hide him when he had crossed the deck.
Once more he checked the two guards at the gangway, their backs were turned to him.
Sebastian filled his lungs and steeled himself to act. Then with one fluid movement he drew himself up and rolled over the side. He landed lightly on his feet and darted across the exposed deck into the shadows. He ducked down behind a pile of canvas and rope netting, and struggled to control his breathing. He could feel his legs trembling violently under him, so he sat down on the planking and huddled against the protecting pile of canvas. River water trickled from his shaven pate over his forehead and into his eyes.
He wiped it away.
Now what?' He was aboard Blitcher, but what should he do next?
Where would they hold Rosa? Was there some sort of guard-room for prisoners? Would they put her in one of the officer's cabins? The sick-bay?
He knew roughly where the sick-bay was located. While he was working in the magazine he had heard the one German guard say, 'He has gone down the companion-way to the sick-bay.' It must be somewhere just below the forward magazine oh, God! If they had her there she would be almost at the centre of the explosion.
He came up on his knees, and peered over the pile of canvas. It was lighter now. Through the screen of netting, he could see the night sky had paled a little in the east. Dawn was not far off. The night had passed so swiftly, morning was on its way and there were but a few scant hours before the hands of the travelling-clock completed their journey, and made the electrical connection that would seal the Blitcher's fate, and the fate of all those aboard her.
He must move. He rose slowly and then froze. The guards at the gangway had come to attention. They stood stiffly with their rifles at the slope, and into the light stepped a tall, white-clad figure.
There was no mistaking him. It was the officer that Sebastian had last seen in the forward magazine. Kyller, they had called him,
Lieutenant Kyller.
Kyller acknowledged the salutes of the two guards, and he spoke with them a while. Their voices were low and indistinct. Kyller saluted again, and then left them. He came down the deck towards the bows; he walked briskly, and his face below the peak of his cap was in darkness.
Sebastian crouched down again, only his eyes lifted above the piled canvas. He watched the officer and he was afraid.
Kyller stopped in mid-stride. He half stooped to look at the deck at his feet, and then in the same movement, straightened with his right hand dropping to the bolstered pistol on his belt.
'Guard!' he bellowed. 'Here! At the double!' On the holy stoned white planking, the wet footprints that Sebastian had left behind him glittered in the lantern light. Kyller stared in the direction that they led, coming directly towards Sebastian's hiding-place.
The boots of the two guards pounded heavily along the deck. They had unslung their rifles as they ran to join Kyller.
'Someone has come aboard here. Spread out and search...'
Kyller shouted at them, as he closed in on Sebastian.
Sebastian panicked. he jumped up and ran, trying to reach the corner of the gun-turret.
'There he is!' Kyller's voice. 'Stop! Stop or I'll fire.'
Sebastian ran. His legs driving powerfully, his elbows pumping, head down, bare feet slapping on the planking, he raced through shadow.
'Stop!' Kyller was balanced on the balls of his feet, legs braced,
right shoulder thrust forward and right arm outflung in the classic stance of the pistol marksman. The arm dropped slowly and then kicked up violently, as the shot spouted from the Luger in a bell of yellow flame. The bullet sponged against the plating of the turret and then glanced off in whining ricochet.
Sebastian felt the wind of the bullet pass his head and he jinked his run. The corner of the turret was very close, and he dodged towards it.
Then Kyller's next shot blurted loudly in the night, and simultaneously something struck Sebastian a heavy blow under his left shoulder blade. It threw him forward off balance and he reeled against the turret, his hands scrabbled at the smooth steel without finding purchase. His body flattened against the side of the turret, so that the blood from the exit hole that the bullet had torn in his breast sprayed on to the pale grey, painted turret.
His legs buckled and he slid down, slowly, still trying to find purchase with the hooked claws of his fingers, so that as his knees touched the deck he was in the attitude of devout prayer. Forehead pressed against the turret, kneeling, arms spread high and wide.
Then the arms sank down, and he slid sideways, collapsed onto the deck and rolled on to his back.
Kyller came and stood over him. The pistol hanging slackly in the hand at his side.
'Oh, my God,' there was genuine regret in Kyller's voice.
'It's only one of the porters. Why did the fool run! I wouldn't have fired if he had stood.' Sebastian wanted to ask him where Rosa was. He wanted to explain that Rosa was his wife, that he loved her,
and that he had come to find her.
He concentrated his vision on Kyller's face as it hung over him,
and he SUmmoned his school-boy German, marshalling the sentences in his mind.
But as he opened his mouth the blood welled up in his throat and choked him. He coughed, racking, and the blood bubbled through his lips in a pink froth.
'Lung shot!' said Kyller, and then to the guards as they came up,
'Get a stretcher. Hurry. We must take him down to the sick-bay.' There were twelve bunks in Blitcher's sick-bay, six down each side of the narrow cabin. In eight of 'them lay German seamen; five malaria cases and three men injured in the work of repairing her bows.
Rosa Oldsmith was in the bunk farthest from the door.
She lay behind a movable screen, and a guard sat outside the screen. He wore a pistol at his belt and was wholly absorbed in a year-old variety magazine, the cover of which depicted a buxom blonde woman in a black corset and high boots, with a horse whip in one hand.
The cabin was brightly lit and smelled of, antiseptic One of the malarial cases was in delirium, and he laughed and shouted. The medical orderly moved along the rows of bunks carrying a metal tray from which he administered the morning dosages of quinine. The time was 5 a.m.
Rosa had slept only intermittently during the night. She lay on top of the blankets and she wore a striped to welling dressing-gown over the blue flannel nightgown. The gown was many sizes too large and she had rolled back the cuffs of the sleeves. Her hair was loose on the pillows, and damp at the temples with sweat. Her face was pale and drawn, with bluish smudges of fatigue under her eyes, and her shoulder ached dully where Fleischer had struck her.
She was awake now. She lay staring up at the low roof of the cabin, playing over in her mind fragments from the happenings of the last twenty-four hours.
She recalled the interrogation with Captain von Kleine.
He had sat opposite her in his luxuriously furnished cabin, and his manner had been kindly, his voice gentle, pronouncing the English words with blurring of the consonants and a hardening of the vowel sounds. His English was good.
'When did you last eat? 'he asked her.
'I am not hungry,' she replied, making no attempt to conceal her hatred. Hating them all this handsome, gentleman, the tall lieutenant who stood beside him, and Herman Fleischer who sat across the cabin from her, with his knees spread apart to accommodate the full hang of his belly.
I will send for food.' Von Kleine ignored her protest and rang for his steward. When the food came, she could not deny the demands of her body and she ate, trying to show no enjoyment. The sausage and pickles were delicious, for she had not eaten since the previous noon.
Courteously von Kleine turned his attention to a discussion with
Lieutenant Kyller until she had finished, but when the steward removed the empty tray he came back to her.
'Herr Fleischer tells me you are the daughter of Major O'Flynn,
the commander of the Portuguese irregulars operating in German territory?'
'I was until he was hanged, murdered! He was injured and helpless. They tied him to a stretcher...' Rosa flared at him,
tears starting in her eyes.
'Yes,' von Kleine stopped her, 'I know. I am not pleased.
That is now a matter between myself and Commissioner Fleischer. I
can only say that I am sorry. I offer you my condolence.' He paused and glanced at Herman Fleischer.
Rosa could see by the angry blue of his eyes that he meant what he said.
'But now there are some questions I must ask you..
Rosa had planned er replies, for she knew what he would ask. She replied frankly and truthfully to anything that did not jeopardize
Sebastian's attempt to place the time fuse aboard Blucher.
