they all came in with the chorus. It went on and on. I rather think that when the soloist came to the end of his song he just went back to the beginning again. Since I could not understand any of it, it made no difference to me. I enjoyed listening to it.
After about three quarters of an hour of lying down I could hear a noise through the singing, a rumble like a distant railway train. It got louder, and the men stopped singing. ‘We are coming to the falls,’ the sergeant said. ‘I wonder where he’s going to pull in?’
By kneeling in the bottom of the boat I could see round the aft paddler without being visible to anyone ahead of the canoe. There was no sign of the falls because we were above them. The river seemed to go on and on, but there was a perceptible quickening of the current. To the left I could see the settlement, with a long quay thronged by boats. The right bank was bush and rock, the bush becoming more and more broken with jagged outcrops of rock. The small canoe went on steadily.
‘We must catch him up now,’ the sergeant said. ‘I don’t want him to have too much start when he gets ashore.’ He gave a brief command to the paddlers, we put on speed and soon we were level with the small canoe, but about twenty yards nearer to the left bank. I remained kneeling, holding a paddle so that the blade hid my face.
Our paddlers were getting anxious. We were approaching the lip of the waterfall, and if we didn’t get out of the current soon we should be caught helplessly in it. The little canoe showed no sign of altering course.
‘He’ll go over,’ the sergeant shouted. ‘We’ve got to get into the bank.’ He took a paddle himself and worked desperately with the others to force round the bow of our big canoe. He was just in time. As we began to move slowly across the stream I saw the little canoe spun round and hurled towards a clump of rocks to the right. It was impossible for our big canoe to get to it, and it needed all we could do to save ourselves.
The events of the next few seconds are vivid in my memory but with a curious detached quality about them, and I see them now as if I were watching a cinema film. The man in the little canoe kept his head, and as the canoe hit the rocks he grabbed at them. He was half out of the canoe before it was swept away, and managed to haul himself on to a rock. With the clarity of vision that sometimes comes at critical moments I noticed that he had his duffel bag tied to his belt. The next second I had gone in after him. I cannot explain why I acted as I did. If I want to be generous to myself I could say that it was to lighten our canoe to help the sergeant and our paddlers, but although there may have been a trace of this thought in my mind it was certainly not decisive. A sharper impetus was perhaps sheer rage at seeing the man save himself. A cold calculation in my mind was that the current which had swept his canoe on the rocks would also carry me there.
It did. The desperate efforts of the sergeant and our paddlers had won us a few yards against the stream, so that I was upstream of the rocks when I went in. I felt myself taken hold of by an all-powerful hand against which I could do nothing. I was rolled over and over, and had to fight to breathe. But the current did carry me towards the rocks, and I clutched at the same rock that the man had hauled himself up on.
He might have thought that I was making a gallant effort to help him, but he did not. He offered no hand as I gasped and clawed my way up the rock. ‘So Hilda was right,’ he said.
As I got my breath and could look about me I could see that we were not well placed for rescue. We were towards the middle of a group of rocks, and the outlying rocks completely hid us from the village bank of the river. If we had been watching from the shore instead of being on the river we should merely have seen the small canoe hurled on to the rocks and go over the fall–and anyone seeing this would have assumed that the occupant of the canoe had been thrown out and had gone over also. Then I noticed something else – it would be a struggle, but it would be quite possible to get from the rocks to the right bank of the Otaro Falls. The sergeant had said that it was bad country and difficult to cross on foot, but that did not make it impossible. The man on the rock beside me had spent some time working in this region for the old Colonial Government. It struck me suddenly that the whole operation might have been planned – for the canoe to go over the falls and Purbeck presumably with it, while the man himself made off through country that discouraged pursuit, even if there had been anyone around to pursue him.
The endlessly told story of Stanley’s meeting with Livingstone was running through my head. I nearly said ‘Robert Purbeck, I presume,’ but I didn’t. Instead I said formally, ‘I have reason to believe that you are Robert Purbeck, and I have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of murder.’
He laughed. ‘Fat lot of use your piece of paper is going to be! It will be soaked to blotting paper now, anyway, unless you left it in your canoe. I don’t know who you are, but whoever you are, you’re a fool. In a minute I’m going to kill you, but I’d like you to know first how utterly you have failed. You see, I plan well.’ He took an automatic pistol from his holster. It was in a waterproof plastic bag, from which he carefully removed it. ‘As a matter of interest, how did you come to suspect me?’ he asked.
‘Because you made a lot of silly mistakes. You should not have used unpainted Sharpe and Wilberforce vans for your various trips. And there were a lot of other things.’
‘Our policemen really are wonderful!’ He tried to say it sarcastically, but I could see that he was a bit nettled. ‘Since I answered your questions honestly, you might at least answer one for me,’ I said. ‘Why go to such lengths to get away from Mpuga? Why not a straightforward trip to Fort Edward, and an aeroplane?’
‘You’ll be dead in a moment, so I don’t mind telling you. Mainly, to get away from Hilda. She was – is, I should say –’ I realised that he did not know that we had seen him kill Miss Sutherland – ‘a most tiresome woman. It didn’t take me long to find the diamonds once I started looking for them, and I spent most of my time when I got here in studying these falls, and experimenting with bits of wood in the current. Everyone would think that I’d gone over with the canoe, and that would be that. I have a passport in another name, and an entirely new life lined up for me when I get back to England. The other thing is that no one else knows where the diamonds are. I’m not greedy as long as I have enough for everything I want, but I may feel inclined to come back one day for a few more. The route I’ve planned is one that will stay safe. Now, I think, it’s time to deal with you.’
As if he took real pleasure in doing it – as, perhaps he did – he pointed his pistol at the middle of my forehead. He was about two feet from me.
‘It’s a pity you didn’t think of the abrasive effect of rock on the string of your bag. You’ll have a long walk without any diamonds,’ I said.
For a fraction of a second he glanced down at his bag. And in that fraction of a second I crashed my left fist as hard as I could into his face, and grabbed at his pistol with my right hand. I could not stop him pressing the trigger, and I felt a tearing pain in my side, but I’d knocked him off balance, and I got both hands on his right wrist. He fired again, but the bullet went off harmlessly into the river. With all the strength left to me I was twisting his hand so that the pistol was forced round pointing to his own body. Then it fired a third time. Whether he fired, not realising that it was pointing at himself, or whether I pressed his trigger finger, I don’t know. But he was hit, and I felt him slump away from me. Then I passed out.
*
My return to the Mission was not as I had planned. In fact, I knew nothing whatever about it until four days later, when I came to in a bed in the Mission hospital to find Ruth in white tropical clothes bending over me. ‘You’ll be all right now, darling.’ she said, ‘though I think perhaps you’d better go to sleep again.’ I didn’t want to go to sleep, and there was so
mething fearfully important that I wanted Ruth to do for me. ‘Please . . . please, Ruth . . .’ I asked.
‘What is it, darling?’
‘Can you get hold of Professor Huntingford?’
‘Of course, though it will take a little time. Why?’
‘Ask him to find some lawn seed that will grow in this climate and send it to Father Simpson.’
Then I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more, and passed out again.
*
The Mission doctor, Mission-trained nurses, and Ruth, who scarcely left my bedside, saved my life, but I had to have three operations, and it wasn’t until a week later that Sergeant Taskalu was allowed to visit me and I learned of what had happened on the rock. He had seen nothing of my fight with Purbeck, but he had seen me carried onto the rock, and as soon as the big canoe was safe in slack water by the bank he had turned upstream to go after me. They couldn’t cross the river near the rocks because the current would simply have swept the canoe on to them – they had to go about a quarter of a mile upstream, cross to the right bank, and approach the rocks from the right flank of the fall. It must have required superb watermanship, but they did it.
‘You were lying partly on the rock, partly in the water,’ he said. ‘I thought you were dead, but when we got you into the canoe we could see that you were not quite dead, though you were covered in blood and obviously badly wounded. The other man was higher up on the rock. He was wounded, too, but he wasn’t so badly hurt, and he was still holding a pistol. As I got on to the rock he waved the pistol at me. One of the paddlers threw a spear which hit him in the arm, and he dropped the pistol. As I went to get him he jumped from the rock into the river. I grabbed at him, and caught hold of his duffel bag which was tied by a string to his belt. The string broke, and he was gone. I was left holding the bag of diamonds. He went over the fall, and his body was washed up on the bank next day. In the pocket of his shorts there was one more huge diamond.’