Reluctantly the man nearest him dipped his paddle and the canoe turned broadside across the current. "Back!" Sebastian repeated and the men dipped again.
Slowly, warily, the single canoe crept upstream towards the monkey-bean tree and the grotesque new fruit that hung from its branches.
The hull slid in onto the firm mud and Sebastian stepped ashore.
"Oud" he ordered the boatmen and gestured again. He wanted them well away from the canoe for he knew that, otherwise, the moment his back was turned they would set off downstream again with renewed enthusiasm. "Oud" and he herded them up the steep bank into Flynn O'Flynn's camp.
The two bearers who had died of gunshot wounds lay beside the smouldering fire. But the four men in the monkey bean tree had been less fortunate. The ropes had cut deeply into the flesh of their necks and their faces were swollen, mouths wide in the last breath that had never been taken. On the lolling tongues the flies crawled like metallic green bees.
"Cut them down!" Sebastian roused himself from the nausea that was bubbling queasily up from his stomach. The boatmen stood paralysed and Sebastian felt anger now mixed with his revulsion. Roughly he shoved one of the men towards the tree. "Cut them down," he repeated, and thrust the handle of his hunting knife into the man's hand.
Sebastian turned away as the native shinned up into the fork of the tree with the knife blade clamped between his teeth. Behind him he heard the heavy meaty thuds as the dead men dropped from the tree. Again his stomach heaved, and he concentrated on his search of the trampled grass around the camp.
"Flynn!" he called softly. "Flynn. I say Flynn! Where are you?" There were the prints of hobnailed boots in the soft earth, and at one place he stooped and picked up the shiny brass cylinder of an empty cartridge case. Stamped into the metal of the base around the detonator cap were the words Mauser Fabriken.
"Flynn!" more urgently now as the horror of it came home to him. "Flynn!" and he heard the grass rustle near him. He swung towards it, half raising the rifle.
"Master!" and Sebastian felt disappointment swoop in his chest.
"Mohammed. Is that you, Mohammed?" and he recognized the wizened little figure with the eternal fez perched on the woolly head as it emerged. Flynn's chief gun-boy, the only one with a little English.
"Mohammed," with relief, and then quickly, Fini? Where is Fini?"
"They shot him, master. The Askari came in the early morning before the sun. Fini was washing. They shot him and he fell into the water."
"Where? Show me where."
Below the camp, a few yards from where the canoe was drawn up, they found the pathetic little bundle of Flynn's clothing. Beside it was a half-consumed cake of cheap soap and a metal hand-mirror. There were the deep imprints of naked feet in the mud, and Mohammed stooped and broke off one of the green reeds at the water's edge. Wordlessly he handed it to Sebastian. A drop of blood had dried black on the leaf, and it crumbled as Sebastian touched it with his thumb-nail.
"We must find him. He might still be alive. Call the others. We'll search the banks downstream."
In an agony of loss, Sebastian picked up Flynn's soiled shirt and crumpled it in his fist.
Flynn shucked off his pants and the filthy bush-shirt.
Shivering briefly in the chill of dawn, he hugged himself and massaged his upper arms while he peered into the shallow water, searching the bottom for the telltale chicken-wire pattern that would mean a crocodile was buried in the mud waiting for him.
His body was porcelain-white where clothing had protected it from the sun, but his arms were chocolate-brown, and a deep vee of the same brown dipped down from his throat onto his chest. Above it the battered red face was creased and puffy with sleep, and his long, greying hair was tangled and matted. He belched thunderously, and grimaced at the taste of old gin and pipe tobacco, then, satisfied that no reptile lay in ambush, he stepped into the water and lowered his massive hams to sit waist-deep. Snorting, he scooped water with his cupped hands over his head, then lumbered out onto the bank again. Sixty seconds is a long time to stay in a river like the Rufiji, for the crocodiles come quickly to the sound of splashing.
Naked, dripping, hair plastered down across his face, Flynn began to soap himself, working up a thick lather at his crotch and tenderly massaging his abundant genitalia, he washed away the sloth of sleep and his appetite stirred.
He called up at the camp, "Mohammed, beloved of Allah and son of his prophet, shake your black arse out of the sack and get the coffee brewing." Then as an afterthought, he added, "And put a little gin in it."
Soapsuds filled Flynn's armpits, and coated the melancholy sag of his belly when Mohammed came down the bank to him. Mohammed was balancing a large enamel mug from which curled little wisps of aromatic steam, and Flynn grinned at him, and spoke in Swahili. "Thou art kind and merciful; this charity will be writ against your name in the Book of Paradise."
He reached for the mug but before his fingers touched it, there was a fusillade of gun-fire above them and a bullet hit Flynn high up in the thigh. It spun him sideways so he sprawled half in mud and half in water.
Lying stunned with the shock, he heard the rush of Askari into the camp, heard their shouted triumph as they clubbed with the gun-butt those who had survived the first volley. Flynn wriggled into a sitting position.
Mohammed was coming to him anxiously.
"Run," granted Flynn. "Run, damn you."
"Lord..
"Get out of here." Savagely Flynn lashed out at him, and Mohammed recoiled. "The rope, you fool. They'll give you the rope and wrap you in a pigskin."
A second longer Mohammed hesitated, then he ducked and scampered into the reeds.
"Find Fini," roared a bull voice in German. "Find the white man."
Flynn realized then that it was a stray bullet that had hit him perhaps even a ricochet. His leg was numb from the hip down, but he dragged himself into the water. He could not run, so he must swim.
"Where is he? Find him!" raged the voice, and suddenly the grass on the bank burst open and Flynn looked up.
For the first time they confronted each other. These two who had played murderous hide-and-seek for three long years across ten thousand square miles of bush.
"Ja!" Fleischer's jubilant bellow as he swung and sighted the pistol at the man in the water below him. "This time!"
aiming carefully, steadying the Luger with both hands.
The brittle snapping sound of the shot, and the slap of the bullet into the water a foot from Flynn's head were followed by Fleischer's snarl of disappointment.
Filling his lungs, Flynn ducked below the surface. Frogkicking with his good leg, trailing the wounded one, he turned with the current and swam. He swam until his trapped breath threatened to explode his chest, and coloured lights flashed and twinkled behind his clenched eyelids. Then he clawed to the surface. On the bank Fleischer was waiting for him with a dozen of his Askari.