though in abject surrender.
'Bawu!' Craig cried and raced towards it. The gaping mouths of the pipe cannons were still oozing oily wreaths of smoke, but there was no other movement.
Craig wrestled the steel hatch open, and crawled into it on his hands and knees. The dark interior stank of acrid plastic explosive burn. ' 'Bawu!' He found him crumpled in the bottom of the cab, and he knew instantly that the old man was in extremis. The whole shape of his face had altered, and his voice was an unintelligible blur.
Craig caught him up in his arms and tried to drag him towards the hatch, but the old man fought him off with desperate strength, and at last Craig understood what he was saying.
'My teeth, blown my bloody teeth oud' He was back on his hands and knees searching desperately. 'Mustn't let her see me, find them, boy, find them.' Craig found the missing plates under the driver's seat, and with them once more in place, Jonathan shot out of the hatchway and confronted Okky van Rensburg furiously.
'You made it top-heavy, you Withering old idiot.' 'You can't talk to me like that, Bawu, I don't work for you any longer. You fired me.'
'You're hired,' bellowed Jonathan. 'Now get that thing right way up again.' Twenty sweating, singing Matabele heaved the Ford slowly upright and at last it flopped over onto its wheels again.
'Looks like a banana,' Okky remarked with obvious satisfaction.
'The recoil of your cannons has bent it almost double. You'll never get that chassis straight again.' 'There is only one way to straighten it,' Jonathan announced and began tightening the strap of his tin helmet again.
What are you going to do, Jon- Jon?' Craig demanded anxiously. , 'Fire the other broadside, of course,' said Jonathan grimly.
'That will knock it straight again.' But Craig seized one of his arms, Okky the other, and Janine murmured soothingly to him as they led him away to the waiting Land-Rover.
'Can you imagine Bawu reaching for the cigarette lighter and hitting the wrong button while driving down Main Street,' Craig chortled, 'and letting that lot go through the front doors of the City Hall?' They giggled over it the whole way back to town, and as they drove in past the lovely lawns of the municipal gardens, Craig suggested easily, 'Sunday evening in Bulawayo, you could suffer a nervous breakdown from the mad gaiety of it. Let me cook you one of my famous dinners on the yacht, and save you from it.' 'The yacht?'Janine was instantly intrigued. 'Here? Fifteen hundred miles from the nearest salt water?' 'I. will say no more,' Craig declared. 'Either you come with me, or you will forever be consumed by unsatisfied curiosity.' 'A fate worse than death,' she agreed. 'And I have always been a good sailor. Let's go!' Craig took the airport road but before they left the builtup area, he turned into one of the older sections of the town. Between two rundown cottages was an empty plot. It was screened from the road by the dense greenery of a row of ancient mango trees. Craig parked the Land-Rover under one of the mango trees, and led her deeper into an unkempt jungle of bougainvillaea and acacia trees, until she stopped abruptly and exclaimed. 'You weren't kidding.
It's a real yacht.' 'They don't come any realer than that,' Craig agreed proudly. 'Livranos-designed, forty-five feet overall length, and every plank laid by my own lily-whites.' 'Craig, she's beautiful!'
'She will be one day when I finish her.' The vessel stood on a wooden cradle, with baulks of timber chocking the sides. The deep keel and ocean-going hull lifted the stainless steel deck-railings fifteen feet above Janine's head as she ran forward eagerly.
'How do I get up?' 'There is a ladder round the other side.' She scrambled up onto the deck, and called down. 'What is her name?' 'She hasn't got one yet.' He climbed up into the cockpit beside her. 'When will you launch her, Craig?? ''The good Lord knows,' he smiled. 'There is a mountain of work to be done on her yet, and every time I run out of money, everything comes to a grinding halt.' He was unlocking the hatch as he spoke, and the moment he swung it open Janine ducked down the companionway. 'It's cosy down here.' 'This is where I live.' He climbed down into the saloon after her and dropped his kit bag on the deck. 'I've finished her off below decks, the galley is through there. Two cabins each with double bunks, a shower and a chemical toilet.' 'It's beautiful,' Janine repeated, running her fingers over the varnished teak joinery, and then bouncing experimentally on the couches.
'Beats paying rent, 'he agreed. 'What remains to be done?' 'Not much- engine, winches, rigging, sails, only about twenty thousand dollars' worth. However, I have just soaked Bawu for almost half of that.' He lit the gas refrigerator and then selected a tape and put it on the player.
Janine listened to the liquid purling piano for a few moments and then said, 'Ludwig van B of course?' 'Of course, who else?' Then with slightly less assurance, she said, 'The Path& tique Sonata?' 'Oh, very good.' He grinned as he found a bottle of Zonnebloem Riesling in one of the cupboards, 'and the artiste?' 'Oh, come on!' 'Give it a shot.'
'Kentner?' 'Not bad, but it's Pressler.' She pulled a face to show her mortification, and he drew the cork and half filled the glasses with pale golden wine.
'Here's looking at you, kid.' She sipped and murmured, 'Mmm!
That's good.' 'Dinner!' Craig dived back into the cupboard. 'Rice and canned stuff. The potatoes and onions are three months old, growing sprouts already.' 'Macrobiotic' she said. 'Good for you. Can I help?'
They worked happily shoulder to shoulder in the tiny galley, and every time they moved they brushed against each other. She smelled of scented soap, and when he looked down on top of her head, her curly hair was so dense and lustrous that he had an almost uncontrollable urge to bury his face in it. Instead he went to look for another bottle of wine.
He emptied four assorted cans into the pot, chopped onions and potatoes over the mixture and spooned in curry powder. He served it on a bed of rice.
'Delicious,'Janine declared. 'What do you call it?' 'Don't ask embarrassing questions.' 'When you launch her, where will you sail her?' Craig reached over her head and brought down a chart and an Indian Ocean Pilot from the bookshelves.
'All right.' He pointed out a position on the chart. 'Here we are anchored in a secluded little cove on an island in the Seychelles. If you look out the porthole you will see the palm trees and the beaches whiter than sugar. Under us the water is so clear that we seem to be floating in air.'.
Janine looked out of the porthole. 'You know what you are right! There are the palm trees and I can hear guitars.' When they finished eating they pushed the dishes aside, and pored over the books and charts.
'Where next? How about the Greek islands?' 'Too touristy.' She shook her head. 'Australia and the Barrier Reef?' 'Beauty!' She mimicked an Aussie accent. 'Can I go topless, sport?' 'Bottomless too, if you want.' 'Rude boy.' The wine had flushed her cheeks, and put a sparkle in her eyes. She slapped his cheek lightly, and he knew he could kiss her then but before he moved, she said, 'Roland told me you were a dreamer.'
The name stopped him dead. He felt the coldness in his chest, and suddenly he was angry with her for spoiling the mood of the moment. He wanted to hurt her as she had just hurt him.
'Are you sleeping with him?' he asked, and she swayed back and stared at him with shock. Then her eyes slanted like those of a cat, and the rims of her nostrils turned bone white with fury.
'What did you say?' His own perversity would not let him turn back from the precipice, and he stepped out over it.
'I asked if you were sleeping with him.' 'Are you sure you want to know?' 'Yes.' 'All right, the answer is 'yes', and it's bloody marvelous. Okay?' 'Okay,'he said miserably.
'Now you can take me home, please.' They drove in complete silence except for her terse directions, and when he parked outside the three-storey block of apartments, he noticed that they were called Beau Vallon, the same as the Seychelles beach over which they had fantasized.
She climbed out of the Land-Rover. 'I'm grateful for the lift,' she said, and walked up the paved path towards the entrance of the building.
Before she reached it, she turned and came back. 'Do you know that you are a spoilt little boy?' she asked. 'And that you give up on everything, just like you did on the tennis court.' This time she disappeared into the entrance of the building without looking back.
When he got back to the yacht, Craig put the charts and books away, then he cleaned the dishes, dried them, and stacked them in their racks. He thought he had left a bottle of gin in one of the cupboards, but he couldn't find it. There wasn't even any of the wine left. He sat in the saloon with the gaslight hissing softly over his head, and he felt numb and empty. There was no point in going to his bunk. He knew he would not sleep.
He unlaced the kit bag the leather- bound journal that Jonathan had loaned him was on top. He opened it and began to read. It had been written in 1860. The writer was Zouga Ballantyne, Craig's great-great-grandfather.
After a while, Craig no longer felt numb and empty, for he was on the quarterdeck of a tall ship, running southwards down the green Atlantic towards a savage enchanted continent.
Samson Kumalo stood in the centre of the dusty track and watched Craig's beaten-up old Land-Rover growl away up the avenue of spathodea trees. When it took the turn past the old cemetery and disappeared, he picked up
