The two guards moved forward, forcing their way into the press of black bodies, shouting hoarsely and clubbing with the rifle butts. It was the opportunity for which Sebastian had waited.
He stepped over the threshold of the magazine, and went to Walaka beside the cordite shelves.
"Send one of your men to take my place," he whispered, and reaching up into the folds of his cloak he brought out the cigar box.
With his back towards the door of the magazine, using the cloak as a screen to hide his movements, he slipped the catch of the box and opened the lid.
His hands trembled with haste and nervous agitation as he fumbled with the winder of the travelling-clock. It clicked, and he saw the second hand begin its endless circuit of the dial. Even over the shouts and scuffling in the alleyway, the muted ticking of its mechanism seemed offensively loud to Sebastian. Hastily he shut the lid and glanced guiltily over his shoulder at the doorway. Walaka stood there, and his face was sickly grey with the tension of imminent discovery, but he nodded to Sebastian, a signal t that the guards were still occupied without.
Reaching up to the nearest shelf, Sebastian wedged the cigar box between two of the paper-wrapped cylinders of cordite. Then he packed others over it, covering it AN completely.
He stood back and found with surprise that he was panting, his breathing whistling in his throat. He could feel the little drops of sweat prickling on his shaven head. In the white electric light they shone like glass beads on his velvety, black-stained skin.
"is it done?"Walaka croaked beside him.
"It is done," Sebastian croaked back at him, and suddenly he was overcome with a driving compulsion to be out of this steel room, out of this box-packed room with the ingredients of violent death and destruction; out of the stifling press of bodies that had surrounded him all day. A dreadful thought seized his imagination, suppose the artificer had erred in his assembly of the time charge, suppose that even now the battery was heating the wires of the detonator and bringing them to explosion point. He felt panic as he looked wildly at the tons of cordite and shell around him.
He w anted to run, to fight his way out and up into the open air.
He made the first move, and then froze.
The commotion in the alleyway had subsided miraculously, and now only one voice was raised. It came from just outside the doorway,
using the curt inflection of authority.
Sebastian had heard that voice repeatedly during that long day,
and he had come to dread it. It heralded danger.
"Get them back to work immediately," snapped Lieutenant Kyller as he stepped over the threshold into the magazine. He drew a gold watch from the pocket of his tunic and read the time. "It is five minutes after seven.
There is still almost half an hour before you knock off." He tucked the watch away, and swept the magazine with a gaze that missed no detail. He was a tall young man, immaculate in his tropical whites.
Behind him the two guards were hurriedly straightening their dishevelled uniforms and trying to look efficient and intelligent.
"Yes, sir," they said in unison.
For a moment Kyller's eyes rested on Sebastian. It was probably because Sebastian was the finest physical specimen among the bearers,
he stood taller than the rest of them as tall as Kyller himself. But
Sebastian felt his interest was deeper. He felt that Kyller was searching beneath the stain on his skin, that he was naked of disguise beneath those eyes. He felt that Kyller would remember him, had marked him down in his memory.
"That shelf." Kyller turned away from Sebastian and crossed the magazine. He went directly to the shelf on which Sebastian had placed his time charge, and he patted the cordite cylinders that Sebastian had handled. They were slightly awry. "Have it repacked immediately,"
said Kyller.
"Right away, sir," said the fat guard.
Again Kyller's eyes rested on Sebastian. It seemed that he was about to speak, then he changed his mind. He stooped through the doorway and disappeared.
Sebastian stood stony still, appalled by the order that Kyller had given. The fat guard grimaced sulkily.
"Christ, that one is a busy bastard." And he glared at the shelf."
He crossed to the cordite shelf "There's nothing wrong it and fiddled ineffectually. After a moment he asked the guard at the door, "Has
Kyller gone yet?"
"Yes. He's gone down the companionway into the sick,
bay.
"Good" grunted the fat one. "I'm damned if I'm going to waste half an hour repacking this whole batch." He hunched his shoulders, and screwed up his face with effort. There was a bagpipe squeal, and the guard relaxed and grinned.
"That one was for Lieutenant Kyller God bless him!" darkness was falling, and with it the temperature dropped a few degrees into the high eighties and created an illusion that the faint evening breeze was chilly. Sebastian hugged his cloak around his body, and shuffled along in the slow column of native labourers that dribbled over the side of the German battle cruiser into the waiting launches.
He was exhausted both in body and in mind from the strain of the day's labour in the magazine, so that he went down the catwalk and took his place in the whaler, moving in a state of stupor. When the boat shoved off and puttered up the channel towards the labour camp on the nearest island, Sebastian looked back at Blucher with the same dumb stare as the men who squatted beside him on the floorboards of the whaler. Mechanically he registered the fact that Commissioner
Fleischer's steam launch was tied up alongside the cruiser.
"Perhaps the fat swine will be aboard when the whole lot blows to hell," he thought wearily. "I can at least hope for that." He had no way of knowing who else Herman Fleischer had taken aboard the cruiser with him. Sebastian had been below decks toiling in the handling room of the magazine when the launch arrived from up-river, and Rosa
Oldsmith had been ushered up the catwalk by the Commissioner in person.
"Come along. We will take you to see the gallant captain of this fine ship." Fleischer puffed jovially as he mounted the steps behind her. "I am sure there are many interesting things that you can tell him." Bedraggled and exhausted with grief, pale with the horror of her father's death, and with cold hatred for the man who had engineered it, Rosa stumbled as she stepped from the catwalk on to the deck. Her hands were still bound in front of her so she could not check herself
She fell forward, letting herself fall uncaring, and with mild surprise felt hands hold and steady her.
She looked up at the man who had caught her, and in her confusion of mind she thought it was Sebastian. He was tall and dark and his hands were strong. Then she saw the peaked uniform cap with- its golden insignia, and she jerked away from him in revulsion.