by Talbot Mundy
But the Greeks did not come, and there streamed such a perfect screen of crimson dust, sparkling in the reflected blaze and more beautiful than all the fireworks ever loosed off at a coronation, that it was folly to linger. We each seized the load left for that last trip (Fred’s included the hammer, pincers, and cold chisel for striking off the porters’ chain) and started off quietly round the hill, not beginning to hurry until the hill lay between us and the burning town.
There was not much need for caution. The roar of flames, the shouting, the excitement would have protected us, whatever noise we made, however openly we ran. Over and above the tumult we could hear Schubert’s bull-throated bellowing, and then the echo to him as the sergeants took up the shout all together, ordering “Off with the grass roofs! Off with the roofs!”
The white officials were more than interested, and had no time for anything but thought for the blaze. As we crossed the shoulder of the far side of the hill we could see them standing on the drill-ground all together, clearly defined against the crimson flare. Schillingschen was with them.
There was no sign of what had happened at the boma. The gang would have to emerge from a little-used gate at the northern end, provided they could break the lock or secure the key to it; otherwise their only chance was to climb the wall by the cook-house roof and jump twenty feet on the far side. I was for running to the little gate and bursting it in from the outside, but Fred damned me for a mutineer between his panting for breath, and Will, who was longer-winded, agreed with him.
“Have to leave their end of the plan to them! Let’s do our part right!”
As it turned out, we were last at the rendezvous. We heard the chain clanking in the dark just ahead of us, and try how we might, could not catch up. Then, near the boat bow, Kazimoto suddenly recognized Fred and nearly throttled him in a fierce embrace, releasing all his pent-up rage, agony, resentment, misery, fear in one paroxysm of affection for the man who cared enough to run risks for the sake of rescuing him. Fred had to pry him off by main force.
“Into the boat with you!” Will ordered them. “Chain-gang first! Get down below, and lie down! The first head that shows shall be hit with a club! Quickly now!”
Clanking their infernal chain like all the ghosts from all the haunted granges of the Old World, they climbed overside and disappeared. There were more figures left on shore then than we expected. Brown we could make out dimly in the dark: he was chattering nervously, and admitted that but for Kazimoto he would not be there. The faithful fellow had broken down the corrugated iron partition and had dragged him out by main force. He was rather resentful than grateful.
“Hauled here by a nigger — think of it!”
We ordered Brown on board and below, pretty peremptorily. Lady Saffren Waldon stepped out of the darkness next, holding a rifle and two bandoliers so full of cartridges that she could hardly raise her arms. We took the load from her, and helped her overside. Fred took the rifle and succumbed to the hunter’s habit of opening the breach first thing. It was a German sporting Mauser, with a hair trigger attachment and magazine, as handy and useful a weapon as the heart of man could wish. He had scarcely snapped the breach to again when a voice we all recognized made the hair rise on my neck. Fred jumped and raised the rifle. Will swore softly — endlessly.
“Gassharrrrammminy! You men took us for damned fools, didn’t you? You thought to get away and leave us! By hell, no! We go or you stay! Birds of a feather fly together! One of you is American — I am American! Two of you are English — I am English, and can prove it! My friends come with me!”
Fred leveled the rifle at him.
“About face! Off back to town with you!” he barked.
“Not on your tin-type!” Coutlass yelled. “I’m no man’s popinjay!
Shoot if you dare, and I’ll spoil the whole game! Help! He-e-e-lp!
He-e-e-e-lp!”
The other Greek and the Goanese joined in the shout, the dark man setting up such an ululating screech that the very storm dwindled into second place in comparison. It was true, the unearthly yelling was carried out over the water, and very likely not a sound of it reached twenty yards inland; but it rattled our nerves, nevertheless. The skin grew prickly all up and down my backbone, and the men on the chain-gang inside the hull began shouting to know what the matter was.
Will remembered then that he was captain for the day, and made virtue of necessity.
“In with you!” he ordered. “Quick!”
With a grin that was half-triumph, half-cunning, and wholly glad, Coutlass helped his companions over the bow, and had the civility to stand there with hand outstretched to help us in after him. We sent him below with his friends, but he came up again and insisted on leaning his weight on the poles with which we began shoving off into deeper water. It was hard work, for with her human cargo and several hundred gallons of water that had leaked through her gaping seams, the dhow was down several inches. Her hull had just begun to feel the wind and to rise and fall freely, when a white figure ran screaming down toward the water’s edge and stood there waving to us frantically.
“Leave her!” said Lady Waldon excitedly, clutching my arm. I was up on the bow, just about to lay the pole along the deck and haul on the halyards. She spoke very slowly right in my ear. “That, is my maid Rebecca. The faithless slut—”
Coutlass began to shout, trying to pole the dhow back to land single-handed.
“We can’t leave that woman behind there!” Fred shouted, hardly making himself heard against the wind.
“Can’t we!” shouted Lady Waldon. “Give me that rifle, and I’ll solve the problem for you!”
But Coutlass solved it in another way by jumping overboard, over his head in deep water, taking our hempen warp with him (I had made one end of it fast to the bitts, meaning to be able to find it in the dark).
There was quite a sea running, even as close inshore as that, and for a moment I doubted whether the Greek would make it. By that time it was all we could do to see the woman’s white figure, still gesticulating, and screaming like a mad thing. Presently, however, the warp tightened, and then by the strain on it I knew that Coutlass was trying to haul us back inshore. Failing to do that, for the strength of the wind was increasing, he seized the Syrian woman by the waist and plunged into the water with her. I saw them disappear and hauled on the warp hand-over-hand with all my might, Lady Waldon leaning over to strike at my hands until I shouted to Fred to come and hold her. Then she begged Fred again for the rifle, promising to kill the two of them and reduce our problem to that extent if we would only let her.
Will and I hauled the dripping pair on board, and Coutlass carried the maid to the stern. She had fainted, either from fright or from being half-drowned, there was no guessing which. Then in pitch blackness with Will’s help I got the ship beam to the wind and began to make sail.
Now danger was only just beginning! I was the only one of them all who knew anything whatever about sails and sailing. I was too weak to get the sail up single-handed, had no compass, knew nothing whatever of the rocks and shoals, except by rumor that there were plenty of both. There appeared to be no way of reefing the lateen sail, which was made of no better material than calico, and I was entirely unfamiliar with the rigging.
Behind us, as we payed before the gaining wind, was brilliant blaze that showed where Muanza was. Against the blaze stood out the lakeward boma wall. I stood due east away from it, and discovered presently that by easing on the halyard so as to lower the long spar I could obtain something the effect of reefing.
I set Fred and Will to making a sea-anchor of buckets and spars in case the sail or rotten rigging should carry away, leaving us at the mercy of the short steep waves that fresh-water lakes and the North Sea only know. The big curved spar, now that it was hanging low, bucked and swung and the dhow steered like an omnibus on slippery pavement. Luckily, I had living ballast and could trim the ship how I chose. They all began to grow seasick, but I gave them something to th
ink about by making them shift backward and forward and from side to side until I found which way the dhow rode easiest.
When Fred had finished the sea-anchor he got out the tools and began striking off the iron rings on the porters’ necks through which the chain passed. The job took him two hours, but at the end of it we owned a good serviceable chain, and a crew that could be drilled to take the brute hard labor off our shoulders.
Coutlass meanwhile was busy on the seat in the stern beside me making Hellenic inflammatory love to Lady Waldon’s maid, whom he had wrapped in his own blanket and held shivering in his arms. Lady Waldon herself sat on the other side of me, affecting not to be aware of the existence of either of them. The other Greek and the Goanese had been driven below, where they started to smoke until I saw the glow of their pipes and shouted to Will to stop that foolishness. He snatched both pipes and threw them overboard. The thought of being seen from shore was almost incitement enough for murder. They refused to turn a hand to anything that night, but sat sulking below the sloping roof of reeds and tarpaulin that did duty for a deck, wedged alongside of seasick Wanyamwezi.
It was Kazimoto who chose the least disheartened of the gang, beat them and stung them into liveliness, and set them to bailing. There was a trough running thwartwise of the ship into which the water had to be lifted from the midship well. It took the gang of eight men, working in relays, until nearly dawn to get the water out of her; and to keep her bottom reasonably dry after that two men working constantly.
I knew vaguely that the great island of Ukerewe lay to the northwestward of us. Between that and the mainland, running roughly north, was a passage that narrowed in more than one place to less than a hundred yards. That would have been the obvious course to take had we not been afraid of pursuit, had we dared get away by daylight, and provided I had known the way. As it was I intended to add another hundred miles to the distance between us and the northern shore of the lake, by sailing well clear of and around Ukerewe, trusting to the less frequented water and the wilder islands to make escape easier.
I judged it likely that the moment we were missed, the launch would be sent off in search of us, and that the Germans would search the narrow passage first. They would expect us to take the narrow passage, as the shortest, and depend on their ability to steam a dozen miles an hour to overhaul us, even should we get a long start on the outside course.
With gaining wind, a following sea, a little ship crowded to suffocation, and a sail that might blow to shreds at any minute, it was not long before I began to pray for the lee of Ukerewe, and to stand in closer toward where I judged the end of the island ought to be than perhaps I should have done. It was lucky, though, that I did.
In making calculations I had overlooked the obvious fact that, steaming three miles to our one, the launch could very well afford to take the outside course to start with. Then they could take a good look for us in the open water next morning, and, failing to find us, steam all around Ukerewe, come back down the inside passage, and catch us between two banks.
It was Lady Saffren Waldon on my left hand, looking anywhere but at her maid and sweeping the dark waste of water with eyes as restless as the waves themselves, who gave the first alarm.
“What is that light?” she asked me.
Following the direction of her hand I saw a red glow on the water to our left, not more than a mile behind.
“Reflection from the burning town,” I answered, but I had no sooner said it than I knew the answer was foolish. It was the glow that rides above hot steamer funnels in the night.
“Fred!” I shouted, for fear took hold of the very roots of my heart, “for the love of God make every one keep silence! Show no lights! Don’t speak above a whisper! Keep all heads below the gunwale! That cursed German launch is after us!”
We were in double danger. I could hear surf pounding on rocks to starboard. I did not dare to come up into the wind because nobody but I knew how the spar would have to be passed around the mast, and in any case the noise and the fluttering sail might attract attention.
“Look out for breakers ahead!” I ordered. “I’m going to hold this course and hope they pass us in the dark!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“DAVID PREVAILED”
(I. Sam. 17:50)
Be glad if ye know the accursed thing
And know it accurst, for the Gift is yours
Of Sight where the prophets of blindness sing
By the brink of death. And the Gift endures;
Ye shall see the last of the sharpened lies
That rivet privilege’s gripe.
Be still, then, ye with the opened eyes,
Come away from the thing till the time is ripe.
Be glad that ye loathe the accursed thing,
It is given to you to foreknow the end.
But they who the unwise challenge fling
Shall startle foe at the risk of friend
As yet unready to endure —
And can ye fend Goliath’s swipe?
The slowly grinding mills are sure,
Let terror alone till the time is ripe.
Be glad when the shout for the spoils, and the glee,
The hoofs and the wheels of the prophets of wrong,
Out thunder the warning of what shall be;
Be still, for the tumult is not for long.
The Finger that wrote, from a polished wall
As surely the closed account shall wipe;
The accursed thing ye feared shall fall
To a boy with a sling when the time is ripe.
If the dhow had been seaworthy; if the crew had understood the rigging and the long unwieldy spar; if we had had any chart, or had known anything whatever of the coast; if nobody had been afraid; and, above all, if that incessant din of surf pounding on rocks not far away to starboard had not threatened disaster even greater than the Germans in the steam launch, our problem might have been simple enough.
But every one was afraid, including me who held the tiller (and the lives of all the party) in my right hand. Lady Saffren Waldon disguised fear under an acid temper and some villainously bad advice.
“Steer toward them!” she kept shouting in my ear. “Steer toward them!
Ram them! Sink them!”
Coutlass, on my other hand, made feverish haste with his love-affair, fearful lest discovery by the Germans should postpone forever the assuaging of his hungry heart’s desire.
“Steer toward shore!” he urged me. “Who cares if we run on rocks? Can’t we swim? Gassharamminy! Take to the land and give them a run for it!”
He seized the tiller to reinforce the argument, and wrenched at it until I hit him, and Fred threatened him with the only rifle.
“Get up forward!” Fred ordered; but Georges Coutlass would not go.
“Gassharamminy!” he snarled. “You want my girl! I will fight the whole damned crew before I let her out of the hollow of my arm.
“All right, touch that tiller again and I’ll kill you!” Fred warned him.
“Touch my girl, and you kill me or get out and swim!” Coutlass retorted.
Will was up forward with Brown, looking out for breakers through the spray that swept over us continually. I watched the glow that rode above the launch’s funnel, marveling, when I found time for it, at the mystery of why the cotton sail should hold. The firm, somewhere in Connecticut, who made that export calico, should be praised by name, only that the dye they used was much less perfect than the stuff and workmanship; their trademark was all washed out.
Suddenly Will dodged under the bellying sail, throwing up both hands, and he and Brown screamed at me: “To your left! Go to your left! Rocks to the right!”
The Germans had passed us, but not by much, for the short steep seas were tossing their propeller out of the water half the time. Because of the course I had taken the wind was setting slightly from us toward them, and I could have sworn they heard Will’s voice. Yet there was nothing for it but to put the
helm over, and as I laid her nearly broadside to the wind a great wave swept us. At that the Greek, the Goanese, and all the natives in the hold set up a yell together that ought to have announced our presence to the Seven Sleepers.
I held the helm up, and let her reel and wallow in the trough. Now I could see the fangs of rock myself and the white waves raging around them. See? I could have spat on them! There was a current there that set strongly toward the rocks, for a backwash of some sort helped the helm and we won clear, about a third full of water, with the crew too panicky to bail.
“Hold her so!” yelled Fred in my ear. “Don’t ease up yet! If we get too close and they see us, I’ve the rifle! They haven’t seen us yet!”
“Rocks ahead again!” yelled Will. “To the left again!”
We were in the gaping jaws of a sort of pocket, and it was too late to steer clear.
“Throw the anchor over!” I roared, “and let go everything.”
Will attended to the anchor. Fred was too anxious for the safety of the only rifle to trust it out of hand, and he hesitated. Georges Coutlass saved the day by letting go the shivering Syrian maid and slashing at the halyard with his knife. Down came the great spar with a crash, and as the dhow swung round in answer to anchor and helm, Fred, Will and Brown, between them, contrived to save the sail, Brown complaining that we were the first sailors he ever heard of who did not have rum served them for working overtime in dirty weather.
So we lay, then, wallowing in the jaws of a crescent granite reef, and watched the red glow above the German launch move farther and farther away from us. We waited there, wet and hungry, until dawn dimmed the flame from the burning roofs of Muanza, Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon loudly accusing us all at intervals of being rank incompetents unfit to be trusted with the lives of fish, and Coutlass afraid of nothing but interruption. The things he said to the maid, in English — the only language that they had apparently in common — would have scandalized a Goanese harbor “guide” or a Rock Scorpion from the lower streets of Gib. He did not mention marriage to her, beyond admitting that he had half a dozen wives already, and had been too bored by convention ever to submit to the yoke again. The maid seemed enraptured — delirious in the bight of his lawless arm, forgetful of her wetting, and only afraid when he left her for a minute.