Текст книги "Shout at the Devil"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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"That's right." Flynn sat up in his chair. "A hell of a fight.

We fought like madmen. Hand-to-hand stuff."

"Quite," Joyce agreed quickly. "Quite so. With this column was a German naval officer..

"didn't do it," interjected Flynn with alarm. "It wasn't me. He was trying to escape. You can't pin -that one on me." Joyce looked startled.

"I beg your pardon."

"He was shot trying to escape and you try and prove different," Flynn challenged him hotly.

"Yes, I know. I have a copy of your report. A pity. A great pity. We would dearly have liked to interrogate the man."

"You calling me a liar?"

"Good Lord, Major O'Flynn. Nothing is further from my mind." Joyce was finding that conversation with Flynn O'Flynn was similar to feeling your way blindfolded through a hawthorn bush. "Your glass is empty, may I offer you a drink?" Flynn's mouth was open to emit further truculent denials, but the offer of hospitality took him unawares and he subsided.

"Thank you. It's damn good gin, haven't tasted anything like it in years. I don't suppose you could spare a case or two?" Again Joyce was startled.

"I'm sure the wardroom secretary will be able to arrange something for you."

"Bloody good stuff," said Flynn, and sipped at his recharged glass. Joyce decided on a different approach.

"Major O'Flynn, have you heard of a German warship, a cruiser, named BBlitcher?"

"Have I?" hell!" bellowed Flynn with such vehemence that Joyce was left in no doubt that he had struck another jarring note. "The bastard sank me!" These words conjured up in the eye of Captain Joyce's mind a brief but macabre picture of a Flynn floating on his back, while a battle cruiser fired on him with nine-inch guns.

"Sank you?" asked Joyce.

"Rammed me! There I was sailing along in this dhow peaceful as anything when up she comes and bang, right up the arse."

"I see," murmured Joyce. "Was it intentional?"

"You bloody tooting it was." "Why.

"Well..."started Flynn, and then changed his mind. "It's a long story."

"Where did this happen?"

"About fifty miles off the mouth of the Rufiji river."

liabilities

"The Rufiji?"Joyce leaned forward eagerly. "Do you know it? Do You know the RUfiji delta?"

"Do I know the Rufiji delta?" chucked Flynn. "I know it like you know the way to YOUr own Thunder Box. I used to do a lot of business there before the war."

"Excellent! Wonderful!" Joyce could not restrain himself from pursing his lips and whistling the first two bars of "Tipperary'. From him this was expression of unadulterated joy.

"Yeah? What's so wonderful about that?" Flynn was immediately suspicious.

"Major O'Flynn. On the basis of your report, Naval Intelligence considers it highly probable that the Blucher is anchored somewhere in the Rufiji delta."

"Who are you kidding? The Blitcher was sunk months ago everybody knows that."

"Presumed sunk. She, and the two British warships that pursued her, disappeared off the face of the earth or more correctly the ocean. Certain pieces of floating wreckage were recovered that indicated that a battle had been fought by the three ships. It was thought that all three had gone down." Joyce paused and smoothed the grey wings of hair along his temples. "But now it seems certain that Blucher was badly damaged during the engagement, and that she was holed up in the delta."

"Those wheels! Steel plating for repairs!" "Precisely, Major, precisely. But..." Joyce smiled at Flynn, thanks to you, they did not get the plating through."

"Yes, they did. "Flynn growled a denial.

"They did?" demanded Joyce harshly.

"Yeah. We left them lying in the veld. My spies told me that after we had gone the Germans sent another party of bearers up and took them away."

"Why didn't you prevent it? ""What the hell for? They've got no value," Flynn retorted.

"The enemy's insistence must have demonstrated their value." "Yeah. The enemy were so insistent they sent up a couple of Maxim guns with the second party. In my book the more Maxims there are guarding something, the less value it is."

"Well, why didn't you destroy them while you had the chance?" Listen, friend, how do you reckon to destroy twenty tons of steel? swallow it perhaps?"

"Do you realize just what a threat this ship will be once it is seaworthy?" Joyce hesitated. "I tell you now in strict confidence that there will be an invasion of German East Africa in the very near future. Can you imagine the havoc if Blitcher were to slip out of the Rufiji and get among the troop convoys?"

"Yeah all of us have got troubles."

"Major." The captain's voice was hoarse with the effort of checking his temper. "Major. I want you to do a reconnaissance and locate the Blucher for us." Is that so?" boomed Flynn. "You want me to go galloping round in the delta when there's a Maxim behind every mangrove tree. It might take a year to search that delta, you've got no idea what it's like in there." "That won't be necessary." Joyce swivelled his chair, he nodded at the Portuguese lieutenant. "This officer is an aviator."

"What's that mean?"

"He is a flyer."

"Yeah? Is that so good? I did a bit of sleeping around when I was young still get it up now and then." Joyce coughed.

"He flies an aircraft. A flying-machine."

"Oh!" said Flynn. He was impressed. "Jeer! Is that so?" He looked at the Portuguese lieutenant with respect.

"With the co-operation of the Portuguese army I intend conductin an aerial reconnaissance of the Rufiji delta.

"You mean flying over it in a flying-machine?"

"Precisely." "That's a bloody good idea." Flynn was enthusiastic. "When can you be ready?"

"What for?"

"For the reconnaissance."

"Now just hold on a shake, friend!" Flynn was aghast.

"You not getting me into one of those flying things." Two hours later they were still arguing on the bridge of HMS. Renounce, as Joyce conned her back towards the land to deposit Flynn and the two Portuguese on the beach from which his launch had picked them up that morning.

The British cruiser steamed over a sea that was oil-slick calm and purple blue, and the land lay as a dark irregular line on the horizon.

"It is essential that someone who knows the delta flies with the pilot. He has just arrived from Portugal, besides which he will be fully occupied in piloting the machine. He must have an observer. "Joyce was trying again.

Flynn had lost all interest in the discussion, he was now occupied with weightier matters.

"Captain," he started, and Joyce recognized the new tone of his voice and turned to him hopefully.

"Captain, that other business. What about it?"

"I'm sorry I don't follow you."

"That gin you promised me, what about it?" Captain Arthur Joyce R.N. was a man of gentle. when.

His face was smooth and unlined, his mouth full but grave, his eyes thoughtful, the streaks of silver grey at his temples gave him dignity. There was only one pointer to his true temperament, his eyebrows grew in one solid continuous line across his face; they were as thick and furry across the bridge of his nose as they were above his eyes. Despite his appearance he was a man of dark and violent temper.

Ten years on his own bridge, wielding the limitless power and authority of a Royal Naval Captain had not mellowed him, but had taught him how to use the curb on his temper.

Since early that morning when he had first shaken Flynn O'Flynn's large hairy. paw, Arthur Joyce had been exercising every bit of restraint he possessed now he had exhausted it all.

Flynn found himself standing speechless beneath the full blaze of Captain Joyce's anger. In a staccato, low-pitched speech, Arthur Joyce told him his opinion of Flynn's courage, character, reliability, drinking habits and sense of personal hygiene.

Flynn was shocked and deeply hurt.

"Listen.. he said.

"YOU listen," said Joyce. "Nothing will give me more pleasure than to see you leave this ship. And when you do so you can rest content in the knowledge that a full report of your conduct will go to my superiors with copies to the Governor of Mozambique, and the Portuguese War Office."

"Hold on!" cried Flynn. Not only was he going to leave the cruiser without the gin, but he could imagine that the wording of Joyce's report would ensure that he never got that medal. They might even withdraw his commission. In this moment of terrible stress the solution came to him.

"There is one man. Only one man who knows the delta better than I do. He's young, plenty of guts and he's got eyes like a hawk." Joyce glared at him, breathing hard as he fought to check the headlong run of his rage.

"Who?"he demanded.

"My own son," intoned Flynn, it sounded better than sonin-law.

"Will he do it?"

"He'll do it. I'll see to that," Flynn assured him.

"It's as safe as a horse and cart," boomed Flynn, he liked the simile, and repeated it.

"How safe is a horse and cart when it's up in the clouds?" asked Sebastian, without lowering his eyes from the sky.

"I'm disappointed in you, Bassie. Most young fellows would jump at this chance." Flynn was literally in excellent spirits. Joyce had come through with three cases of best Beefeater gin. He sat on one of the gasoline drums that lay beneath the shade of the palm trees above the beach, around him in various attitudes of relaxation lay twenty of his scouts, for it was a drowsy, warm and windless morning.

A bright sun burned down from a clear sky, and the white sand was dazzling against the dark green of the sea. The low surf sighed softly against the beach, and half a mile out, a cloud of seabirds were milling and diving on a shoal of bait fish Their cries blending with the sound of the sea.

Even though they were a hundred miles north of the Rovuma mouth, deep in German territory, a holiday atmosphere prevailed. Heightened by anticipation of the imminent arrival of the flying-machine they were enjoying themselves all of them except Sebastian and Rosa. They were holding each other's hands and looking into the southern sky.

"You must find it for us." Rosa's voice was low, but not low enough to cover her intensity. For the last ten days, since Flynn had returned from his meeting with Joyce on board the Renounce, she had spoken of little else but the German warship. It had become another cup to catch the hatred that overflowed from her.

"I'll try, "said Sebastian.

"You must, "she said. "You must."

"Should be able to get a good view from up there. Like standing on a mountain only with no mountain under you, said Sebastian and he felt his skin crawl at the thought.

"Listen!" said Rosa.

"What?"

"Ssh!" And he heard it, an insect drone that swelled and sank and swelled again. They heard it under the trees also, and some of them came out into the sun and stood peering towards the south.

Suddenly in the sky there was a flash of reflected sunlight off metal or glass, and a shout went up from the watchers.

It came in towards them, low on wobbly wings, the clatter of its engine rising to a crescendo, its shadow racing ahead of it along the white beach. The group of native scouts exploded in panic-stricken retreat, Sebastian dropped on his face in the sand, only Rosa stood unmoving as it roared a few feet over her head, and then rose and banked away in a curve out over the sea.

Sebastian stood up and sheepishly brushed sand from his bush-jacket, as the aircraft levelled in and sank down on to the hard-packed sand near the water's edge. The beat of its engine faded to a spluttering burble, and it waddled slowly towards them, the backwash of the propeller sending a misty plume of sand scudding out behind. The wings looked as though they were about to fall off.

"All right," bellowed Flynn at his men who were standing well back in the palm grove. "Get these drums down there." The pilot switched off the motor, and the silence was stunning. He climbed stiffly out of the cockpit on to the lower wing, (Limpy and awkward in his thick leather jacket, helmet and goggles. He jumped down on to the beach and shrugged out of the jacket, pulled off the helmet and was revealed as the SUave young Portuguese lieutenant.

"Da Silva," he said offering his right hand as Sebastian ran forward to greet him. "Hernandez da Silva." While Flynn and Sebastian supervised the refuelling of the aircraft, Rosa sat with the pilot under the palms, while he breakfasted on garlic polo ny and a bottle of white wine that he had brought with him. suitably exotic food for a dashing knight of the air.

Although his mouth was busy, the pilot's eyes were free and he used them on Rosa. Even at a distance of fifty yards Sebastian became aware with mounting disquiet that Rosa was Suddenly a woman again. Where before there had been a lifted chin and the straight-forward masculine gaze; now there were downcast eyes broken with quick bright glances and secret smiles, now there were soft rose colours that glowed and faded beneath the sun-browned skin of her cheeks and neck. She touched her hair with a finger, pushing a strand back behind her ear. She tugged at the front of her bush-jacket to straighten it, then drew her long khaki-clad legs up sideways beneath her as she sat in the sand. The pilot's eyes followed the movement. He wiped the neck of the wine bottle on his sleeve, and then with a flourish offered it to Rosa.

Rosa murmured her thanks and accepted the bottle to sip at it delicately. With the freckles across her cheeks and the skin peeling from her nose she looked as fresh and as innocent as a little girl, Sebastian thought.

The Portuguese lieutenant on the other hand looked neither fresh nor innocent. He was handsome, if you liked the slimy continental type with that slightly jaded torn cat look. Sebastian decided that there was something obscenely erotic about that little black mustache, that lay upon his upper lip and accentiated the cherry-pink lips beneath.

Watching him take the bottle back from Rosa and lift it towards her in salutation before drinking, Sebastian was overcome with two strong desires. One was to take the wine bottle and thrust it down the lieutenant's throat, the other was to get him into the flying-machine and away from Rosa just as quickly as was possible.

"Paci. Paci," he growled at Mohammed's gang who were slopping gasoline into the funnel on the upper wing. "Get a move on, for cat's sake!"

"Get your clobber into this thing, Bassie, and stop giving orders you know it just confuses everybody."

"I don't know where to put it you'd better tell that greaser to come and show me. I can't speak his language."

"Put it in the front cockpit the observer's cockpit."

"Tell that damned Portuguese to come here." Sebastian dug in stubbornly. "Tell him to leave Rosa alone and come here." Rosa followed the pilot to the aircraft and the expression of awed respect on her face, as she listened to him throwing out orders in Portuguese, infuriated Sebastian. The ritual of starting the aircraft completed, it stood clattering and quivering on the beach, and the pilot waved imperiously at Sebastian from the cockpit to come aboard.

Instead he went to Rosa and took her possessively in his arms.

"Do you love me?"he asked.

"What?"she shouted above the bellow of the engine.

"Do you love me?"he roared.

"Of course I do, you fool," she shouted back and smiled up into his face before going up on tip-toe to kiss him while the slipstream of the propeller howled around them. Her embrace had passion in it that had not been there these many months, and Sebastian wondered sickly how much of it had been engendered by an outside agency.

"You can do that when you get back." Flynn prised him loose from Rosa's grip, and boosted him up into the cockpit.

The machine jerked forward and Sebastian clutched desperately to retain his balance, then glanced back. Rosa was waving and smiling, he was not certain if the smile was directed at him or at the helmeted head in the cockpit behind him, but his jealousy was swamped by the primeval instinct of survival.

Clutching with both hands at the sides of the cockpit, and his toes curling in their boots as though to grip the floorboards of the cockpit, Sebastian stared ahead.

The beach disappeared beneath the fuselage in a solid white blur; the palm trees whipped past on one side, the sea on the other; the wind tore at his face and tears streamed back along his cheeks, the machine bumped and bucked and jounced, and then leaped upwards under him, dropped back to bounce once more and then was airborne. The earth fell away gently beneath them as they soared, and Sebastian's spirits soared with them. His misgivings melted away.

Sebastian remembered at last to pull the goggles down over his eyes to protect them from the stinging wind, and godlike he looked down through them at a world that was small and tranquil.

When at last he looked back over his shoulder at the pilot, this strange and wonderful shared experience of immortality had lifted him above the petty passions of mere men, and they smiled at each other.

The pilot pointed out over the right wing tip, and Sebastian followed the direction of his arm.

Far, far out on the crenellated blue blanket of-the sea, tiny beneath vast flUffy piles of thunderhead cloud, he saw the grey shape of the British cruiser Renounce with the pate white feather of its wake fanning on the surface of the ocean behind it.

He nodded and smiled at his companion. Again the pilot pointed, this time ahead.

Still misty in the blue haze of distance, haphazard as the unfitted pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the islands of the Rufiji delta were spilled and scattered between ocean and mainland.

In the rackety little cockpit, Sebastian squatted over his pack and took from it binoculars, pencil and map-case.

It was hot. Moist itchy hot. Even in the shade beneath the festooned camouflage-nets the decks of Blitcher were smothered with hot sticky waves of swamp air. The sweat that oozed and trickled down the glistening bodies of the half-naked men who slaved on her foredeck gave them no relief, for the air was too humid to evaporate the moisture. They moved like sleep-walkers, with slow mechanical determination, manhandling the thick sheet of steel plate into its slings beneath the high arm of the crane.

Even the flow of obscenity from the lips of Lochtkamper, the engineering commander, had dried up like a spring in drought season. He worked with his men, like them stripped to the waist, and the tattoos on his upper arms and across his chest heaved and bulged as they rode on an undulating sea of Muscles.

"Rest," he grunted; and they straightened up from their labour, mouths gaping as they sucked in the stale air, massaging aching backs, glowering at the sheet of steel with true hatred.

"Captain." Lochtkamper became aware of von Kleine for the first time. He stood against the forward gun-turret, tall in full whites, the blond beard half concealing the cross of black enamel and silver that hung at his throat. Lochtkamper crossed to him.

"It goes well?" von Kleine asked, and the engineer shook his head.

, "Not as well as I had hoped." He wiped one huge hand across his forehead, leaving a smudge of grease and rust scale on his own face. "Slow," he said. "Too slow."

"You have encountered difficulties?" "Everywhere," growled the engineer, and he looked around at the heat mist and the mangroves, at the sluggish black waters and the mud banks.

"Nothing works here the welding equipment, the winch engines, even the men everything sickens in this obscene heat."

"How much longer?"

"I

do not know, Captain. I truly do not know." Von Kleine would not press him. If any man could get Blitcher seaworthy, it would be this man, When Lochtkamper slept at all, it was here on the foredeck, curled like a dog on a mattress thrown on the planking. He slept a few exhausted hours amid the whine and groan of the winches, the blue hissing glare of the welding torches and the drum splitting hammering of the riveters, then he was up again bullying, leading, coaxing and threatening.

"Another three weeks," Lochtkamper estimated reluctantly. "A month at the most if all goes as it does now." They were both silent, standing together, two men from different worlds drawn together by a common goal, united by respect for each other's ability.

A mile up the channel, movement caught their attention. It was one of the launches returning to the cruiser, yet it looked like a hayrick under its bulky cargo. It came slowly against the sluggish current, sitting so low in the water that only a few inches of freeboard showed, while its load was a great shaggy hump on which sat a dozen black men.

Von Kleine and Lochtkamper watched it approaching.

"I still do not know about that obscene wood, Captain." Lochtkamper shook his big untidy head again. "It is so soft, so much ash, it could clog the furnace."

"There is nothing else we can do," von Kleine reminded him.

When Blucher entered the Rufiji, her coal-bunkers were almost empty. There was enough fuel for perhaps four thousand miles of steaming. Hardly enough to carry her in a straight run down into latitude 45" south, where her mother ship, Esther, waited to refuel her, and fill her magazines with shell.

There was not the faintest chance of obtaining coal.

Instead von, Kleine had set Commissioner Fleischer and his thousand native porters to cutting cordwood from the forests, that grew at the apex of the delta. It was a duty that Commissioner Fleischer had opposed with every argument and excuse he could muster. He felt that in delivering safely to Captain von Kleine the steel plating from Dares Salaam, he had discharged any obligation that he might have towards the Blitcher. His eloquence availed him not at all, Lochtkamper had fashioned two hundred primitive axe heads from the steel plate, and von Kleine had sent Lieutenant Kyller up-river with Fleischer to help him keep his enthusiasm for wood-cutting burning brightly.

For three weeks now, the Blitcher's launches had been plying steadily back and forth. Up to the present they had delivered some five hundred tons of timber. The problem was finding storage for this unwieldy cargo once the coal bUnkers were filled.

"We will have to begin deck loading the cordwood soon," von Kleine muttered, and Lochtkamper opened his mouth to reply when the alarm bells began to clamour an emergency, and the loud-hailer boomed.

"Captain to the bridge. Captain to the bridge." Von Kleine turned and ran.

On the companion ladder he collided with one of his lieutenants. They caught at each other for balance and the lieutenant shouted into von Kleine's face.

"Captain, an aircraft! Flying low. Coming this way.

Portuguese markings."

"Damn it to hell!" Von Kleine pushed past him, and bounded up the ladder. He burst on to the bridge, panting.

"Where is it?"he shouted.

The officer of the watch dropped his binoculars and turned to von Kleine with relief "There it is, sir!" He pointed through a hole in the tangled screen of camouflage that hung like a veranda roof over the bridge.

Von Kleine snatched the binoculars from him and, as he trained them on the distant winged shape in the mist haze above the mangroves, he issued his orders.

"Warn the men ashore. Everybody under cover," he barked. "All guns trained to maximum elevation. Pom-poms loaded with shrapnel. Machine-gun crews closed up but no firing until my orders." He held the aircraft in the round field of the field glasses.

"Portuguese, all right," he grunted; the green and red insignia showed clearly against the brown body of the aircraft.

"She's searching. The aircraft was sweeping back and forth, banking over and turning back at the end of each leg of her search pattern, like a farmer ploughing a field. Von Kleine could make out the head and shoulders of a man crouched forward in the squat round nose of the aircraft. Now we'll find out how effective is our camouflage." So the enemy have guessed at last. They must have reported the convoy of steel plate or perhaps the chopping of the cordwood has alerted them, he thought, watching the aircraft tacking slowly towards him. We could not hope to go undetected for ever but I did not expect them to send an aircraft, Then suddenly the thought struck him so hard that he gasped with the danger of it. He whirled and ran to the forward rail of the bridge and peered out through the camouflage net.

Still half a mile distant, trundling slowly down the centre of the channel with the wide rippling V of her wake spread on the current behind her, clumsy as a pregnant hippo with her load of cordwood, the launch was aimed straight at Blitcher. From the air she would be as conspicuous as a fat tick on a white sheet.

"The launch..." shouted von Kleine, hail her. Order her to run for the bank get her under cover!

But he knew it was useless. By the time she was within hail, it would be too late. He thought of ordering his forward turrets to fire on the launch and sink her but He discarded the idea immediately, the fall of shell would immediately draw the enemy's attention.

Impatiently he stood gripping the rail of the bridge, and mouthing his anger and his frustration at the approaching launch.

Sebastian hung over the edge Of the cockpit. The wind buffeted him, flapping his jacket wildly about his body, whipping his hair into a black tangle. With his usual dexterity Sebastian had managed to drop the binoculars overboard. They were the property of Flynn Patrick O'Flynn, and Sebastian knew that he would be expected to pay for them. This spoiled Sebastian's enjoyment of the flight to some extent, he already owed Flynn a little over three hundred pounds. Rosa would have something to say also. However, the loss of the binoculars was no handicap, the aircraft was flying too low and was so unstable that the unaided eye was much more effective.

From a height of five hundred feet the mangrove forest looked like a fluffy overstuffed mattress, a sickly fever green in colour, with the channels and the water-ways between them dark gun-metal veins that flashed the sunlight back like a heliograph. The clouds of white egrets that rose in alarm as the aircraft approached looked like drifts of torn paper scraps. A fish eagle hung suspended in silent flight ahead of them, the wide span of its wings flared at the tips like the fingers of a hand. It dipped away, sliding past the aircraft's wing tip so close that Sebastian saw the fierce yellow eyes in its white hooded head.

Sebastian laughed with delight, and then grabbed at the side of the cockpit to steady himself, as the machine rocked violently under him. This was the pilot's method of attracting Sebastian's attention, and Sebastian wished he would think up some other way of doing it.

He looked back angrily shouting in the howl of wind and engine.

"Watch it! YOU Stupid dago." Da Silva was gesticulating wildly, his pink mouth working under the black mustache, his eyes wild behind the panes of his goggles, his right hand stabbing urgently out over the starboard wing.

Sebastian saw it immediately on the wide water-way, the launch was so glaringly conspicuous that he wondered why he had not seen it before, then he recalled that his attention had been concentrated on the terrain directly beneath the aircraft and he exCUsed himself. Yet there was little to justify da Silva's excitement, he thought. This was no battle cruiser, it was a tiny vessel of perhaps twenty-five feet. Quickly he ran his eyes down the channel, following it to the open sea in the blue distance.

It was empty.

He glanced back at the pilot and shook his head. But da Silva's excitement had, if anything, increased. He was making another frenzied hand-signal that Sebastian could not understand. To save– argument Sebastian nodded in agreement, and instantly the machine dropped away under him so that Sebastian's belly was left behind and he clutched desperately at the side of the cockpit once more.

In a shallow turning dive, da Silva took the machine

Down and then levelled out with the landing-wheels almost brushing the tops of the mangroves. They rushed towards the channel, and as the last mangroves whipped away under them da Silva eased the nose down still farther and they dropped to within a few feet of the surface of the water. It was a display of fine flying that was completely wasted on Sebastian. He was cursing da Silva quietly, his eyes starting from their sockets.

A mile ahead of them across the open water bobbed the overladen launch. It was only a few feet below their own level, and they raced towards it with the wash of the propeller blowing a squall of ripples across the surface behind them.

"My God!" The blasphemy was wrung from Sebastian in his distress. He's going to fly right into it!" It was an opinion that seemed to be shared by the crew of the launch. As the machine roared in on them, they began to abandon ship. Sebastian saw two men leap from the high piled load of timber and hit the water with small white splashes.

At the last second da Silva lifted the plane and they hopped over the launch. For a fleeting instant Sebastian stared at a range of fifteen feet into the face of the German naval officer who crouched down over the tiller bar at the stern of the launch. They were then past and climbing sharply, banking and turning back.

Sebastian saw the launch had rounded to, and that her crew were clambering aboard and splashing around her, but da Silva had throttled back and the engine was burbling,. Once more the aircraft dropped towards the river under half power. He levelled out fifty feet above the water, and flew sedately, keeping away from the launch and well towards the northern side of the channel.

"What are you doing?" Sebastian mouthed the question at da Silva. In reply the pilot made a sweeping gesture with his right hand at the thick bank of mangroves alongside.

Puzzled, Sebastian stared into the mangroves. What was the fool doing, surely he didn't think that... There was a hump of high ground on the bank, a hump that rose perhaps one hundred and fifty feet above the level of the river. They came up to it.

Like a hunter following a wounded buffalo, moving carelessly through thin scattered bush which could not possibly give cover to such a large animal, and then suddenly coming face to face with it so close, that he sees the minute detail of crenellation on the massive bosses of the horns, sees the blood dripping from moist black nostrils, and the dull furnace glare of the piggy little eyes in the same fashion Sebastian found the Blitcher.