Fleischer would jeer at him, Commissioner Fleischer had shown an increasing tendency to jeer at Ensign Proust.
'No,' he thought, flushing so that the red spots on his skin were less noticeable, 'I will not send for that fat peasant.' He stopped pacing and addressed himself to the sergeant of Askari.
'Tell them...' he started, and his voice squeaked alarmingly.
He adjusted the timbre to a deep throaty rumble, 'Tell them I take a very serious view of this matter.' The sergeant saluted, did a showy about-face with much feet stamping, and passed on Ensign Proust's message in loud Swahili. From the dark ranks of bearers there was no reaction whatsoever, not so much as a raised eyebrow. The crews of the launches were more responsive. One of them laughed.
Ensign Proust's Adam's apple bobbed, and his ears chameleoned to the colour of a good burgundy.
'Tell them that it is mutiny!' The last word squeaked again, and the sergeant hesitated while he groped for the Swahili equivalent.
Finally he settled for: 'Bwana Heron is very angry.' Proust had been nicknamed for his pointed nose and long thin legs. The tribesmen bore up valiantly under this intelligence.
'Tell them i will take drastic steps.' Now, thought the sergeant,
he is making' sense. He allowed himself literary licence in his translation.
i 'Bwana Heron says that there are trees on this island for all of you and he has sufficient rope.' A sigh blew through them, soft and restless as a small wind in a field of wheat. Heads turned slowly until they were all looking at Walaka.
Reluctantly Walaka stood up to reply. He realized that it was foolhardy to draw attention to himself when there was talk of ropes in the air, but the damage had already been done. The hundreds of eyes upon him had singled him out to the Allemand. Bwana Intambu always hanged the man that everyone looked at.
Walaka began to speak. His voice had the soothing quality of a rusty gate squeaking in the wind. It went on and on, as Walaka attempted a one-man filibust.
'What is he talking about? 'demanded Ensign Proust.
'He is talking about leopards,' the sergeant told him.
'What is he saying about them?'
'He says, among other things,
that they are the excrement of dead lepers,'
Proust looked stunned, he had expected Walaka's speech to have at least some bearing on the business in hand. He rallied gamely.
'Tell him that he is a wise old man, and that I look to him to lead the others to their duties.' And the sergeant gazed upon Walaka sternly.
'Bwana Heron says that you, Walaka, are the son of a diseased porcupine and that you feed on offal with the vultures.
He says further that you he has chosen to lead the others in the dance of the rope.' Walaka stopped talking. He sighed in resignation and -started down towards the waiting launch. Five hundred men stood up and followed him.
The two vessels chugged sedately down to Blitcher's moorings.
Standing in the bows of the leading launch with his hands on his hips,
Ensign Proust had the proud bearing of a Viking returning from a successful raid.
'I understand these people,' he would tell Lieutenant Kyller.
'You must pick out their leader and appeal to his sense of duty.' He took his watch from his breast pocket.
'Fifteen minutes to seven' he Murmured. 'I'll have them aboard on the hour.' He turned and smiled fondly at Walaka who squatted miserably beside the wheelhouse.
'Good man, that! I'll bring his conduct to Lieutenant Kyller's attention.' Lieutenant Ernst Kyller shrugged out of his tunic and sat down on his bunk. He held the tunic in his lap and fingered the sleeve. The smear of blood had dried, and as he rubbed the material between thumb and forefinger, the blood crumbled and flaked.
'He should not have run. I had to shoot.' He stood up and hung the tunic in the little cupboard at the head of his bunk. Then he took his watch from the pocket and sat down again to wind it.
'Fifteen minutes to seven.' He noted the time mechanically, and laid the gold hunter on the flap table beside the bunk. Then he lay back and arranged the pillows under his head, he crossed his still-booted feet and regarded them dispassionately.
'He came aboard to try and rescue his wife. It was the natural thing to do. But that disguise the shaven head, and stained skin that must have been carefully thought out. It must have taken time to arrange.' Kyller closed his eyes. He was tired. It had been a long and eventful watch. Yet there was something nagging him, a feeling that there was an important detail that he had overlooked, a detail of vital no, of deadly importance.
Within two minutes of the girl's recognition of the wounded man,
Kyller and the Surgeon commander had established that he was not a native, but a white man disguised as one.
Kyller's English was sketchy, but he had understood the girl's cries of love and concern and accusation.
'You've killed him also. You've killed them all. My baby, my father and now my husband. You murderers, you filthy murdering swines!' Kyller grimaced and pressed his knuckles into his aching eyes.
Yes, he had understood her.
When he had reported to Captain von Kleine, the captain had placed little importance on the incident.
'Is the man conscious?'
'No, sir.'
'What does the surgeon say his chances are?'
'He will die. Probably before midday.'
'You did the right thing, Kyller.' Von Kleine touched his shoulder in a show of understanding. 'Do not reproach yourself It was your duty.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'You are off watch now. Go to your cabin and rest that is an order. I want you fresh and alert by nightfall.'
'Is it tonight then, sir?'
'Yes. Tonight we sail. The minefield has been cleared and
I have given the order for the boom to be destroyed.
The new moon sets at 11:47. We will sail at midnight.' But Kyller could not rest. The girl's face, pale, smeared with her tears, haunted him. The strangled breathing of the dying man echoed in his ears, and that nagging doubt scratched against his nerves.
There was something he must remember. He flogged his tired brain,
and it balked.
Why was the man disguised? If he came as soon as he had heard that his wife was a prisoner he would not have had time to effect the disguise.
Where had the man been when Fleischer had captured his wife? He had not been there to protect her. Where had he been? It must have been somewhere near at hand.
Kyller rolled on to his stomach and pressed his face into the pillow. He must rest. He must sleep now for tonight they would go out to break through the blockading English warships.
A single ship against a squadron. Their chances of slipping through unchallenged were small. There would be a night action. His imagination was heightened by fatigue, and behind his closed eyelids he saw the English cruisers, lit by the flashes of their own broadsides as they closed with Blitcher. The enemy intent on vengeance. The enemy in overwhelming strength. The enemy strong and freshly provisioned,
their coal-bunkers glutted, their magazines crammed with shell, their crews uncontaminated by the fever miasma of the Rufiji.
Against them a single ship with her battle damage hastily patched,
half her men sick with malaria, burning green cordwood in her furnaces,
her fire-power hampered by the desperate shortage of shell.
He remembered the tiers of empty shell racks, the depleted cordite shelves in the forward magazine.
The magazine? That was it! The magazine! It was something about the magazine that he must remember.
That was the thing that had been nagging him. The magazine!
'Oh, my GodV he shouted in horror. In one abrupt movement he had leapt from his prone position on the bunk to stand in the centre of the cabin.
The skin on his bare upper arms prickled with gooseflesh.
That was where he had seen the Englishman before. He had been with the labour party in the forward magazine.
He would have been there for one reason only sabotage.
Kyller burst from his cabin, and raced, half dressed, along the corridor.
'I must get hold of Commander Lochtkamper. We'll need a dozen men strong men stokers. There are tons of explosive to move, we'll have to handle it all to find whatever the Englishman placed there.
Please, God, give us time. Give us time!' Captain Otto von Kleine bit the tip from the end of his cheroot, and removed a flake of black tobacco from the tip of his tongue with thumb and fore finger. His steward
