running.
They camped there that night without food, bedding or weapons, and the following morning, after a heated council Of war, Sebastian was elected to return to the river and ascertain whether the hippo was still in control of the channel. He came back at high speed to report that she was.
Three more days they waited for the hippo and her calf to move away- During this time they suffered the miseries of cold nights and hungry days, but the greatest misery was inflicted on Flynn O'Flynn whose case of gin was under eight feet of water and by the third morning he was threatening delyrium tremens again. just before
Sebastian set off for his morning reconnaissance of the channel, Flynn informed him agitatedly that there were three blue scorpions sitting on his head. After the initial alarm, Sebastian went through the motions of removing the imaginary scorpions and stamping them to death, and
Flynn was satisfied.
Sebastian returned from the river with the news that the % hippo and her calf had evacuated the island, and it was now possible to begin salvage operations.
Protesting mildly and talking about crocodiles, Sebastian was stripped naked and coaxed into the water. On his first dive, he retrieved the precious case of gin.
'Bless you, MY boy,' Flynn murmured fervently as he eased the cork out of a bottle.
By the following morning Sebastian had recovered nearly all their equipment and booty, without being eaten by crocodiles, and they set off for Lalapanzi on foot.
Now they were in their last camp before Lalapanzi, and Sebastian felt his impatience rising. He wanted to get home to Rosa and baby
Maria. He should be home by evening.
'Come on, Flynn. Let's go.' He flicked the coffee grounds from his mug, threw aside his blanket, and shouted to Mohammed and the bearers who were huddled around the other fire.
'Safari! Let us march.' Nine hours later, with the daylight dying around him, he breasted the last rise and paused at the top.
All that day eagerness had lengthened his stride, and he had left
Flynn and the column of heavily laden bearers far behind.
Now he stood alone, and stared without comprehension at the smoke-blackened ruins of Lalapanzi from which a few thin tendrils of smoke still drifted.
'Rosa!' Her name was a harsh bellow of fear, and he ran wildly.
'Rosa!' he shouted as he crossed the scorched and trampled lawns.
'Rosa! Rosa! Rosa!' the echo from the kopje above the homestead shouted back.
'Rosa!' He saw something amongst the bushes at the edge of the lawn, and he ran to it. Old Nanny lying dead with the blood dried black on the floral stuff of her nightgown.
'Rosa!' He ran back towards the bungalow. The ash swirled in a warm mist around his legs as he crossed the stoep.
'Rosa!' His voice rang hollowly through the roofless shell of the house, as he stumbled over the fallen beams that littered the main room. The reek of burned cloth and hair and wood almost choked him, so that his voice was husky as he called again.
'Rosa!' He found her in the burnt-out kitchen block and he thought she was dead. She was slumped against the cracked and blackened wall.
Her night-gown was torn and scorched, and the snarled skeins of hair,
that hid her face, were powdered with white wood ash.
'My darling. Oh, my darling.' He knelt beside her, and timidly touched her shoulder. Her flesh was warm and alive beneath his fingers, and he felt relief leap up into his throat, blocking it so he could not speak again. Instead, he brushed the tangle of hair from her face and looked at it.
Beneath the charcoal smears of dirt her skin was pale as grey marble. Her eyes, tight closed, were heavily underscored with blue,
and rimmed with crusty red.
He touched her lips with the tips of his fingers, and she opened her eyes, But they looked beyond him; unseeing, dead eyes. They frightened him. He did not want to look into them, and he drew her head towards his shoulder.
There was no resistance in her. She lay against him quietly, and he pressed his face into her hair. Her hair was impregnated with the smell of smoke.
'Are you hurt?' he asked her in a whisper, not wanting to hear the answer. But she made no answer, lying inert in his arms.
'Tell me, Rosa. Speak to me. Where is Maria?' At the mention of the child's name, she reacted for the first time. She began to tremble.
'Where is she?' more urgency in his voice now.
She rolled her head against his shoulder and looked across the floor of the room. He followed the direction of her gaze.
Near the far wall an area of the floor had been swept clear of debris and ash. Rosa had done it with her bare hands while the ash was still hot. Her fingers were blistered and burned raw in places, and her arms were black to the elbows. Lying in the centre of this cleared space was a small, charred thing.
'Maria?' Sebastian whispered, and Rosa shuddered against him.
'Oh, God,' he said, and lifted Rosa. Carrying her against his chest, he staggered from the ruins of the bungalow out into the cool, sweet evening air, but in his nostrils lingered the smell of smoke and burned flesh. He wanted to escape from it. He ran blindly along the path and Rosa lay unresisting in his arms. The following day Flynn buried their dead on the kopje above
Lalapanzi. He placed a thick slab of granite over the small grave that stood apart from the others, and when it was done he sent a bearer to the camp to fetch Rosa and Sebastian.
When they came, they found him standing alone by Maria's grave under the man da trees. His face was puffy and purply red. The thinning grey hair hung limply over his ears and forehead, like the wet feathers of an old rooster. His body looked as though it was melting.
It sagged at the shoulders and the belly. Sweat had soaked through his clothing across the shoulders, and at the armpits and crotch.
He was sick with drink and sorrow.
Sebastian stood beside Rosa, and the three of them took their silent farewell of the child.
'There is nothing else to do now,' Sebastian spoke huskily.
'Yes,' said Flynn. He stooped slowly and took a handful of the new earth from the grave. 'Yes, there is. 'He crumbled the earth between his fingers. 'We still have to find the man who did this and kill him.' Beside Sebastian, Rosa straightened up. She turned to
Sebastian, lifted her chin, and spoke for the first time since he had come home.
'Kill him! 'she repeated softly.
PART TWO
With his hands clasped behind his back, and his chin thrust forward aggressively, Rear-Admiral Sir Percy Howe sucked in his lower lip and nibbled it reflectively. What was our last substantiated sighting on Blitcher?'he asked at last.
'A month ago, sir. Two days before the outbreak of war.
Sighting reported by S.S. Tygerberg. Latitude 027N. Longitude 5'-16'E. Headed south-west; estimated speed, eighteen knots.'
'And a hell of a lot of good that does us,' Sir Percy interrupted his flag-captain and glared at the vast Admiralty plot of the Indian Ocean. 'She could be back in Bremerhaven by now.'
'She could be, sir,' the flag-captain nodded, and Sir Percy glanced at him and permitted himself a wintry smile.
'But you don't believe that, do you, Henry?'
'No, sir, I don't.
During the last thirty days, eight merchantmen have disappeared between
Aden and Lourenco Marques. Nearly a quarter of a million tons of shipping.
That's the Blitcher's work.'
'Yes, it's the Blitcher, all right,'
agreed the Admiral, and reached across the-plot to pick up the black counter labelled 'Blitcher', that lay on the wide green expanse of the
Indian Ocean.
A respectful silence held the personnel of the plotting room South
Atlantic and Indian Oceans while they waited for the great man to reach his decision. It was a long time coming. He stood bouncing the
'counter in the palm of his right hand, his grey eyebrows erect like the spines of a hedgehog's back, as his forehead creased in thought.
A
full minute they waited.
'Refresh my memory of her class and commission.' Like most successful men Sir Percy would not hurry a decision when there was time to think, and the duty lieutenant who had anticipated his request,
stepped forward with the German Imperial Navy list open at the correct page.
'Blitcher. Commissioned August 16, 1905. 'B' Class heavy cruiser. Main armament, eight nine-inch guns. Secondary armament, six six-inch guns.'' The lieutenant finished his reading and waited quietly.
'Who is her captain?' Sir
