Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur - Страница 13

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"Please, Flynn. Please tell me."

"Tell you?" muttered Flynn in delirium. "Sure! Have you heard the one about the camel and the missionary?"

Sebastian jumped to his feet and looked wildly about him. The sun was low, perhaps another two hours to nightfall If only we can hold them off until then. "Mohammed.

Get the gun-boys up into the stern," he snapped, and Mohammed, recognizing the new crispness in his voice, turned on the mob about him to relay the order.

The ten gun boys scattered to gather their weapons and then crowded up on to the poop. Sebastian followed them, gazing anxiously back along the channel. He could see two thousand yards to the bend behind them and the channel was empty, but he was sure the sound of the steam engine was louder.

"Spread them along the rail," he ordered Mohammed. He was thinking hard now; always a difficult task for Sebastian.

Stubborn as a mule, his mind began to sulk as soon as he flogged it. He wrinkled his high scholar's forehead and his next thought emerged slowly. "A barricade," he said. The thin planking of the bulwark would offer little protection against the high-powered Mousers. "Mohammed, get the others to carry up everything they can find, and pile it here to shield the steersman and the gun-boys. Bring everything water barrels, the sacks of coconuts, those old fishing nets

While they hurried to obey the order, Sebastian stood in frowning concentration, prodding the mass within his skull and finding it as responsive as a lump of freshly kneaded dough. He tried to estimate the relative speeds of the dhow and a modern steam launch. Perhaps they were moving at half the speed of their pursuers. With a sliding sensation, he decided that even in this wind, sail could not hope to out run a propeller-driven craft.

The word propeller, and the chance that at that moment he was forced to move aside to allow four of the men to drag an untidy bundle of old fishing-nets past, eased the next idea to the surface of his mind.

Humbled by the brilliance of his idea, he clung to it desperately, lest it somehow sink once more below the surface to be lost. "Mohammed..." he stammered in his excitement. "Mohammed, those nets..." He looked back again along the wide channel, and saw it still empty. He looked ahead and saw the next bend coming towards them;

already the helmsman was chanting the orders preparatory to tacking the dhow. "Those nets. I want to lay them across the channel."

Mohammed stared at him aghast, his wizened face crinkling deeper in disbelief

"Cut off the corks. Leave every fourth one." Sebastian grabbed his shoulders and shook him in agitation. "I want the net to sag. I don't want them to spot it too soon."

They were almost up to the bend now, and Sebastian pointed ahead "We'll lay it just around the corner."

"Why, master?" pleaded Mohammed. "We must run. They are close now."

"The propeller," Sebastian shouted in his face. He made a churning motion with his hands. "I want to snag the propeller."

A moment longer Mohammed stared at him, then he began to grin, exposing his bald gums.

While they worked in frantic haste the muffled engine beat from upstream grew steadily louder, more insistent.

The dhow wallowed and balked at the efforts of the helmsman to work her across the channel. Her head kept falling away before the wind, threatening to snarl the net in her own rudder, but slowly the line of bobbing corks spread from the mangroves on one side towards the far bank, while in grim concentration Sebastian and a group led by Mohammed paid the net out over the stern. Every few minutes they lifted their faces to glance at the bend upstream, expecting to see the German launch appear and hear the crackle of Mauser fire.

Gradually the dhow edged in towards the north bank, sowing the row of corks behind her, and abruptly Sebastian realized that the net was too short too short by fifty yards.

There would be a gap in their defence. If the launch cut the bend fine, hugging the bank as it came, then they were lost.

Already the note of its engine was so close that he could hear the metallic whine of the drive shaft.

Now also there was a new problem. How to anchor the loose end of the net? To let it float free would allow the current to wash it away, and open the gap still further.

"Mohammed. Fetch one of the tusks. The biggest one you can find. Quickly. Go quickly."

Mohammed scampered away and returned immediately, the two bearers with him staggering under the weight of the long curved shaft of ivory.

His hands clumsy with haste, Sebastian lashed the end rope of the net to the tusk. Then grunting with the effort, he and Mohammed hoisted it to the side rail, and pushed it overboard. As it splashed, Sebastian shouted at the helmsman, "Go!" and pointed downstream. Thankfully the Arab wrenched the tiller across. The dhow spun on her heel and pointed once more towards the sea.

Silently, anxiously, Sebastian and his gun-boys lined the stern and gazed back at the bend of the channel. In the fists of each of them were clutched the short-barrelled elephant rifles, and their faces were set intently.

The chug of the steam engine rose louder and still louder.

"Shout as soon as it shows," Sebastian ordered. "Shoot as fast as you can. Keep them looking at us, so they don't see the net."

And the launch came around the bend; flying a ribbon of grey smoke from its single stack and the bold red, yellow and black flag of the Empire at its bows. A neat little craft, forty-footer, low in the waist, small deck house aft, gleaming white in the sunlight, and the white mustache of the bow wave curled about her bows.

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