Assegai

‘Let fly!’ Leon screamed at Manyoro, who reacted swiftly, heaving with both hands on the release handle. The retaining hooks opened, allowing the heavy rope to drop away cleanly, an instant before it could pluck the Butterfly from the sky. The airship’s huge fishtail rudder brushed their upper wing as it passed over them. And then the Butterfly was free and clear. Leon brought her around and climbed back into the position above and behind the Assegai, keeping in her blind spot. The burst of tracer from the Maxim machine-gun had come too close. He would not make that mistake again.

He watched smoke billow from the airship’s rear engines. The netting and heavy drag lines were so deeply tangled in the propeller bosses and other moving parts that both had seized up and cut out. The Assegai was no longer responding to her helm. The single forward engine did not have the power to hold her against the cross-wind of the monsoon and she began to pay off sharply and drift straight for the rocky cliff face of Lonsonyo Mountain. The helmsman was ru

Graf Otto ran across the control room, grabbed the helmsman by the shoulders and flung him aside. He crashed into the window head first and dropped to the deck, blood pouring from his broken nose. Graf Otto seized the wheel and looked up at the cliffs. They were only half a mile away, at least a thousand feet below the summit, and the only way to avoid colliding with them was to inflate the gas chambers to their utmost and take her up as fast as she would climb and try to skim over the top. He reached for the valve control and pulled it wide open. Instead of a rush of hydrogen squealing through the inlet pipes, there was a weak hiss, and although the airship shuddered, she rose only sluggishly.

‘Hydrogen tanks are flat!’ he screamed with frustration. ‘We blew off all the gas in the desert, fighting against the khamsin. We’ll never make it. We’re going to run full into the cliff. We’ll have to jump! Ritter, get out the parachutes. There are enough for all of us.’

Ritter led a rush for the storeroom behind the bridge and they started to fling the parachute packs through the door into a pile on the deck. There was a panic-driven scramble as the men fought over them. Graf Otto shouldered them out of his way and grabbed one in each hand. He ran back to Eva. ‘Put this on.’

‘I don’t know how to do it,’ she protested.

‘Well, you have about two minutes to learn,’ he told her grimly, and slipped the harness over her shoulders. ‘As soon as you’re clear of the airship you must count to seven, then pull this cord. The parachute will do the rest.’ He pulled the straps of the harness tightly across her chest. ‘As soon as you hit the ground, open these buckles and get rid of the chute.’ He buckled on his own parachute and day pack, then dragged her to the doorway, which was already blocked with men fighting to get out.

‘Otto, I can’t do this,’ Eva cried, but he did not argue with her. He seized her around the waist and carried her bodily, struggling, to the doorway. With powerful kicks he booted the two men ahead of him out of the way, and as soon as the doorway was open he threw Eva out. As she dropped away he shouted after her, ‘Count to seven, then pull the cord.’

He watched her fall towards the top gallery of the rainforest. Just when it seemed she must crash into the branches her parachute burst open and jerked her so violently that her body swung on the shrouds like a puppet’s. He did not wait to see her land but stepped out into space and plunged towards the trees.

Leon held the Butterfly in a tight turn above the cliffs and peered down at the human bodies spilling out of the hatchway in the airship’s control cabin. He saw at least three parachutes fail to open and the men drop, arms and legs flailing, until they hit the treetops. Others more fortunate were carried away on the monsoon wind like thistledown and scattered across the mountainside. Then Eva was falling free, smaller and slimmer than any of the men. He bit his lip hard as he waited for her parachute to open, then shouted with relief as the white silk blossomed above her. She was already so low that, within seconds, she had been sucked into the dense green mass of the jungle.

The Assegai floated on, nose high and yawing aimlessly across the wind. She was rising slowly but he knew at a glance that she would never clear the top of the cliff. Her tail touched the trees and she came around abruptly. Like a stranded jellyfish she rolled on to her side and her cavernous gas chambers snagged in the upper branches of the trees. They collapsed and the airship deflated like a punctured balloon. Leon braced himself for the explosion of hydrogen that he was sure must follow – it needed but a spark from the damaged generators – but nothing happened. As the gas gushed out and was dispersed by the wind, the Assegai settled in a shapeless mass of canvas and wreckage on the jungle tops, breaking down even the largest branches under her massive weight.

Leon put the Butterfly into a tight turn and flew back only a few feet over the wreck. He tried to see down into the forest, hoping desperately for a glimpse of Eva, but he could see nothing of her. He circled back and made one more fly-past. This time he saw a body hanging lifelessly on the shrouds of a parachute, the silk tangled in the branches of a tall tree. He was so low now that he could recognize Graf Otto.

‘He’s dead,’ Leon decided. ‘Broken his rotten bloody neck at last.’ Then the Butterfly was directly over him and her lower wing blocked Leon’s line of sight. He did not see Graf Otto lift his head and look up at the aircraft.

Leon turned back and put the Butterfly into a climb for the landing strip, keeping low along the cliff face so that he did not waste a moment. He wanted to get back and find Eva. As he flew past the cascading white waterfall and looked down into Sheba’s Pool at the foot, he checked his landmarks carefully. He was only a few minutes’ flight from the wreck of the Assegai, but he knew it would be heavy going to cover the same ground on foot. The moment he landed and cut the engines he reached under the seat to pull out his gun case. With three quick movements he reassembled the stock and barrels and loaded the chambers of his big Holland. Then he swung his legs over the side of the cockpit and jumped down, shouting orders to the crowd of waiting morani who ran forward to meet him.

‘Hurry! Get your spears. The memsahib is out there alone in the forest. She may be hurt. We have to find her fast.’ He raced down the slope, hurdling low bushes. The warriors following him were hard put to keep him in sight through the trees.