Текст книги "Shout at the Devil"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

erman Fleischer was tired and there were blisters on his feet from the series of forced marches that had brought him to M'tapa's village.

A month before he had left his headquarters at Mahengeto begin the annual tax tour of his area. As was his custom, he had started in the northern province, and it had been an unusually successful expedition. The wooden chest with the rampant black eagle painted on its lid had grown heavier with each day's journey. Herman had amused himself by calculating how many more years service in Africa would be necessary before he could resign and return home to Plaven and settle down on the estate he planned to buy.

Three more years as fruitful as this, he decided, would be sufficient. It was a bitter shame that he had not been able to capture O'Flynn's dhow on the Rufiji thirteen months previously that would have advanced his date of departure by a full twelve months. Thinking about it stirred his residual anger at that episode, and he placated it by doubling the hut tax on the next village he visited. This raised such a howl of protest from the village headman that Herman nodded at his sergeant Of Askari, who began ostentatiously to unpack the rope from his saddlebag.

"O fat and beautiful bull elephant," the headman changed his mind hastily. "If you will wait but a little while, I will bring the money to you. There is a new hut, without lice or fleas, in which you may rest Your lovely body, and I will send a young girl to you with beer for Your thirst."

"Good," agreed Herman. "While I rest, my Askari will stay with you." He nodded at the sergeant to bind the chief, then waddled away to the hut.

The headman sent two of his sons to dig beneath a certain tree in the forest, and they returned an hour later with mournful faces, carrying a heavy skin bag.

Contentedly Herman Fleischer signed an official receipt for ninety per cent of the contents of the bag Fleischer allowed himself a ten per cent handling fee and the headman, who could not read a word of German, accepted it with relief.

"I will stay tonight in your village," Herman announced.

"Send the same girl to cook my food."

The runner from the South arrived in the night, and disturbed Herman Fleischer at a most inopportune moment.

The news he carried was even more disturbing. From his description of the new German commissioner who was doing Herman's job for him in the southern province, and shooting up the countryside in the process, Herman immediately recognized the young Englishman whom he had last seen on the deck of a dhow in the Rufiji delta.

Leaving the bulk of his retinue, including the bearers of the tax chest, to follow him at their best speed, Herman mounted at midnight on his white donkey and, taking ten Askari with him, he rode southwards on a storm patrol.

Five nights later, in those still dark hours that precede the dawn, Herman was camped near the Rovuma river when he was awakened by his sergeant.

"What is it?" Grumpy with fatigue, Herman sat up and lifted the side of his mosquito net.

"We heard the sound of gunfire. A single shot."

"Where?" He was instantly awake, and reaching for his boots.

"From the South, towards the village of M'tapa on the Rovuma."

Fully dressed now, Herman waited anxiously, straining his ears against the small sounds of the African night. "Are you sure... he began as he turned to his sergeant, but he did not finish. Faintly, but unmistakable in the darkness, they heard the pop, pop, pop of a distant rifle a pause and then another shot.

"Break camp," bellowed Herman. "Rasch! You black heathen. Rasch!"

The sun was well up by the time they reached M'tapa's village. They came upon it suddenly through the gardens of tall millet that screened their approach. Herman Fleischer paused to throw out his Askari in a line of skirmishers before closing in on the cluster of huts, but when he reached the fringe, he stopped once more in surprise at the extraordinary spectacle which was being enacted in the open square of the village.

The dense knot of half-naked black people that swarmed over the remains of the elephant was perfectly oblivious of Herman's presence until at last he filled his lungs, and then emptied them again in a roar that carried over the hubbub of shouts and laughter. Instantly a vast silence fell upon the gathering, every head turned towards Herman and from each head eyes bulged in horrific disbelief

"Bwana intarnbu," a small voice broke the silence at last.

"Lord of the rope. "They knew him well.

"What?" Herman began, and then gasped in outrage as he noticed in the crowd a black man he had never seen before, dressed in the full uniform of German Askari. "You!"

he shouted, pointing an accusing finger, but the man whirled and ducked away behind the screen of blood smeared black bodies. "Stop him!" Herman fumbled with the flap of his holster. Movement caught his eye and he turned to see another pseudo-Askari running away between the huts. "There's another one! Stop him! Sergeant, Sergeant, get your men here!"

The initial shock that had held them frozen was now past, and the crowd broke and scattered. Once again, Herman Fleischer gasped in outrage as he saw, for the first time, a figure sitting on a carved native stool on the far side of the square. A figure in an outlandish uniform of bright but travel-stained blue, fragged with gold, his legs clad in high jackboots, and on his head the dress helmet of an illustrious Prussian regiment.

"Englishman!" Despite the disguise, Herman recognized him. He had finally succeeded in unbuttoning the flap of his holster, and now he withdrew his Luger. "Englishman!"

He repeated the insult and lifted the pistol.

With the quickness of mind for which he was noted, Sebastian sat bewildered by this unforeseen turn of events, but when Herman showed him the working end of the Luger, he realized that it was time to take his leave, and he attempted to leap nimbly to his feet. However, the spurs on his boots became entangled once more and he went backwards over the stool. The bullet hissed harmlessly through the empty space where he would have been standing.

"God damn!" Herman fired again, and the bullet kicked a burst of splinters out of the heavy wooden stool behind which Sebastian was lying. This second failure aroused in Herman Fleischer the blinding rage which spoiled his aim for the next two shots he fired, as Sebastian went on hands and knees around the corner of the nearest hut.

Behind the hut, Sebastian jumped to his feet and set off at a run. His main concern was to get out of the village and into the bush. In his ears echoed Flynn O'Flynn's advice.

"Make for the river. Go straight for the river."

And he was so occupied with it that, when he charged around the side of the next hut, he could not check himself in time to avoid collision with one of Herman Fleischer's Askari, who was coming in the opposite direction. Both of them went down together in an untidy heap, and the steel helmet fell forward over Sebastian's eyes. As he struggled into a sitting position, he removed the helmet and found the man's woolly black head in front of him. It was ideally positioned and Sebastian was holding the heavy helmet above it. With the strength of both his arms, he brought the helmet down again, and it clanged loudly against the Askari's skull. With a grunt the Askari sagged backwards and lay quietly in the dust. Sebastian placed the helmet over his sleeping face, picked up the man's rifle from beside him and got to his feet once more.

He stood crouching in the shelter of the hut while he tried to make sense of the chaos around him. Through the pandemonium set up by the panic-stricken villagers, who were milling about with all the purpose of a flock of sheep attacked by wolves, Sebastian could hear the bellowed commands of Herman Fleischer, and the answering shouts of the German Askari. Rifle-fire cracked and whined, to be answered by renewed outbursts of screaming.

Sebastian's first impulse was to hide in one of the huts but he realized this would be futile. At the best it would only delay his capture.

No, he must get out of the village. But the thought of covering the hundred yards of open ground to the shelter of the nearest trees, while a dozen Askari shot at him, was most unattractive.

At this moment Sebastian became aware of an unpleasant warmth in his feet, and he looked down to find that he was standing in the live ashes of a cooking fire. The leather of his jackboots was already beginning to char and smoke. He stepped back hurriedly, and the smell of burning leather acted as a laxative for the constipation of his brain.

From the hut beside him he snatched a handful of thatch and stooped to thrust it into the fire. The dry grass burst into flame, and Sebastian held the torch to the wall of the hut. Instantly fire bloomed and shot upwards. With the torch in his hand, Sebastian ducked across the narrow opening to the next hut and set fire to that also.

"Son of a gun!" exulted Sebastian as great oily billows of smoke obscured the sun and limited his field of vision to ten paces.

Slowly he moved forward in the rolling cloud of smoke, setting fire to each hut he passed, and delighted in the frustrated bellows of Germanic rage he heard behind him.

Occasionally ghostly figures scampered past him in the acrid half-darkness but none of them paid him the slightest attention, and each time Sebastian relaxed the pressure of his forefinger on the trigger of the Mauser, and moved on.

He reached the last hut and paused there to gather himself for the final sprint across open ground to the edge of the millet garden. Through the eddying bank of smoke, the mass of dark green vegetation from which he had fled in terror not many hours before, now seemed as welcoming as the arms of his mother.

Movement near him in the smoke, and he swung the Mauser to cover it; he saw the square outline of a kepi and the sparkle of metal buttons, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

"Manalli!"

"Mohammed! Good God, I nearly killed you." Sebastian threw up the rifle barrel as he recognized him.

"Quickly! They are close behind me." Mohammed snatched at his arm and dragged him forward. The jackboots pinched his toes and thumped like the hooves of a galloping buffalo as Sebastian ran. From the huts behind them a voice shouted urgently and, immediately afterwards, came the vicious crack of a Mauser and the shrill whinny of the ricochet.

Sebastian had ale ad of ten paces on Mohammed as he plunged into the bank of leaves and millet stalks.

What should we do now, Manali?" Mohammed asked, and the expression on the faces of the two other men echoed the question with pathetic trust. A benevolent chance had reunited Sebastian with the remnants of his command. During the flight through the millet gardens, with random rifle-fire clipping the leaves about their heads, Sebastian had literally fallen over these two. At the time they were engaged in pressing their bellies and their faces hard against the earth, and it had taken a number of lusty kicks with the jackboot to get them up and moving.

Since then Sebastian, mindful of Flynn's advice, had cautiously and circuitously led them down to the landing place on the bank of the Rovuma. He arrived to find that Fleischer's Askari, by using the direct route and without the necessity of concealing themselves, had arrived before him.

From the cover of the reed-banks Sebastian watched dejectedly, as they used an axe to knock the bottoms out of the dug-out canoes that were drawn up on the little white beach.

"Can we swim across?" he asked Mohammed in a whisper, and Mohammed's face crumpled with horror, as he considered the suggestion. Both of them peered out through the reeds across a quarter of a mile of deep water that flowed so fast, its surface war-dimpled with tiny whirlpools.

"No,"said Mohammed with finality.

"Too far? "asked Sebastian hopelessly.

"Too far, Too fast. Too deep. Too many crocodiles,"

agreed Mohammed, and in an unspoken but mutual desire to get away from the river and the Askari, they crawled out of the reed-bank and crept away inland.

In the late afternoon they were lying up in a bushy gully about two miles from the river and an equal distance from M'tapa's village.

"What should we do now, Manali?" Mohammed repeated his question, and Sebastian cleared his throat before answering.

"Well..." he said and paused while his wide brow wrinkled in the agony of creative thought. Then it came to him with all the splendour of a sunrise. "We'll just jolly well have to find some other way of getting across the river." He said it with the air of a man well pleased with his own perspicacity. "What do you suggest, Mohammed?"

A little surprised to find the ball returned so neatly into his own court, Mohammed remained silent.

"A raft?" hazarded Sebastian. The lack of tools, material and opportunity to build one was so obvious, that Mohammed did not deign to reply. He shook his head.

"No," agreed Sebastian. "Perhaps you are right." Again the classic beauty of his features was marred by a scowl of concentration. At last he demanded, "There are other villages along the river?"

"Yes," Mohammed conceded. "But the Askari will visit each of them and destroy the canoes. Also they will tell the headmen who we are, and threaten them with the rope."

"But they cannot cover the whole river. It has a frontier of five or six hundred miles. We'll just keep walking until we find a canoe. It may take us a long time but we'll find one eventually."

"If the Askari don't catch us first."

"They'll expect us to stay close to the border. We'll make a detour well inland, and march for five or six days before we come back to the river again. We'll rest now and move tonight."

Heading on a diagonal line of march away from the Rovuma and deeper into German territory, moving north-west along a well defined footpath, the four of them kept walking all that night. As the slow hours passed so the pace flagged and twice Sebastian noticed one or other of his men wander off the path at an angle until suddenly they started and looked about in surprise, before hurrying back to join the others. It puzzled him and he meant to ask them what they were doing, but he was tired and the effort of speech was too great. An hour later he found the reason for their behaviour.

Plodding along, with the movement of his legs becoming completely automatic, Sebastian was slowly overcome by a state of gentle well-being. He surrendered to it and let the warm, dark mists of oblivion wash over his mind.

The sting of a thorn branch across his cheek jerked him back to consciousness and he looked about in bewilderment.

Ten yards away on his flank, Mohammed and the two gun boys walked along the path in single file, their faces turned towards him with expressions of mild interest in the moonlight. It took some moments for Sebastian to realize that he had fallen asleep on his feet. Feeling a complete ass, he trotted back to take his place at the head of the line.

When the fat silver moon sank below the trees, they kept going by the faint glow of reflected light, but slowly that waned until the footpath hardly showed at their feet.

Sebastian decided that dawn could be only an hour away and it was time to halt. He stopped and was about to speak when Mohammed's clutching hand on his shoulder prevented him.

"Manali!" There was a to tie in Mohammed's whisper that cautioned him, and Sebastian felt his nerves jerk taut.

"What is it?" he breathed, protectively unslinging the Mauser.

"Look. There ahead of us."

Screwing up his eyes Sebastian searched the blackness ahead, and it was a long time before the faint ruddiness in the solid blanket of darkness registered itself upon the exhausted retinas of his eyes. "Yes!" he whispered. "What is it?"

"A fire," breathed Mohammed. "There is someone camped across the path in front of us."

"Askari?"asked Sebastian.

"Perhaps."

Peering at the ruby puddle of dying coals, Sebastian felt the hair on the back of his neck stir and come erect with alarm. He was fully awake now. "We must go around them."

"No. They will see our spoor in the dust of the path and they will follow us," Mohammed demurred.

"What then?"

"First let me see how many there are."

Without waiting for Sebastian's permission, Mohammed slipped away and disappeared into the night like aleopard.

Five anxious minutes Sebastian waited. Once he thought he heard a scuffling sound but he was not certain.

Mohammed's shape materialized again beside him. "Ten of them," he reported. "Two Askari and eight bearers. One of the Askari sat guard by the fire. He saw me, so I killed him."

"Good God!" Sebastian's voice rose higher. "You did what?"

"I killed him. But do not speak so loud."

"How?"

"With my knife."

"Lest he kill me first."

"And the other?"

"Him also."

"You killed both of them?" Sebastian was appalled.

"Yes, and took their rifles. Now it is safe to go on. But the bearers have with them many cases. It comes to me that this party follows after Bwana Intambu, the German commissioner, and that they carry with them all his goods."

"But you shouldn't have killed them," protested Sebastian. "You could have just tied them up or something."

"Manali, you argue like a woman," Mohammed snapped impatiently, and then went on with his original line of thought. "Among the cases is one that by its size I think is the box for the tax money. The one Askari slept with his back against it as though to give it special care."

"The tax money?"

"Yes.

"Well, son of a gun!" Sebastian's scruples dissolved and in the darkness his expression was suddenly transformed into that of a small boy on Christmas morning.

They woke the German bearers by standing over them and prodding them with the rifle barrels. Then they hustled them out of their blankets and herded them into a small group, bewildered and shivering miserably in the chill of dawn. Wood was heaped on the fire; it burned up brightly, and by its light Sebastian examined the booty.

The one Askari had bled profusely from the throat on to the small wooden chest. Mohammed took him by the heels and dragged him out of the way, then used his blanket to wipe the chest clean.

"Manali," he said with reverence. "See the big lock. See the bird of the Kaiser painted on the lid..." He stooped over the chest and took a grip on the handles, but most of all, feel the weight of it."

Amongst the other equipment around the fire, Mohammed found a thick coil of one-inch manila rope. A commodity which was essential equipment on any of Herman Fleischer's safaris. With it, Mohammed roped the bearers together, at waist level, allowing enough line between each of them to make concerted movement possible but preventing individual flight.

"Why are you doing that?" Sebastian asked with interest, through a mouthful of blood sausage and black bread. Most of the other boxes were filled with food, and Sebastian was breakfasting well and heartily.

"So they cannot escape."

"We're not taking them with us are we?"

"Who else will carry all this? "Mohammed asked patiently.

Five days later Sebastian was seated in the bows of a long dug-out canoe, with the charred soles of his boots set firmly on the chest that lay in the bilges. He was eating with relish a thick sandwich of polo ny and picked onions, wearing a change of clean underwear and socks that were a few sizes too large, and there was clutched in his left hand an open bottle of Hansa beer all these with the courtesy of Commissioner Fleischer.

The paddlers were singing with unforced gaiety, for the hiring fee that Sebastian had paid them would buy each of them a new wife at least.

Hugging the bank of the Rovurna on the Portuguese side, driven on by willing paddles and the eager current, in twelve hours they covered the distance that it had taken Sebastian and his heavily-laden bearers five days on foot.

The canoe deposited Sebastian's party at the landing opposite M'tapa's village, only ten miles from Lalapanzi.

They walked that distance without resting and arrived after nightfall.

The windows of the bungalow were darkened, and the whole camp slept. After cautioning them to silence, Sebastian drew his depleted band up on the front lawn with the tax chest set prominently in front of them. He was proud of his success and wanted to achieve the appropriate mood for his home-coming. Having set the stage, he went up on to the stoep, of the bungalow and tip, toed towards the front door with the intention of awakening the household by hammering upon it dramatically.

However, there was a chair on the stoep, and Sebastian tripped over it. He fell heavily. The chair clattered and the rifle slipped from his shoulder and rang on the stone flags.

Before Sebastian could recover his feet, the door was flung open and through it appeared Flynn O'Flynn in his night-shirt and armed with a double-barrelled shotgun.

"Caught you, you bastard! "he roared and lifted the shotgun.

Sebastian heard the click of the safety-catch and scrambled to his knees. "Don't shoot! Flynn, it's me."

The shotgun wavered a little. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"It's me Sebastian."

"Bassie?" Flynn lowered the shotgun uncertainly. "It can't be. Stand up, let's have a look at yOU."

Sebastian obeyed with alacrity.

"Good God," Flynn swore in amazement, "It is you. Good God! We heard that Fleischer caught you at M'tapa's village a week ago. We heard he'd nob bled you for keeps!" He came forward with his right hand extended in welcome. "You made it, did you? Well done, Bassie boy."

Before Sebastian could accept Flynn's hand, Rosa came through the doorway, brushed past Flynn, and almost knocked Sebastian down again. With her arms locked around his chest and her cheek pressed to his unshaven cheek, she kept repeating, "You're safe! Oh Sebastian, you're safe."

Acutely aware of the fact that Rosa wore nothing under the thin night-gown, and that everywhere he put his hands they came in contact with thinly-veiled warm flesh, Sebastian grinned sheepishly at Flynn over her shoulder.

"Excuse me, he said.

His first two kisses were off target for she was moving around a lot. One caught her on the eye, the next on her eyebrow, but the third was right between the lips.

When it last they were forced to separate or suffocate,

Rosa gasped, "I thought YOu were dead."

"All right, missie," growled Flynn. "You can go and put some clothes on now."

Breakfast at Lalapanzi that morning was a festive affair.

Flynn took advantage of his daughter's weakened condition and brought a bottle of gin to the table. Her protests were half-hearted, and later with her own hands she poured a little into Sebastian's tea to brace it.

They ate on the stoep in golden sunshine that filtered through the bougainvillaea creeper. A flock of glossy starlings hopped and chirruped on the lawns, and an oriel sang from the wild fig-trees. All nature conspired to make Sebastian's victory feast a success, while Rosa and Nanny did their best from the kitchen drawing upon the remains of Herman Fleischer's supplies that Sebastian had brought home with him.

Flynn O'Flynn's eyes were bloodshot and underhung with plum-coloured pouches, for he had been up all night counting the contents of the German tax chest and working out his accounts by the light of a hurricane lamp. Nevertheless, he was in a merry mood made merrier by the cups of fortified tea on which he was breakfasting. He joined warmly in the chorus of praise and felicitation to Sebastian Old, smith that was being sung by Rosa O'Flynn.

"You turned up one for the book, so help me, Bassie," he chortled at the end of the meal. "I'd just love to hear how Fleischer is going to explain this one to Governor Schee.

Oh, I'd love to be there when he tells him about the tax money son of a gun, it'll nigh kill them both."

"While you're on the subject of money," Rosa smiled at Flynn, "have you worked out how much Sebastian's share comes to, Daddy?" Rosa only used Flynn's paternal title when she was extremely well-disposed towards him.

"That I have," admitted Flynn, and the sudden shiftiness of his eyes aroused Rosa's suspicions. Her lips pursed a little.

"And how much is it? "she asked in the syrupy tone which Flynn recognized as the equivalent of the blood roar of a wounded lioness.

"Sure now, and who wants to be spoiling a lovely day with the talking of business?" Under pressure, Flynn exaggerated the brogue in his voice in the hope that Rosa would find it beguiling. A forlorn hope.

"How much? "demanded Rosa, and he told her.

There was a sickly silence. Sebastian paled under his sunburn and opened his mouth to protest. On the strength of his half share, he had the previous night made to Rosa O'Flynn a serious proposal, which she had accepted.

"Leave this to me, Sebastian," she whispered and laid a restraining hand on– his knee as she turned back to her father. "You'll let us have a look at the accounts, won't you?"

Still syrupy sweet.

"Sure and I will. They're all straight and square."

The document that Flynn O'Flynn produced under the main heading, "Joint Venture Between F. O'Flynn, Esq and S. Oldsmith, Esq and Others. German East Africa. Period May 15, 1913, to August 21, 1913," showed that he belonged to an unorthodox school of accountancy.

The contents of the tax chest had been converted to English sterling at the rates laid down by Pear's Almanac for lyp, 1893. Flynn set great store by this particular publication.

From the gross proceeds of 4,652 pounds Flynn had deducted his own fifty per cent share and the ten per cent of the other partners the Portuguese Chef D'Post and the Governor of Mozambique. From the balance he had then deducted the losses incurred on the Rufiji expedition (for which separate account addressed to German East African Administration). From there he had gone on to charge the expenses of the second expedition, not forgetting such items as:

To L. Parbhoo (Tailor) 15.10 pounds. To One German Dress HelmetE 5.10 pounds To Five Uniforms (Askari)

2.10 pounds each 12.10 pounds. To Five Mauser Rifles 10 pounds each 50 pounds. -.

To Six Hundred and Twenty-Five Rounds 7men Ammunition E22.10 To Advance re travelling expenses, One Hundred Escudos made to S. Oldsmith, Esq. f, 1. 5.

Finally, Sebastian's half share of the net losses amounted to a little under twenty pounds.

"Don't worry," Flynn assured him magnanimously. "I don't expect you to pay it now we'll just deduct it from your share of the profits of the next expedition."

"But, Flynn, I thought you said well, I mean, you told me I had a half share."

"And so you have, Bassie, and so you have."

"You said we were equal partners."

"You must have misunderstood me, boy. I said a half share and that means after expenses. It's just a great pity there was such a large accumulated loss to bring forward."

While they discussed this, Rosa was busy with a stub of a pencil on the reverse side of the account.

A few minutes later she thrust the result across the breakfast table at Flynn. She said, "And that's the way I work it out."

Rosa O'Flynn was a student of the "One-for-you-one-for, me" school, and her reckonings were much simpler than those of her father.

With a cry of anguish, Flynn O'Flynn lodged objection.

"You don't understand business."

"But I recognize crookery when I see it," Rosa flashed back.

"You'd call your old father a crook?"

"Yes."

"I've a damn good mind to take the kiboko to you. You're not too big and Uppity that I can't warm your tail up good."

"You just try id' said Rosa, and Flynn back pedalled

"Anyway, what would Bassie do with all that money? It's no good for a youngster. It would spoil him."

"He'd marry me with it. That's what he'd do with it."

Flynn made a noise as though there were a fish-bone stuck in his throat, his face mottled over with emotion and he swung ominously in Sebastian's direction. "So!"he rasped.

"I thought so!"

"Now steady on, old chap," Sebastian tried to soothe him.

"You come into my home and act like the king of bloody England. You try to fraudulently embezzle my money but that's not enough! Oh no! That's not a bloody "enough.

You've also got to start tampering with my daughter just to round things off."

"Don't be coarse," said Rosa.

"That's rich don't be coarse, she says, and just what exactly have you two been up to behind my back?"

Sebastian stood up from the breakfast table with dignity.

"I will not have you speak so of a lady in my presence, sir.

Especially of the lady who has done me the great honour of consenting to become my Wife." He begun unbuttoning his jacket. "Will you step into the garden with me, and give me satisfaction?"

"Come along, then." As Flynn lumbered out of his chair he made as if to pass Sebastian, but at that moment Sebastian's arms were behind him, still bound by the sleeves of his jacket as he attempted to shrug it off. Flynn sidestepped swiftly, paused a moment as he took his aim, and then drove his left fist into Sebastian's stomach.

"Oaf!" said Sebastian, and leaned forward involuntarily to meet Flynn's other fist as it came up from the level of his knees. It took Sebastian between the eyes, and he changed direction abruptly and ran backwards across the veranda.

The low Wooden railing caught him behind the knees and he toppled slowly into the flower-beds below the stoep.

"You've killed him, , wailed Rosa, and picked up the heavy china tea-pot.

"I hope so," said Flynn, and ducked as the pot flew towards his head, passed over it and burst against the wall of the stoep, spraying tea and steam.

There was an ominous stirring among the flowers.

presently Sebastian's head emerged with blue hydrangea petals festively strewn in his hair and the skin around both eyes fast swelling and chameleoning to a creditable match with the petals. "I say, Flynn. That wasn't fair," he announced.

"He wasn't looking," Rosa accused. "You hit him before he was ready."

"Well, he's looking now," roared Flynn and went down the veranda stairs like a charging hippopotamus. From the hydrangeas, Sebastian rose to meet him and took up the classic stance of the ring fighter. "Marquis of Queensberry rules? he cautioned as Flynn closed in.