They passed over the British cruiser Renounce as she entered the channel between the mangroves. They rolled overhead like giant cannon-balls across the roof of the sky.
Captain Arthur Joyce leapt to the rail of his bridge, and he saw the column of agonized smoke rise from the swamps ahead of him. A
grotesque living thing, unbelievable in its size, black and silver and shot through with flame.
"They've done it!" shouted Arthur Joyce. "By Jove, they've done it!" He was shaking; his whole body juddering, his face white as ice,
and his eyes which he could not drag from that spinning column of destruction that rose into the sky, filled slowly with tears. He let them overflow his eyelids and run unashamedly down his cheeks.
Two old men walked into a grove of fever trees that stood on the south bank of the Abati river. They stopped beside a pile of gargantuan bones from which the scavengers had picked the flesh,
leaving them scattered and white.
"The tusks are gone, "said Walaka.
"Yes," agreed Mohammed, "the Askari came back and stole them."
Together they walked on through the fever trees and then they stopped again. There was a low mound of earth at the edge of the grove.
Already it had settled and new grass was growing upon it.
"He was a man, "said Walaka.
"Leave me, my cousin. I will stay here a while."
"Stay in peace,
then," said Walaka, and settled the string of his blanket roll more comfortably over his shoulder before he walked on.
Mohammed squatted down beside the grave. He sat there unmoving all that day. Then in the evening Mohammed stood up and walked away towards the south.
The End