"Ah! Lieutenant Kyller." Commissioner Fleischer spoke behind her.
"I have brought you a visitor a lovely lady."
"Who is she?" Kyller was appraising Rosa. Rosa could not understand a word that was spoken.
She stood in quiet acceptance, her whole body drooping.
"This..." answered" Fleischer proudly, is the most dangerous young lady in the whole of Africa. She is one of the leaders of the gang of
English bandits that raided the column bringing down the steel plate from Dares Salaam.
It was she who shot and killed your engineer. I captured her and her father this morning. Her father was the notorious O'Flynn."
"Where is he?" Kyller snapped.
"I hanged him."
"You hanged him? "demanded Kyller. "Without trial?"
"No trial was necessary."
"Without interrogating him?"
"I
brought in the woman for interrogation." Kyller was angry now, his voice crackled with it.
will leave it to Captain von Kleine to judge the wisdom of your actions," and he turned to Rosa; his eyes dropped to her hands, and,
with an exclamation of concern, he took her by the wrist.
"Commissioner Fleischer, how long has this woman been bound?"
Fleischer shrugged. "I could take no chances on her escaping."
"Look at this!" Kyller indicated Rosa's hands. They were Swollen, the fingers puffy and blue, sticking out stiffly, dead looking and useless.
"I could take no chances." Fleischer bridled at the implied criticism.
"Give me your knife," Kyller snapped at the petty officer in the barge of the gangway, and the man produced a large clasp knife. He opened it and handed it to the lieutenant.
Carefully Kyller ran the blade between Rosa's wrists and sawed at the rope. As her bonds dropped away Rosa cried out in pain, fresh blood flowing into her hands.
"You will be lucky if you have not done her permanent damage,"
Kyller muttered furiously as he massaged Rosa's bloated hands.
"She is a criminal. A dangerous criminal," growled Fleischer.
"She is a woman, and therefore deserving of your consideration.
Not of this barbarous treatment."
"She will hang."
"Her crimes she will answer for, in due course but until she has stood trial she will be treated as a woman." Rosa did not understand the harsh German argument that raged around her. She stood quietly and her eyes were fastened on the knife in Lieutenant Kyller's hand.
The hilt brushed her fingers as he worked to restore the circulation of her blood. The blade was long and silver bright, she had seen how keen was its edge by the way in which it had cut through the rope. As she stared at it, it seemed to her fevered fancy that there were two names engraved in the steel of the blade. The names of the two persons she had loved. The names of her father and her child.
With an effort she tore her gaze from the knife and looked at the man she hated. Fleischer had come close up to her, as though to take her away from Lieutenant Kyller's attention. His face was flushed with anger and the fold of flesh under his chin wobbled flabbily as he argued.
Rosa flexed her fingers. They were still numb and stiff, but she could feel the strength flowing back into them. She let her gaze drop down to Fleischer's belly.
It jutted out round. and full, soft-looking under the grey corduroy tunic, and again her fevered imagination formed a picture of the blade going into that belly. Slipping in silently, smoothly,
burying itself to the hilt and then drawing upwards to open the flesh like a pouch. The picture was so vivid that Rosa shuddered with the intense sensual pleasure of it.
Kyller was completely occupied with Fleischer. He felt the girl's fingers slide into the cupped palm of his right hand, but before he could pull away she had scooped the knife deftly from his grip. He lunged at her, but she pirouetted lightly away from him. Her knife hand dropped and then darted forward, driven by the full weight of her body at the bulging belly of Herman Fleischer.
Rosa thought that because he was fat he would be slow.
She expected him to be stunned by the unexpected attack, to stand and take the knife in his vitals.
Herman Fleischer was fully alert before she even started her thrust. He was fast as a striking mamba, and strong beyond credibility. He did not make the mistake of intercepting the knife with his bare hands. Instead he struck her right shoulder with a clenched fist the size of a carpenter's mallet. The force of the blow knocked her sideways, deflecting the blade from its target. Her arm from the shoulder downwards was paralysed, and the knife flew from her hand and slithered away across the deck.
Ja!"roared Fleischer triumphantly. Ja! So! Now you see how I
was right to tie the bitch. She is Vicious, dangerous." And he lifted the huge fist again to smash it into Rosa's face as she crouched,
hugging her hurt shoulder and sobbing with pain and disappointment.
"No!" Kyller stepped between them. "Leave her."
"She must be tied up like an animal she is dangerous," bellowed Fleischer, but
Kyller put a protective arm around Rosa's bowed shoulders.
"Petty Officer," he said. "Take this woman to the sickbay. Have
Surgeon Commander Buchholz see to her. Guard her carefully, but be gentle with her. Do you hear me?" And they took her away below.
"I must see Captain von Kleine," Fleischer demanded. "I must make a full report to him."
"Come,"said Kyller, "I will take you to him."
Sebastian lay on his side beside the smoky little fire with his cloak draped over him. Outside he heard the -night sounds of the swamp, the faint splash of a fish or a crocodile in the channel, the clink and boom of the tree frogs, the singing of insects, and the lap and sigh of wavelets on the mud bank below the hut.
The hut was one of twenty crude open sided shelters that housed the native labour force. The earth floor was thickly strewn with sleeping bodies. The sound of their breathing was a restless murmur,
broken by the cough and stir of dreamers.
Despite his fatigue, Sebastian was not sleeping, he could not relax from the state of tension in which he had been held all that day.
He thought of the little travelling-clock ticking away in its nest of high explosive, measuring out the minutes and the hours, and then his mind side-stepped and went to Rosa. The muscles of his arms tightened with longing. Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow I will see her and we will go away from this stinking river. Up into the sweet air of the highlands. Again his mind jumped. Seven O'clock, seven o'clock tomorrow morning and it will be over. He remembered Lieutenant
Kyller's voice as he stood in the doorway of the magazine with the gold watch in his hand. The time is five minutes past seven..." he had said. So that Sebastian knew to within a few minutes when the time fuse would explode.