seemed to shake the water off her decks as a spaniel shakes when it comes ashore with a dead duck in its jaws. Then the propeller bit in hard and this surged forward. Saffron was shaken from her perch on the cabin roof. Her arms windmilled and Rebecca tried to catch her, but she slipped through her fingers and fell backwards with a shriek. If she had struck the steel deck she might have caved in the back of her skull, but Ryder threw aside the axe, dived under her and snatched her out of the air. For a moment he held her to his chest.
“A bird you certainly ain’t, Saffy.” He grinned at her, and ran with her towards his bridge. Although she tried to cling to him, he dumped her unceremoniously in Nazeera’s arms. Without a backward glance, he jumped behind the this’s wheel, and pushed the twin throttles wide open. With a rush of steam from her piston exhausts, she tore away, rejoicing to be free of her towing cable, building up swiftly to her top speed of twelve knots. Ryder brought her round to port in a narrow arc of 180 degrees until he was rushing straight back towards the tangled mass of barges and feluccas.
“What are you going to do?” David asked, as he appeared at Ryder’s side with his shotgun over a shoulder. “Pick up swimmers?”
“No,” Ryder replied grimly. “I am going to add to, not subtract from, the number of swimmers.” The bows of the this were reinforced with a double thickness of half-inch steel plate to withstand contact with the rocks of the cataracts. “I am going to ram,” he warned David. “Tell the girls that we will hit with an almighty thump and they must hang on tight.”
The Dervish boats were thick as vultures round an elephant carcass. Ryder saw that some of the Ansar were freeing the tow lines that held the barges together and passing the cables down to the dhows. Obviously they intended dragging them one at a time into the shallows of the west bank where they could complete the slaughter and plundering at their leisure. The rest were still hacking at the cowering bodies on the crowded decks or leaning over the sides to stab at those who were struggling in the water and screaming for mercy. In the beam of the this’s spotlight the waters of the Nile were stained the colour of mulberry juice by the blood of the dead and dying, and rivulets of blood trickled down the sides of the barges.
“The murderous swine,” Rebecca whispered. Then, to Nazeera, “Take the twins to the cabin. They should not witness this.” She knew it was a forlorn command. It would require more bodily strength than Nazeera possessed to remove them from the bridge. In the reflection of the spotlight’s beam their eyes were huge with dreadful fascination.
The capsized barge was floating bottom up, but sinking swiftly. Suddenly its stern rose, pointed at the moon, then slid below the surface and was gone. Ryder steered for a cluster of three big feluccas, which had tied on to the side of the nearest surviving barge. The Ansar were so busy with their bloody work on the deck that they did not seem to notice the this bearing down on them. At the last moment one of the dhow captains looked up and realized the danger. He shouted a warning, and some of his comrades were scrambling back into the feluccas as the this struck.
Ryder brought her in so skilfully that her steel bows tore through the wooden hulls in quick succession, the timbers shrieking and exploding with the sound of cannon fire as the boats capsized or were driven under the bloody waters. Although the this touched the side of the barge as she tore past, it was a glancing blow and the vessel spun away.
Ryder looked down into the terrified faces of the surviving refugees and heard their piteous entreaties for rescue. He had to harden his heart: the choice before him was to sacrifice all or rescue some. He left them and brought the this around, still under full throttle, then aimed at the next group of Dervish attack boats as they wallowed helplessly without steerage way alongside another drifting barge.
Now the Ansar were fully aware of the danger. The this bore down on them and the blazing Cyclops eye of the spotlight dazzled them. Some threw themselves overboard. Few could swim and their shields and broadswords drew them under swiftly. The this crashed at full throttle into the first felucca, shattered it, and ran on with scarcely a check. Beyond was one of the largest Dervish dhows, almost the length of the this herself. The steamer’s steel bows sliced deeply into her, but could not severe her hull. The impact threw her back on her heels and
some of those on her deck were hurled overboard with the crew of the dhow.
Ryder threw the this into reverse, and as he backed off from the mortally stricken dhow he played the spotlight beam around her. Most of the Dervish boats had recovered their boarding parties from the barges, abandoning their prey in the face of the this’s ferocious onslaught. They hoisted sail and steered back towards the west bank. The three surviving barges were no longer linked together, for the Ansar had succeeded in freeing the lines. Independently of each other they were spreading out and drifting in towards the west bank, thrust across the wide bend of the river by the current. In the powerful beam Ryder could just make out the Dervish hordes waiting to welcome them and complete the massacre. He swung the this around in the hope that he could reach at least one and pick up the tow line again in time to drag it off the hostile shore.
As he tore towards the barges he saw that the one that contained the cordwood, heavier than the others, was being carried more slowly on the current. The remaining two were still in its teeth, their decks piled with the dead and wounded, blood painting their sides, glistening red in the spotlight beam. They would soon be into the shallows where the this could not follow them.
Ryder knew every shoal and bend of the river as intimately as a lover knows the body of his beloved. He narrowed his eyes and calculated the angles and relative speeds. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he realized he could not reach them in time to rescue them all. He kept the this tearing downstream under full steam, but he knew it was hopeless. He saw first one barge, then the other check sharply and come to a halt, stranded on the shoals. From the shore the waiting Dervish warriors plunged into the river and waded out waist-deep to finish the slaughter. Ryder was forced to throttle back and watch helplessly in horror and pity as the Ansar scrambled aboard and their bloody work began again. In vain he directed the rifle fire of his crew at the hordes of Dervish still wading out to the stranded vessels, but the range was long and the bullets had little effect.
Then he saw that the cordwood barge was still floating free. If he acted swiftly he might still be able to salvage it before it, too, went aground. He opened the throttle and raced down to intercept it. It was of crucial importance to recover this stock of fuel for his boilers. With it, they might reach the first cataract without being forced ashore to cut more timber. Ryder shouted to Jock McCrump to prepare a new tow line, then brought the this alongside the barge and held her in position while Jock and his boarding party jumped across to fix the fresh line.
“Quick as you like, Jock,” Ryder shouted. “We’re going to touch bottom at any moment.”
He looked anxiously at the enemy shore. They had now drifted within pistol shot, and even as he thought it he saw muzzle flashes as the Dervish riflemen opened fire on them from the bank. A bullet struck the bridge rail and ricocheted so close past David’s ear that he ducked instinctively, then straightened, looking embarrassed. He turned sternly to Rebecca: “Get the twins below immediately, and make sure they stay there until I tell you.”
Rebecca knew better than to argue with him when he used that tone. She gathered the twins and drove them off the deck with her fiercest tone and expression. Nazeera needed no urging and scuttled down to the cabin ahead of them.
Ryder played the spotlight along the bank, hoping to intimidate the Ansar marksmen or, at least, to illuminate them so that his own crew could return fire more accurately. Although Jock worked fast to rig the new tow line, it seemed like an eternity as they drifted swiftly towards the shallows and the waiting enemy. At last he bellowed across, “All secure, Captain.”
Ryder reversed the this slowly until the gap between the two vessels was narrow enough for Jock and his team to leap back on board the steamer. As soon as his feet hit the this’s steel deck he yelled, “Haul away!”
With a rush of relief Ryder eased the throttles ahead and gently drew the barge after him until she was following like an obedient dog on a leash. He began to haul her off into the main stream of the river, when a rushing sound filled the air and something passed so close above him that his hat spun off his head. Then, immediately afterwards, there followed the unmistakable boom of a six-pounder cannon, the sound following the shell from the west bank.
“Ah! They’ve brought up one of their artillery pieces,” David remarked, in a conversational tone. “Only wonder is that it has taken them so long.”
Quickly Ryder doused the spotlight beam. “They could not fire before for fear of hitting their own ships,” he said. And his last words were drowned by the next shell howling overhead. “That was not so close.” He kept his right hand pressing down on the throttle handles to milk the last turn of speed out of his vessel. The weight and drag of the barge cut at least three knots off their speed.
