gloom,
and Sebastian lifted himself on one elbow. In the flickering light from the fire there was a shadowy figure, crawling on hands and knees across the earthen floor, and searching the faces of the sleeping men.
'Manali, where are you?'
'Who is it?' Sebastian answered softly,
and the man jumped up and scurried to where he lay.
'It is I, Mohammed.'
'Mohammed?' Sebastian was startled. 'Why are you here?
You should be with Fini at the camp on the Abati.' Fini is dead.'
Mohammed's whisper was low with sorrow, so low that Sebastian thought he had misunderstood.
'What? What did you say?' Fini is dead. The Allemand came with the ropes. They hung him in the fever trees beside the Abati, and when he was dead they left him for the birds.'
'What talk is this Sebastian demanded.
'it is true,' mourned Mohammed. 'I saw it, and when the
Allemand had gone, I cut the rope and brought him down.
I wrapped him in my own blanket and buried him in an ant-bear hole.'
'Dead? Flynn dead? It isn't true!'
'It is true, Manah.' In the red glow of the camp-fire Mohammed's face was old and raddled and gaunt. He licked his lips. 'There is more, Manali. There is more to tell.' But Sebastian was not listening. He was trying to force his mind to accept the reality of Flynn's death, but it balked.
It would not accept the picture of Flynn swinging at the rope's end, Flynn with the rope burns at his throat and his face swollen and em purpled Flynn wrapped in a dirty blanket and crammed into an ant-bear hole. Flynn dead?
No! Flynn was too big, too vital they could not kill Flynn.
Vanali, hear me.' Sebastian shook his head, bemused, denying it.
It could not be true.
'Manali, the Allemand, they have taken Little Long Hair. They have bound her with ropes and taken her.' Sebastian winced, and jerked away as though he had been struck open-handed across the face.
'No!' He tried to close his mind against the words.
'They caught her this morning early as she went to Fini.
They took her down-river in the small boat, and she is now on the great ship of the Allemand.' Blitcher? Rosa is aboard the Blitcher?'
'Yes. She is there.'
'No. Oh, God, no!' In five hours Blitcher would blow up. In five hours Rosa Would die. Sebastian swung his head and looked out into the night, he looked through the open side of the hut, down the channel to where Blitcher lay at her moorings half a mile away. There was a dim glow of light across the water from the hooded lanterns on Blitcher's main deck. But her form was indistinguishable against the dark mass of the mangroves. Between her and the island,
the channel was a smooth expanse of velvety blackness on which the reflections of the stars were scattered sequins of light.
'I must go to her,' said Sebastian. 'I cannot let her die there alone.' His voice gathered strength and resolve. 'I cannot let her die. I'll tell the Germans where to find the charge I'll tell them. ' Then he faltered. 'I can't. No, I can't. I'd be a traitor then, but, but..
He threw aside his cloak.
'Mohammed, how did you come here? Did you bring the canoe? Where is it?' Mohammed shook-his head. 'No. I swam. My cousin brought me close to the island in the canoe, but he has gone away. We could not leave the canoe here, lest the Askari find it. They would have seen the canoe.'
'There isn't a boat on the island nothing,' muttered
Sebastian. The Germans were careful to guard against desertion. Each night the labour force was marooned on the island and the Askari patrolled the mud banks.
'Mohammed, hear me now.' Sebastian reached across and laid his hand on the old man's shoulder. 'You are my friend. I thank you that you have come to tell me these things.'
'You are going to Little Long
Hair?'
'Yes.'
'Go in peace, Manali.'
'Take my place here, Mohammed.
When the guards count tomorrow morning, you will stand for me.'
Sebastian tightened his grip on the bony shoulder. 'Stay in peace,
Mohammed.' His blackened body blending into the darkness, Sebastian crouched beneath the spread branches of a clump of pampa scrub, and the
Askari guard almost brushed against him as he passed. The Askari slouched along with his rifle slung so that the barrel stood up behind his shoulder. The constant patrolling had beaten a path around the circumference of the island, the guard followed it mechanically. Half asleep on his feet, completely unaware of Sebastian's presence. He stumbled in the darkness and swore sleepily, and moved on.
Sebastian crossed the path on his hands and knees, then stretched out on his belly into a reptilian slither as he reached the mud bank.
Had he tried to walk across it, the glutinous mud would have sucked so loudly around his feet that every guard within a hundred yards would have heard him.
The mud coated his chest and belly and legs with its coldly loathsome, clinging oiliness, and the reek of it filled his nostrils so he gagged. Then he was into the water. The water was blood warm, he felt the tug of the current and the bottom dropped away beneath him.
He swam on his side, careful that neither legs nor arms should break the surface. His head alone showed, like the head of a swimming otter,
and he felt the mud washing off his body.
He swam across the current, guided by the distant glimmer of Blucher's deck lights. He swam slowly, husbanding his strength, for he knew he would need all of it later.
His mind was filled with layers of awareness. The lowest layer was a lurking undirected terror of the dark water in which he swam, his dangling legs were vulnerable to the scaly predators which infested the
Rufiji river. The current Must be carrying his scent down to them.
Soon they would come hunting up to find him. But he kept up the easy stroke of arms and legs. It was a chance, one chance of the many He was taking and he tried to ignore it and grapple with the practical problems of his attempt. When he reached Blitcher, how was he to get aboard her? Her sides were fifty feet high, and the catwalks were the only means of access. These were both heavily guarded. It was a problem without solution, and yet he harried it.
Over this was a thick layer of hopeless sorrow. Sorrow for Flynn.
But the uppermost layer was thickest, strongest. Rosa, Rosa and
Rosa.
He found with surprise that he was saying it aloud.
'Rosa!' with each forward thrust of his body through the water.
'Rosa!' each time he drew breath.
'Rosa!' as his legs kicked out and Pushed him towards the
Blitcher.
He did not know what he would do if he reached her.
Perhaps there was some-half-fort ned idea of escaping with her, of fighting his way out of Blucher with his woman.
Getting her away before that moment when the ship would vanish in a holocaust of flame. He did not know, but he swam on quietly.
Then he was under Blitcher's side. The towering mass of steel blotted out the starry night sky, and he stopped swimming and hung in the warm water looking up at her.
There were small sounds. The hum of machinery within her, the faint clang' of metal struck against metal, the low guttural murmur of voices at her gangway, the thump of a rifle butt against the wooden deck, the soft wash of water around the hull -and then a closer,
clearer sound, a regular creak and tap, creak and tap.
He swam in towards the hull, searching for the source of this new sound. It came from near the bows, creak and tap.
The creak of rope, and the tap of wood against the steel hull. He saw it then, just above his head. He almost cried out with joy.
The cradles! The platforms still suspended above the water on which the welders and the painters had worked.
He reached up and gripped the wooden edge and drew himself on to the platform. He rested a few seconds and then began to climb the rope. Hand over hand, gripping the rope between the insides of his bare feet, he went up.
His head came level with the deck and he hung there, searching carefully. Fifty yards away he saw two seamen at the gangway. Neither was looking his way.
At intervals the hooded lanterns threw puddles of yellow light upon the deck, but there were concealing shadows beyond them. It was dark around the base of the forward gun-turrets, and there were piles of material, abandoned welding equipment, heaps of rope and canvas in the shadows which would
