"You bloody swine," he shouted at them. Hatred stronger than he had ever dreamed possible choked his voice. "You filthy, bloody swine." He lifted the rifle and fired without effect, and the Blitcher hit the dhow.
It struck with a crash and the crackling roar of rending timber. It crushed her side and cut through in the screaming of dying men and the squeal of planking against steel.
It trod the dhow under, breaking her back, forcing her far below the surface. At the initial shock, Sebastian was hurled overboard, the rifle thrown from his hands. He struck the armoured plate of the cruiser a glancing blow and then dropped into the sea beside her. The thrust of the bow wave tumbled him aside, else he would have been dragged along the hull and his body shredded against the steel plate.
He surfaced just in time to suck a lungful of air before the turbulence of the great screws caught him and plucked him under again, driving him deep so the pressure stabbed like red-hot needles in his eardrums. He felt himself swirled end over end, buffeted, shaken vigorously as the water tore at his body.
Colour flashed and zigzagged behind his closed eyelids.
There was a suffocating pain in his chest and his lungs pumped, urgently craving air, but he sealed his lips " and kicked out with his legs, clawing at the water with his hands.
The churning wake of the cruiser released its grip upon him, and he was shot to the surface with such force that he broke clear to the waist before dropping back to drink air greedily. He unbuckled the heavy cartridge belt and let it sink before he looked about him.
The surface of the sea was scattered with floating debris, and a few bobbing human heads. Near him a section of torn planking rose in a burst of trapped air bubbles. Sebastian struck Out for it and clung there, his legs hanging in the clear green water.
"Flynn," he gasped. "Flynn, where are you?"
A quarter of a mile away, the Blucher was circling slowly, long and menacing and shark-like, and he stared at it in hatred and in fear.
"Master!" Mohammed's voice behind him.
Sebastian turned quickly and saw the black face and the red face beside the floating sack of corks a hundred yards away. "Flynn!"
"Good-bye, Bassie," Flynn called. "The old Hun is coming back to finish us off. Look! They've got machine guns set up on the bridge. See you on the other side, boy:
Quickly Sebastian looked back at the cruiser and saw the clusters of white uniforms on the angle of her bridge. Ja, there are still some of them alive." Through borrowed binoculars, Fleischer scanned the littered area of the wreck.
"You will use the Maxims, of course, Captain? It will be quicker than picking them off with rifles."
Captain von Kleine did not answer. He stood tall on his bridge, slightly round-shouldered, staring out at the wreckage with his hands clasped behind him. "There is something sad in the death of a ship," he murmured. "Even such a dirty little one as this." Suddenly he straightened his shoulders and turned to Fleischer. "Your launch is waiting for you at the mouth of the Rufiji. I will take you there, Commissioner."
"But first the business of the survivors."
Von Kleine's expression hardened. "Commissioner, I sank that dhow in what I believed to be my duty. But now I am not sure that my judgement was not clouded by anger. I will not trespass further on my conscience by machine-gunning swimming civilians."
"You will then pick them up. I must arrest them and give them trial."
"am not a policeman," he paused and his expression softened a little. "That one who fired the rifle at us. I think he must be a brave man. He is a criminal, perhaps, but I am not so old in the ways of the world that I do not love courage merely for its own sake. I would not like to know I have saved this man for the noose. Let the sea be the judge and the executioner." He turned to his lieutenant. Kyller, prepare to drop one of the life rafts." The lieutenant stared at him in disbelief "You heard me?"
"Yes, my Captain."
"Then do it." Ignoring Fleischer's squawks of protest, von Kleine crossed to the pilot. "Alter course to pass the survivors at a distance- of fifty metres."
"Here she comes." Flynn grinned tightly, without humour, and watched the cruiser swing ponderously towards them.
The cries of the swimmers around him, pleading mercy, were plaintive as the voices of sea birds tiny on the immensity of the ocean.
"Flynn. Look at the bridge!" Sebastian's voice floated across to him. "See him there. The grey uniform."
Tears from the sting of sea salt in his wound, and the distortion of fever had blurred Flynn's vision, yet he could make out the spot of grey among the speckling of white uniforms on the bridge of the cruiser.
"Who is it?"
"You were right. It's Fleischer," Sebastian shouted back, and Flynn began to curse.
"Hey, you filthy, fat Blucher," he bellowed, trying to drag himself up onto the floating sack of corks. "Hey, you whore's chamber pot." His voice carried above the murmur of the cruiser's engines running at dead-slow. "Come on, you blood-smeared little pig The tall hull of the cruiser was close now, so close he could see the bulky figure in grey turn to the tall white, uniformed officer beside him, gesticulating in what was clearly entreaty.
The officer turned away, and moved to the rail of the bridge. He leaned out and waved to a group of seamen on the deck below him.
"That's right. Tell them to shoot. Let's get it over with.
Tell them..."
A large square object was lifted over the rail by the gang below the bridge. It dropped and fell with a splash alongside.
Flynn's voice dried up, and he watched in disbelief as the white-clad officer lifted his right arm in a gesture that might have been a salute. The beat of the cruiser's engines mounted as it increased speed, and she swung away towards the west.
Flynn O'Flynn began to laugh, the cackling hysteria of relief and delirium. He rolled off the sack of corks and his head dropped forward, so the warm green water smothered his laughter. Mohammed took a handful of the grey hair and lifted his face to prevent him drowning.
Sebastian reached the raft, and grasped the rope that hung in loops around its sides. He paused to regain his breath before hauling himself up to lie gasping, the blood-warm sea-water streaming from his sodden clothing, and watched the shape of the battle cruiser recede into the west.
"Master! Help me!"
The voice roused him and he sat up. Mohammed was struggling, dragging Flynn and the sack through the water.
Among the floating wreckage a dozen others of the crew and the bearers were flapping their way towards the raft; the weaker swimmers were already failing, their cries becoming more pitiful, and their splashing more frenzied.
There were oars roped to the slatted deck of the raft.
Quickly Sebastian cut one loose with his hunting knife and began rowing towards the pair. His progress was slow, for the raft was an ungainly bitch that balked and swung away from the thrust of the oar.