Come on, Davie! He could hear David's panting breath above the idling beat of the Rolls-Royce engine, and a bullet slapped into the wing, punching a neat round hole through the fabric.
Come on, Davie. Sweat had stained David's tunic and greased his flushed face. He reached the Hurricane and jumped up onto the wing. The aircraft dipped under his weight.
On my lap, Shasa yelled. Get in! David scrambled in on top of him, grunting for breath.
I can't see ahead, Shasa shouted. You take the stick and the throttle, I'll work the rudders. He felt David's hands on the joystick and the throttle lever, and relinquished both of them. The engine beat quickened and the Hurricane began to roll forward.
A touch of left rudder, David called, his voice broken and rough with fatigue, and Shasa pushed on an inch of left rudder.
In a gale of sound and dust the Rolls-Royce engine built up to full power, and they were bumping and bouncing over the field, steering an erratic course as Shasa worked the
rudders blindly, over-correcting to David's instructions.
Shasa could not see ahead. David was crushing him down in the seat and totally obscuring his forward vision. He twisted his head and looked over the edge of the cockpit, watching the ground begin to blur past him as their speed built up, responding quickly to David's calls for left or right rudder. The dry sorghum stalks whipped against the leading edges of the wings; the sound they made was almost as ugly as the snap and flute of bullets passing close. All the remaining shufta were still firing at them, but the range was opening rapidly.
The Hurricane hit a hump in the field and it kicked them into the air. The jolting and thudding ceased abruptly and they were airborne, climbing away.
We made it! Shasa shouted, amazed at their achievement, and as the words left his lips something hit him in the face.
The bullet was a piece of hammered-iron pot-leg, as long and thick as a man's thumb. It had been fired from a 1779
Tower musket by a handful of black powder. It struck the metal frame of the canopy beside Shasa's head, and the pot leg mushroomed and tumbled as it ricocheted. Spinning, it smashed into the side of Shasa's face, its velocity sharply reduced by the impact on the frame. Striking side-on, it did not penetrate to the brain.
Shasa did not even lose consciousness. It felt as though he had been hit in the outer corner of his left eye with a full swing of a hammer. His head was knocked across so that it struck the opposite side of the canopy.
He felt the supra-orbital margin of the frontal bone of his skull shatter, and hot blood drenched his eye and tatters of his own skin and flesh hung down over his face like a curtain.
David! he screamed. I'm hit! I can't see! David twisted around and looked back at Shasa's face and he cried out in horror. Blood was spurting and dribbling and splashing, blown by the slipstream into pink veils that spattered into David's face.
I can't see, Shasa kept repeating. His face was raw meat running red. I can't see, oh God Davie, I can't see. David pulled the silk scarf from around his own neck and pushed it into one of Shasa's groping hands.
Try and stop the bleeding, he shouted above the roar of the engine, and Shasa bundled the scarf and pressed it into the hideously ragged wound, while David gave all his attention to getting them home, keeping low, skimming the wild brown hills.
It took them fifteen minutes back to the airstrip at Yirga Alem and they came in at treetop level. David slammed the Hurricane onto the dusty strip and taxied tail up to the waiting field ambulance that he had called for from the air.
They lifted Shasa out of the blood-spattered cockpit. Then David and a medical orderly half-carried, half-led him, stumbling like a blind man to the ambulance. Within fifteen minutes Shasa was anaesthetized and laid out on the operating table in the hospital tent and an air-force doctor was working over him.
When he came round from the anaesthetic, all was dark.
He lifted his hand and touched his face. it was swathed in bandages, and panic rose in him.
David" he tried to scream, but it came out in a drunken slur from the chloroform.
All right, Shasa, I'm here. The voice was close by and he groped for him.
Davie! Davie! It's all right, Shasa, it's all going to be just fine. Shasa found his hand and clung to it. I can't see. I'm blind., The bandages, that's all, David assured him. The doctor is delighted with you. You're not lying to me, David? Shasa pleaded. 'Tell me I'm not blind. You are not blind, David whispered, but mercifully Shasa could not see his face as he said it. Shasa's desperate grip relaxed slowly, and after a minute the pain-killers took effect and he drifted back into unconsciousness.
David sat beside his cot all that night; even in darkness the tent was hot as an oven. He wiped the glistening sweat from Shasas neck and chest, and held his hand when he whimpered in his sleep and muttered, Mater? Are you there, Mater? After midnight the doctor ordered David to leave him and get some rest, but David refused.
I have to be here when he wakes, I have to be the one to tell him. I owe him that much at least. outside the tent the jackals yipped at the dawn, and when the first glow struck through the canvas, Shasa woke again, and asked immediately, David? I'm here, Shasa. 'It hurts like hell, Davie, but you told me it's going to be all right.
I remember that, you did tell me, didn't you? Yes, that's what I said. We'll be flying together soon, won't we, Davie boy? The old team, Courtney and Abrahams back in business? He waited for the reply, but when it did not come Shasa's tone changed. I'm not blind, am I? We will be flying again? You are not blind, David said softly. But you won't be flying again. You're going home, Shasa. Tell me! Shasa ordered. Don't try and spare me, that will only make it worse. All right, I'll tell you straight. The bullet burst your left eyeball. The doctor had to remove it. Shasa lifted his hand and touched the left side of his face disbelievingly.
You will still have full vision in the right eye, but you won't be flying Hurricanes again. I'm sorry, Shasa. Yes, Shasa whispered. 'So am I. David came to visit him again that evening. The CO has put you up for the DFC. You'll get it, for sure. That's charming of him, Shasa said. Bloody charming. And they were silent for a while, then David spoke again.
You saved my life, Shasa. Oh shut up, Davie, don't be a bore., 'They are flying you down to the coast tomorrow morning in the transport Dakota. You'll be in Cape Town for Christmas. Give Matty and the baby a kiss for me, you lucky sod., I'd change places any day, Shasa told him. But we'll give you one hell of a party when you come home. Is there anything I can do for you, anything you need? David asked as he stood up.
As a matter of fact, there is. Do you think you could get your hands on a bottle of whisky for me, Davie? The commander of the submarine straightened up from the eye-piece of the telescope and nodded to Manfred De La Rey.
Look, please! he said, and Manfred took his place at the telescope, pressing his forehead against the rubber pad and staring into the lens.
They were lying two miles offshore and on the surface it was late evening. The sun was setting behind the land.
Do you recognize the landmarks? the U-boat commander asked in German and Manfred did not answer immediately, for he found it difficult to speak. His emotions were too strong, five years, five long years since he had set eyes on this beloved coast, and his joy was abundant. He knew that he could never be truly happy anywhere but in his Africa.
However, the intervening years had not been unhappy.
There had always been Heidi, and in this last year his son, Lothar, named after his own father. The two of them had formed the pivot of his existence. And there had also been his work, two tasks running side by side, each of them demanding and utterly fulfilling.
His law studies had cuhninated in a Master's degree in Roman Dutch Law and International Law at the University of Berlin.