Then abruptly it was no longer dark. From all around them sparkling trails of fire shot into the sky and burst in balls of blue, that lit it all with an eerie flickering glow.
"Sky rockets, be Jesus. Guy Fawkes, Guy," said the commander.
They could see the banks of mangrove massed on either hand, and ahead of them the double mouths of the two channels.
"Steer for the southern channel." This time the commander lifted his voice a little, and the ship plunged onward, throwing out white wings of water from under her bows, bucking and jarring as she leapt over the low swells pushed up by the out-flowing tide, so the men on the bridge hung on to the hand rail to steady themselves.
Then all of them gasped together in the pain of seared eyeballs as a solid shaft of dazzling white light struck them.
It leapt out from the dark wedge of land that divided the two channels, and almost immediately two other searchlights on the outer banks of the channels joined in the hunt. Their beams fastened on the ship like the tentacles of a squid on the carcass of a flying fish.
"Get those lights!" This time the commander shouted the order at the gunners behind the Lewis guns at the corners of the bridge. The tracer that hosed out in a gentle arc towards the base of the searchlight beams was anaemic and pinkly pale, in contrast to the brilliance they were trying to quench.
The torpedo-boat roared on into the channel.
Then there was another sound. A regular thump, thump, thump like the working of a distant water pump. Lieutenant Kyller had opened up with his quick-firing pam-pam.
The four-pound tracer emanated from the dark blob of the island. Seeming to float slowly towards the torpedo boat but gaining speed as it approached, until it flashed past with the whirr of a rocketing pheasant.
"Jesus" said Flynn as though he meant it. He sat down hurriedly on the deck and began to unlace his boots.
Still held in the cold white grip of the searchlights, the torpedo-boat roared on with four-pounder shell streaking around her, and bursting in flurries of spray on the surface near her. The long dotted tendrils of tracer from her own Lewis guns still arched out in delicate lines towards the shore, and suddenly they had effect.
The beam of one of the searchlights snapped off as a bullet shattered the glass, for a few seconds the filaments continued to glow dull red as they burned themselves out.
In the relief from the blinding glare, Sebastian Could see ahead, and he saw a sea serpent. It lay across the channel, undulating in the swells, bellied from bank to bank by the push of the tide, showing its back at the top of the swells and then ducking into the troughs; long and sinuous and menacing, Lieutenant Kyller's log boom waited to welcome them.
"Good God, what's that?"
"Full port rudder!" the commander bellowed. "Both engines full astern together." And before the ship could answer her helm or the drag of her propellers, she ran into a log four feet thick and a hundred feet long. A log as unyielding as a reef of solid granite that stopped her dead in the water and crunched in her bows.
The men in the well of her bridge were thrown into a heap of tangled bodies on the deck. A heap from which the bull figure of Flynn Patrick O'Flynn was the first to emerge, On stockinged feet he made for the side of the ship.
"Flynn, where are you going?" Sebastian shouted after him.
"Home,"said Flynn.
"Wait for me. "Sebastian scrambled to his knees.
The engines roaring in reverse pulled the torpedo-boat back off the log-boom, her plywood hull crackling and speaking, but she was mortally wounded. She was sinking with a rapidity that amazed Sebastian. Already her cockpit was flooding.
"Abandon ship, "shouted the commander.
"You damned tooting," said Flynn O'Flynn and leaped in an untidy tangle of arms and legs into the water.
Like a playful seal the torpedo-boat rolled over on its side, and Sebastian jumped. Drawing his breath while he was in the air, steeling himself against the cold of the water.
he was surprised at how warm it was.
from the bridge of HMS. Renounce, the survivors looked like a cluster of bedraggled water rats. In the dawn they floundered and splashed around the edge of the balloon of stained and filthy water where the Rufiji had washed them out, like the effluent from the sewer outlet of a city. Renounce found them before the sharks did, for there was no blood. There was one broken leg, a fractured collar bone and a few cracked ribs but miraculously there was no blood. So from a crew of fourteen, Renounce recovered every man including the two pilots.
They came aboard with their hair matted, their faces streaked, and their eyes swollen and inflamed with engine oil. With a man on either hand to guide them, leaving a trail of malodorous Rufiji water across the deck, they shuffled down to the sick bay, a sodden and sorrow-full looking assembly of humanity.
"Well," said Flynn O'Flynn, "if we don't get a medal for that, then I'm going back to my old job and the hell with them."
"That," said Captain Arthur Joyce, sitting hunched behind his desk, "was not a roaring success." He showed no inclination to whistle "Tipperary'.
"It wasn't even a good try, sir," agreed the torpedo-boat commander. "The Boche had everything ready to throw at our heads."
"log boom!"-" Joyce shook his head, "good Lord, they went out with the Napoleonic War!" He said it in a tone that implied that he was a victim of unfair play.
"It was extraordinarily effective, sir." Yes, it must have been." Joyce sighed. "Well, at the very least we have established that an attack up the channel is not practical."
"During the few minutes before the tide swept us away from the boom I looked beyond it, and I saw what I took to be a mine. I think it certain that the Boche have laid a minefield beyond the boom, sit."
"Thank you, Commander, "Joyce nodded. "I will see to it that their Lordships receive a full account of your conduct.
I consider it excellent." Then he went on, "I would value your opinion of Major O'Flynn and his son do you think they are reliable men?"
"Well the commander hesitated, he did not want to be unfair, they can both swim and the young one seems to have good' eyesight Apart from that I am not really in a position to give a judgement."
"No, I don't suppose you are. Still I wish I knew more about them. For the next phase in this operation I am going to rely quite heavily on them." He stood up. "I think I will talk to them now."
"You mean you actually want someone to go on board Blitcher!" Flynn was appalled.
"I have explained to you, Major, how important it is for me to know exactly what state she is in. I must be able to estimate when she is likely to break out of the delta. I must know how much time I have." Madness, whispered Flynn. "Stark raving bloody madness." He stared at Joyce in disbelief.
"You have told me how well organized is your intelligence system ashore, of the reliable men who work for you. Indeed it is through you that we know that the Germans are cutting c(rdwood and taking it aboard. We know that they have recruited an army of native labourers and are using them not only for wood-cutting, but also for heavy work aboard the Blucher."