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Slowly, through the black mists of rage, reason returned to Herman Fleischel. He stood with shoulders hunched, breathing heavily through his mouth, and mentally digested the full import of Kalani's message.
This was not just another of O'Fly
This, perhaps, was the goad that would launch the fatherland on the road to its true destiny. He gulped with excitement. They had flapped that hated flag in the Kaiser's face just once too often. This was history being made, and Herman Fleischer stood in the centre of it.
Trembling a little, he hurried into his office, and began drafting the report to Governor Schee that might plunge the world into a holocaust from which the German people would rise as the rulers of creation.
An hour later, he rode out of the boma on a white donkey with his slouch uniform hat set well forward on his head to shield his eyes from the glare. Behind him his black Askari marched with their rifles at the slope. Smart in their pillbox kepis with the back flaps hanging to the shoulder, khaki uniforms freshly pressed, and put teed legs rising and falling in unison, they made as gallant a show as any commander could wish.
A day and a half march would bring them to the confluence of the Kilombero and Rufiji rivers where the Commissioner's steam launch was moored.
As the buildings of Mahenge vanished behind him, Herr Fleischer relaxed and let his ample backside conform to the shape of the saddle.
have you got it straight?" Fly
Right you are, old chap." With eight days" growth of black beard, and the skin peeling from the tip of his sunburned nose, Sebastian was begi
They stood together under a monkey-bean tree on the bank of the Rufiji, while at the water's edge the bearers were loading the last tusks into the canoes. There was ale-greenish smell hanging over them in the steamy purp heat, a smell which Sebastian hardly noticed now for the last eight days had seen a great killing of elephant and the stink of green ivory was as familiar to him as the smell of the sea to a mariner.
"By the time you get back tomorrow morning the boys will have brought in the last of the ivory. We'll have a full dhow-load and you can set off for Zanzibar."
"What about you? Are you staying on here?"
"Not bloody likely. I'll light out for my base camp in Mozambique."
"Wouldn't it be easier for you to come along on the dhow? It's nearly two hundred miles to walk. "Sebastian was solicitous; in these last days he had conceived a burning admiration for Fly
"Well, you see, it's like this..." Fly
"You've got a daughter?" Sebastian was taken by surprise.
"You damn right I have." Fly
"Well, when will I see you again? "The thought of parting from Fly
"Well," Fly
"Couldn't we..." Sebastian blushed a little under his sun-reddened cheeks. "Couldn't we sort of team up together?
I could work for you, sort of as an apprentice?"
The idea made Fly
Sebastian gri
"All right, then, off you go. And don't forget the gin."
With Sebastian standing in the bows of the lead canoe, the double-barrelled rifle clutched in his hands, and the terai hat pulled down firmly over his ears, the little flotilla of heavily laden canoes pulled out from the bank and caught the current. Paddles dipped and gleamed in the evening sunlight as they arrowed away towards the first bend downstream.
Still standing unsteadily in the frail craft, Sebastian looked back and waved his rifle at Fly