“Rest,” I told her, kneeling to kiss her tenderly. “Try and sleep. I will fetch you when we are ready to leave.”
Chubby was already busy with the necessary tasks. He had checked the whaleboat and, apart from a few shrapnel holes, found her in good condition.
We filled the holes with Pratleys putty from the toolchest, and left her on the beach.
The hole in which the chest had been buried served as a communal grave for the dead men and the woman lying about it. We laid them in it like sardines, and covered them with the soft sand.
We exhumed the golden head from its own grave with its glittering eye still in the broad forehead, and staggering under its weight we carried it down to the whaleboat and padded it with the polythene cushions in the bottom of the boat. The plastic packets of sapphires and emeralds I packed into my haversack and laid it beside the head.
Then we returned to the caves and salvaged all the undamaged stores and equipment - the jerrycans of water and petrol, the scuba bottles and the compressor. It was late afternoon before we had packed it all into the whaleboat and I was tired. I laid the FN rifle on top of the load and stood back.
“Okay, Chubby?” I asked, as I lit our cheroots and we took our first break. “Reckon we can take off now.”
Chubby drew on the cheroot and blew a long flag of blue smoke before he spat on the sand. “I just want to go up and fetch Angelo,” he muttered, and when I stared at him he went on, “I’m not going to leave the kid up there. It’s too lonely here, he’ll want to be with his own people in a Christian grave.”
So while I went back to the caves to fetch Sherry, Chubby selected a bolt of canvas and went off into the gathering darkness.
I woke Sherry and made sure she was warmly dressed in one of my jerseys, then I gave her two more codeine and took her down towards the beach. It was dark now, and I held the flashlight in one hand and helped Sherry with the other. We reached the beach and I paused uncertainly. There was something wrong, I knew, and I played the torch over the loaded vessel.
Then I realized what it was, and I felt a sick little jolt in my belly.
The FN rifle was no longer where I had left it in the whaleboat.
“Sherry,” I whispered urgently, “get down and stay there until I tell you.”
She sank swiftly to the sand beside the beached hull, and I looked around frantically for a weapon. I thought of the spear-gun, but it was under the jerrycans, my baitknife was still pegged into a palm tree in the grove - I had forgotten about it until this moment. A spanner from the toolbox, perhaps - but the thought was as far as I got.
“All right, Harry, I’ve got the gun.” The deep throaty voice spoke out - of the darkness close behind me. “Don’t turn around or do anything stupid.”
He must have been lying up in the grove after he had taken the rifle, and now he had come up silently behind me. I froze.
“Without turning around - just toss that flashlight back here.
Over your shoulder.”
I did as he ordered and I heard the sand crunch under his feet as he stooped to pick it up.
“All right, turn around - slowly.” As I turned, he shone the powerful beam into my eyes, dazzling me. However, I could still vaguely make out the huge hulking shape of the man beyond the beam.
“Have a good swim, Suleimanr I asked. I could see that he wore only a pair of short white underpants, and his enormous belly and thick shapeless legs gleamed wetly in the reflected torchlight.
“I am beginning to develop an allergy to your jokes, Harry,” he spoke again in that deep beautifully modulated voice, and I remembered too late how a grossly overweight man becomes light and strong in the supporting salt water of the sea. However, even with the turn of the tide to help him, Suleiman Dada had performed a formidable feat in surviving the explosion and swimming back through almost two miles of choppy water. I doubted any of his men had done as well.
“I think it should be in the belly first,” he spoke again, and I saw that he held the stock of the rifle across his left elbow. With the same hand he aimed the torch beam into my face. “They tell me that is the most painful place to get it.”
We were silent for moments then, Suleiman Dada. breathing with his deep asthmatic wheeze and I trying desperately to think of some way in which to distract him long enough to give me a chance to grab the barrel of the FN.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to go down on your knees and plead with me?“he asked.
“Go screw, Suleiman,” I answered.
“No, I didn’t really think you would. A pity, I would have enjoyed that. But what about the girl, Harry, surely it would be worth a little of your pride ” We both heard Chubby. He had known there was no way he could cross the open beach undetected, even in the dark. He had tried to rush Suleiman Dada, but I am sure he knew that he would not make it. What he was really doing was giving me the distraction I so desperately needed.
He came fast out of the darkness, running in silently with only the squeak of the treacherous sand beneath his feet to betray him. Even when Suleiman Dada turned the rifle on to him, he did not falter in his charge.
There was the crack of the shot and the long lightning flash of the muzzle blast, but even before that, I was halfway across the distance that separated me from the huge black man. From the corner of my eye I saw Chubby fall, and then Suleiman Dada began to swing the rifle back towards me.
I brushed past the barrel of the FN and crashed shoulder first into his chest. It should have staved his ribs in like the victim of a car smash - instead I found the power of my rush absorbed in the thick padding of dark flesh. It was like running into a feather mattress, and although he reeled back a few paces and lost the rifle, Suleiman Dada remained upright on those two thick tree-trunks of his legs, and before I could recover my own balance I was enfolded in a vast bear hug.
He picked me up off my feet, and pulled me to his mountainously soft chest, trapping both my arms and lifting me so that I could not brace my legs to resist his weight and strength. I experienced a chill of disbelief when I felt the strength of the man, not a hard brutal strength - but something so massive and weighty that there seemed no end to it, almost like the irresistible push and surge of the sea.
I tried with my elbows and knees, kicking and striking to break his hold, but the blows found nothing solid and made no impression upon the man. Instead, the enfolding grip of his arms began to tighten with the slow pulsing power of a giant python. I realized instantly that he was quite capable of literally crushing me to death - and I experienced a sense of panic. I twisted and struggled frantically and unavailingly in his arms, but as he brought more of his immense power to bear upon me, so his breathing wheezed more harshly and he leaned, forward, hunching his great shoulders over me and forcing my back into an arc that must soon snap my spine.
I bent back my head, reached up with an open mouth and I locked my teeth into the broad flattened nose. I bit in hard, with all my desperation, and quite clearly I felt my teeth slice through the flesh and gristle of his nose and instantly my mouth filled with the warm salty metallic flood of his blood. Like a dog at a bull-baiting, I worried and tugged at his nose.
The man bellowed a roar of agony and anger and he released his crushing grip from around my body to try and tear my teeth from his face. The instant my arms were free I twisted convulsively and got a purchase with both feet in the firm wet sand, so I could put my hip into him for the throw. He was so busy attempting to dislodge the grip of my teeth from his nose that he could not resist the throw and as he went over backwards my teeth tore loose, cutting away a lump of his living flesh.
I spat out the horrid mouthful but the warm blood streamed down my chin and I resisted the temptation to pause and wipe it clean.
Suleiman Dada was down on his back, stranded like some massive crippled black frog, but he would not remain helpless much longer, I had to take him out cleanly now and there was only one place where he might be vulnerable.
I jumped up high over him and came down to knee-drop into his throat, to drive my one knee with the full weight and momentum of my body into his larynx and crush it.
He was swift as a cobra, throwing up both arms to shield his throat and to catch me as I descended on to him. Once again, I was enmeshed by those thick black arms, and we rolled down the beach, locked chest to chest into the warm shallow water of the lagoon.
