Then to Rosa, "You sent for me? What is it you have to tell us?"
With one hand Rosa was stroking Sebastian's head, but she was looking up at the clock.
"You must tell Herr Fleischer that the time is one minute before seven."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Tell him exactly as I say it."
"Is this a joke?"
"Tell him, quickly. There is very little time."
"She says the time is one minute to seven," von Klein(rattled out the translation.
Then in English, "I have told him."
"Tell him that at seven o'clock he will die."
"What is the meaning of that?"
"Tell him first. Tell him!"
insisted Rosa.
"She says that you will die at seven o'clock." And Fleischer interrupted his impatient gobbling over the prone form of Sebastian.
He stared at the woman for a moment, then he giggled uncertainly.
"Tell her I feel very well," he said, and laughed again, "better than this one here." He prodded Sebastian. "Ja, much better." And his laughter came full and strong, booming in the confined space of the sick-bay.
"Tell him my husband has placed a bomb in this ship, and it will explode at seven o'clock."
"Where?"demanded von Kleine.
"Tell him first."
"If this is true you are in danger also where is it?"
"Tell Fleischer what I said."
"There is a bomb in the ship."
And Fleischer stopped laughing.
"She is lying, "he spluttered. "English Lies."
"Where is the bomb? "von Kleine had grasped Rosa's arm.
"It is too late, Rosa smiled complacently. "Look at the clock."
"Where is it?" Von Kleine shook her wildly in his agitation.
"In the magazine. The forward magazine."
"In the Magazine! Sweet merciful Jesus!" von Kleine swore in German, and turned for the door.
"The magazine?" shouted Fleischer and started after him.
"It is impossible it can't be." But he was running, wildly,
desperately, and behind him he heard Rosa Oldsmith's triumphant laughter.
"You are dead. Like my baby dead, like my father. It is too late to run, much too late!" Von Kleine went up the companion-way steps three at a time. He came out into the alleyway that led to the magazine, and stopped abruptly.
The alleyway was almost blocked by a mountain of cordite charges thrown haphazard from the magazine by a knot of frantically busy' stokers
"What are you doing? "he shouted.
"Lieutenant Kyller is looking for a bomb."
"Has he found it?" von
Kleine demanded as he brushed past them.
"Not yet, sir." Von Kleine paused again in the entrance to the magazine. It was a shambles. Led by Kyller, men were tearing at the stacks of cordite, sweeping them from the shelves, ransacking the magazine.
Von Kleine jumped forward to help.
"Why didn't you send for me?" he asked as he reached up to the racks above his head.
"No time, sir, "grunted Kyller beside him.
"How did you know about the bomb?"
"It's a guess I could be wrong, Sir."
"You're right! The woman told us. It's set for seven o'clock."
"Help us, God! Help us!" pleaded Kyller, and hurled himself at the next shelf.
"It could be anywhere anywhere!" Captain von Kleine worked like a stevedore, knee-deep in spilled cylinders of cordite.
"We should clear the ship. Get the men off." Kyller attacked the next rack.
"No time. We've got to find it." Then in the uproar there was a small sound, a muffled tinny buzz. The alarm bell of a travelling-clock.
"There!" shouted Kyller. "That's id" And he dived across the magazine at the same moment as von Kleine did. They collided and fell,
but Kyller was up instantly, dragging himself on to his feet with hands clawing at the orderly rack of cordite cylinders.
The buzz of the alarm clock seemed to roar in his ears.
He reached out and his hands fell on the smoothly paper-wrapped parcels of death, and at that instant the two copper terminals within the leather case of the clock which had been creeping infinitesimally slowly towards each other for the past twelve hours, made contact.
Electricity stored in the dry cell battery flowed through the circuit, reached the hair-thin filament in the detonator cap, and heated it white-hot. The detonator fired, transferring its energy into the sticks of gelignite that were packed into the cigar box. The wave of explosion leapt from molecule to molecule with the speed of light so that the entire contents of Blitcher's magazine were consumed in one hundredth part of a second. With it were consumed Lieutenant Kyller and Captain von Kleine and the men about them.
In the centre of that fiery holocaust they burned to vapour.
The blast swept through Blucher. Downwards through two decks with a force that blew the belly out of her as easily as popping a. paper bag, down through ten fathoms of water to strike the bottom of the river and the shock wave bounced up to raise fifteen-foot "waves along the surface.
It blew sideways through Blitcher's watertight bulkheads, crumpling and tearing them like silver paper.
It caught Rosa Oldsmith as she lay across Sebastian's chest,
hugging him. She did not even hear it come.
It caught Herman Fleischer just as he reached the deck, and shredded him to nothingness.
It swept through the engine room and burst the great boilers,
releasing millions of cubic feet of scalding steam to race through the ship.
It blew upwards through the deck, lifting the forward gun-turret off its seating, tossing the hundreds of tons of steel high in a cloud of steam and smoke and debris.
It killed every single human being aboard. It did more than merely kill them, it reduced them to gas and minute particles of flesh or bone. Then still unsatisfied, its fiery unabated, it blew outwards from Blitcher's shattered hulk, a mighty wind that tore the branches from the mangrove forest and stripped it of leaves.
It lifted a column of smoke and flame writhing and twisting into the bright morning sky above the Rufiji delta, and the waves swept out across the river as though from the eye of a hurricane.
They overwhelmed the two launches that were approaching Blitcher,
pouring over them and capsizing them, swirling them over and over and spilling their human cargo into the frightened frothing water.
And the shock waves rolled on across the delta to burst thunderously against the far hills, or to dissipate out on the vastness of the Indian Ocean.