The African Queen Read online

  “It’s like ’ell, isn’t it, Miss?” said Allnutt. “Up at the mine I found it just the sime when I got back from Limbasi. Clean sweep of everything. What they’ve done with the Belgians, God only knows. And God ’elp ’em, too. I wouldn’t like to be a prisoner in the forest of that long chap with the glass eye—’Anneken’s ’is nime, isn’t it, Miss? Not a thing stirring at the mine until a nigger who’d esciped showed up. My niggers just bolted for the woods when they ’eard the news. Don’t know if they were afride of me or the Germans. Just skipped in the night and left me with the launch.”

  “The launch?” said Rose, sharply.

  “Yerss, Miss. The African Queen. I’d been up the river to Limbasi with the launch for stores. Up there they’d ’eard about this war, but they didn’t think Von ’Anneken would fight. Just ’anded the stuff over to me and let me go agine. I fort all the time it wouldn’t be as easy as they said. Bet they’re sorry now. Bet Von ’Anneken done the sime to them as ’e done at the mine. But ’e ’asn’t got the launch, nor yet what’s in ’er, which ’e’d be glad to ’ave, I daresay.”

  “And what’s that?” demanded Rose.

  “Blasting gelatine, Miss. Eight boxes of it. An’ tinned grub. An’ cylinders of oxygen and hydrogen for that weldin’ job on the crusher. ’Eaps of things. Old Von ’Anneken’d find a use for it all. Trust ’im for that.”

  They were inside the bungalow now, and Allnutt took off his battered sun hat as he realised he was in the presence of death. He bowed his head and lapsed into unintelligibility. Garrulous as he might be when talking of war or of his own experiences, he was a poor hand at formal condolences. But there was one obvious thing to say.

  “ ’Scuse me, Miss, but ’ow long ’as ’e been dead?”

  “He died this morning,” said Rose. The same thought came into her mind as was already in Allnutt’s. In the tropics a dead man must be buried within six hours, and Allnutt was further obsessed with his desire to get away quickly, to retire again to his sanctuary in the river backwaters far from German observation.

  “I’ll bury ’im, Miss,” said Allnutt. “Don’t you worry yourself, Miss. I’ll do it all right. I know some of the service. I’ve ’eard it often enough.”

  Rose pulled herself together.

  “I have my prayer book here. I can read the service,” she said, keeping her voice from trembling.

  Allnutt came out on the verandah again. His shifty gaze swept the edge of the forest for Germans, before it was directed upon the clearing to find a site for a grave.

  “Just there’d be the best place,” he said. “The ground’ll be light there and ’e’d like to be in the shide, I expect. Where can I find a spide, Miss?”

  The pressing importance of outside affairs was of such magnitude in Allnutt’s mind that he could not help but say, in the midst of the grisly business—

  “We’d better be quick, Miss, in case the Germans come back agine.”

  And when it was all over and Rose stood in sorrow beside the grave with its makeshift cross, Allnutt moved restlessly beside her.

  “Come on darn to the river, Miss,” he urged. “Let’s get awye from ’ere.”

  Down through the forest towards the river ran a steep path; where it reached the marshy flats it degenerated into something worse than a track. Sometimes they were up to their knees in mud. They slipped and staggered, sweating under the scanty load of Rose’s possessions. Sometimes tree roots gave them momentary foothold. At every step the rank marigold smell of the river grew stronger in their nostrils. Then they emerged from the dense vegetation into blinding sunlight again. The launch swung at anchor, bow upstream, close to the water’s edge. The rushing brown water made a noisy ripple round anchor chain and bows.

  “Careful now, Miss,” said Allnutt. “Put your feet on that stump. That’s right.”

  Rose sat in the launch which was to be so terribly important to her, and looked about her. The launch hardly seemed worthy of her grandiloquent name of African Queen. She was squat, flat-bottomed, and thirty feet long. Her paint was peeling off her, and she reeked of decay. A tattered awning roofed in six feet of the stern; amidships stood the engine and boiler, with the stumpy funnel reaching up just higher than the awning. Rose could feel the heat from the thing where she sat, as an addition to the heat of the sun.

  “Excuse me, Miss,” said Allnutt. He knelt in the bottom of the boat and addressed himself to the engine. He hauled out a panful of hot ashes and dumped them overside with a sizzle and a splutter. He filled the furnace with fresh wood from the pile beside him, and soon smoke appeared from the funnel, and Rose could hear the roar of the draught. The engine began to sigh and splutter—Rose was later to come to know this sequence of sounds so well—and then began to leak grey pencils of steam. In fact, the most noticeable point about the appearance of the engine was the presence of those leaks of steam, which poured out from it here, there, and everywhere. Allnutt peered at his gauges, thrust some more wood into the furnace, and then leaped forward round the engine. With grunts and heaves at the small windlass, he proceeded to haul in the anchor, the sweat pouring from him in rivers. As the anchor came clear, and the rushing current began to sweep the boat in to the bank, he dashed back again to the engine. There was a clanking noise, and Rose felt the propeller begin to vibrate beneath her. Allnutt thrust mightily at the muddy bank with a long pole, snatched the latter on board again, and then came rushing aft to the tiller.

  “Excuse me, Miss” said Allnutt again. He swept her aside unceremoniously as he put the tiller over just in time to save the boat from running into the bank. They headed, grinding and clattering, out into the racing brown water.

  “I fort, Miss,” said Allnutt, “ ’ow we might find somewhere quiet be’ind a island, where we couldn’t be seen. Then we could talk about what we could do.”

  “I should think that would be best,” said Rose.

  The river Ulanga at this point of its course has a rather indefinite channel. It loops and it winds, and its banks are marshy, and it is studded with islands—so frequent indeed are the islands that in some reaches the river appears to be more like a score of different channels, winding their way tortuously through clumps of vegetation. The African Queen churned her slow way against the current, quartering across the broad arm in which they had started. Half a mile up on the other bank half a dozen channels offered themselves, and Allnutt swung the boat’s nose towards the midmost of them.

  “Would you mind ’olding this tiller, Miss, just as it is now?” asked Allnutt.

  Rose silently took hold of the iron rod; it was so hot that it seemed to burn her hand. She held it resolutely, with almost a thrill at feeling the African Queen waver obediently in her course as she shifted the tiller ever so little. Allnutt was violently active once more. He had pulled open the furnace door and thrust in a few more sticks of fuel, and then he scrambled up into the bows and stood balanced on the cargo, peering up the channel for snags and shoals.

  “Port a little, Miss” he called. “Pull it over this side, I mean. That’s it! Steady!”

  The boat crawled up into a narrow tunnel formed by the meeting of the foliage overhead. Allnutt came leaping back over the cargo and shut off the engine, so that the propeller ceased to vibrate. Then he dashed into the bows once more, and just as the trees at Rose’s side began apparently to move forward again as the current overcame the boat’s way, he let go the anchor with a crash and rattle, and almost without a jerk the African Queen came to a standstill in the green-lighted channel. As the noise of the anchor chain died away a great silence seemed to close in upon them, the silence of a tropical river at noon. There was only to be heard the rush and gurgle of the water, and the sighing and spluttering of the engine. The green coolness might almost have been paradise. And then with a rush came the insects from the island thickets. They came in clouds, stinging mercilessly.

  Allnutt came back into the sternsheets. A cigarette hung from his upper lip; Rose had not the faintest ide
a when he had lighted it, but that dangling cigarette was the finishing touch to Allnutt’s portrait. Without it he looked incomplete. Never could Rose picture little Allnutt to herself without a cigarette—generally allowed to go out—stuck to his upper lip halfway between the centre and the left corner of his mouth. A thin straggling beard, only a few score black hairs in all, was beginning to sprout on his lean cheeks. He still seemed restless and unnerved, as he battled with the flies, but now that they were away from the dangerous mainland he was better able to master his jumpiness, or at least to attempt to conceal it under an appearance of jocularity.

  “Well, ’ere we are, Miss,” he said. “Safe. And sound, as you might say. The question is, wot next?”

  Rose was slow of speech and of decision. She remained silent while Allnutt’s nervousness betrayed itself in further volubility.

  “We’ve got ’eaps of grub ’ere, Miss, so we’re all right as far as that goes. Two thousand fags. Two cases of gin. We can stay ’ere for months, if we want to. Question is, do we? ’Ow long d’you fink this war’ll last, Miss?”

  Rose could only look at him in silence. The implication of his speech was obvious—he was suggesting that they should remain here in this marshy backwater until the war should be over, and they could emerge in safety. And it was equally obvious that he thought it easily the best thing to do, provided that their stores were sufficient. He had not the remotest idea of striking a blow for England. Rose’s astonishment kept her from replying, and allowed free rein to Allnutt’s garrulity.

  “Trouble is,” said Allnutt, “we don’t know which way ’elp’ll come. I s’pose they’re going to fight. Old Von ’Anneken doesn’t seem to be in two minds about it, does ’e? If our lot comes from the sea they’d fight their way up the railway to Limbasi, I s’pose. But that wouldn’t be much ’elp, when all is said an’ done. If they was to, though, we could stay ’ere an’ just go up to Limbasi when the time came. I don’t know that wouldn’t be best, after all. Course, they might come down from British East. They’d stand a better chance of catching Von ’Anneken that way, although ’unting for ’im in the forest won’t be no child’s play. But if they do that, we’ll ’ave ’im between us an’ them all the time. Same if they come from Rhodesia or Portuguese East. We’re in a bit of a fix whichever way you look at it, Miss.”

  Allnutt’s native cockney wit combined with his knowledge of the country enabled him to expatiate with fluency on the strategical situation. At that very moment, sweating generals were racking their brains over appreciations very similar—although differently worded—drawn up for them by their staffs. An invasion of German Central Africa in face of a well-led enemy was an operation not lightly to be contemplated.

  “One thing’s sure, anyway, Miss. They won’t come up from the Congo side. Not even if the Belgians want to. There’s only one way to come that way and that’s across the Lake. And nothing won’t cross the Lake while the Louisa’s there.”

  “That’s true enough,” agreed Rose.

  The Königin Luise, whose name Allnutt characteristically anglicised to Louisa, was the police steamer which the German government maintained on the Lake. Rose remembered when she had been brought up from the coast, overland, in sections, eight years before. The country had been swept for bearers and workmen then as now, for there bad been roads to hack through the forest, and enormous burdens to be carried. The Königin Luise’s boiler needed to be transported in one piece, and every furlong of its transport had cost the life of a man in the forest. Once she had been assembled and launched, however, she had swept the Lake free immediately from the canoe pirates who had infested its waters from time immemorial. With her ten-knot speed she could run down any canoe fleet, and with her six-pounder gun she could shell any pirate village into submission, so that commerce had begun to develop on the lake, and agriculture had begun to spread along such of its shores as were not marshy, and the Königin Luise, turning for the moment her sword into a ploughshare, had carried on such an efficient mail and passenger service across the lake that the greater part of German Central Africa was now more accessible from the Atlantic coast, across the whole width of the Belgian Congo, than from the Indian Ocean.

  Yet, it was a very significant lesson in sea power that the bare mention of the name of the Königin Luise was sufficient to convince two people with a wide experience of the country, like Rose and Allnutt, of the impregnability of German Central Africa on the side of the Congo. No invasion whatever could be pushed across the lake in the face of a hundred-ton steamer with a six-pounder popgun. Germany ruled the waters of the lake as indisputably as England ruled those of the Straits of Dover, and the advantage to Germany which could be derived from this localized sea power was instantly obvious to the two in the launch.

  “If it wasn’t for the Louisa,” said Allnutt, “there wouldn’t be no trouble here. Old Von ’Anneken couldn’t last a month if they could get at him across the Lake. But as it is—”

  Allnutt’s gesture indicated that, screened on the other three sides by the forest, Von Hanneken might prolong his resistance indefinitely. Allnutt tapped his cigarette with his finger, so that the ash fell down on his dirty white coat. That saved the trouble of detaching the cigarette from his lip.

  “But all this doesn’t get us any nearer ’ome, does it, Miss? But b-bless me if I can fink what we can do.”

  “We must do something for England,” said Rose instantly. She would have said “We must do our bit,” if she had been acquainted with the wartime slang which was at that moment beginning to circulate in England. But what she said meant the same thing, and it did not sound too melodramatic in the African forest.

  “Coo!” said Allnutt.

  His notion had been to put the maximum possible distance between himself and the struggle; he had taken it for granted that this war, like other wars, should be fought by the people paid and trained for the purpose. Out of touch with the patriotic fervour of the press, nothing had been farther from his thoughts than that he should interfere. Even his travels, which had necessarily been extensive, had not increased his patriotism beyond the point to which it had been brought by the waving of a penny Union Jack on Empire Day at his board school; perhaps they had even diminished it—it would be tactless to ask by what road and for what reasons an Englishman came to be acting as a mechanic-of-all-work on a Belgian concession in a German colony; it was not the sort of question anyone asked, not even missionaries nor their sisters.

  “Coo!” said Allnutt again. There was something infectious, something inspiring, about the notion of “doing something for England.”

  But after a moment’s excitement Allnutt put the alluring vision aside. He was a man of machinery, a man of facts, not of fancies. It was the sort of thing a kid might think of, and when you came to look into it there was nothing really there. Yet, having regard to the light which shone in Rose’s face, it might be as well to temporize, just to humour her.

  “Yerss, Miss,” he said, “if there was anyfink we could do I’d be the first to say we ought ter. What’s your notion, specially?”

  He dropped the question carelessly enough, secure in his certainty that there was nothing she could suggest—nothing, anyway, which could stand against argument. And it seemed as if he were right. Rose put her big chin into her hand and pulled at it. Two vertical lines showed between her thick eye-brows as she tried to think. It seemed absurd that there was nothing two people with a boat full of high explosive could do to any enemy in whose midst they found themselves, and yet so it appeared. Rose sought in her mind for what little she knew about war.

  Of the Russian-Japanese war all she could remember was that the Japanese were very brave men with a habit of shouting “Banzai!” The Boer war had been different—she was twenty then, just when Samuel had entered the ministry, and she could remember that khaki had been a fashionable colour, and that people wore buttons bearing generals’ portraits, and that the Queen had sent packets of chocolate to the men at the front. S
he had read the newspapers occasionally at that time—it was excusable for a girl of twenty to do that in a national crisis.

  Then after the Black Week, and after Roberts had gained the inevitable victories, and entered Pretoria, and come home in triumph, there had still been years of fighting. Someone called De Wet had been “elusive”—no one had ever mentioned him without using that adjective. He used to charge down on the railways and blow them up.

  Rose sat up with a jerk, thinking at first that the inspiration had come. But next moment the hope faded. There was a railway, it was true, but it ran from a sea which was dominated by England to the head of navigation on the Ulanga at Limbasi. It would be of small use to the Germans now, and to reach any bridge along it she and Allnutt would have to go upstream to Limbasi, which might still be in German hands, and then strike out overland, carrying their explosives with them, with the probability of capture at any moment. Rose had made enough forest journeys to realize the impossibility of the task, and her economical soul was pained at the thought of running a risk of that sort for a highly problematical advantage. Allnutt saw the struggle on her face.

  “It’s a bit of a teaser, isn’t it, Miss?” he said.

  It was then that Rose saw the light.

  “Allnutt,” she said. “This river, the Ulanga, runs into the lake, doesn’t it?”

  The question was a disquieting one.

  “Well, Miss, it does. But if you was thinking of going to the lake in this launch—well, you needn’t think about it any more. We can’t, and that’s certain.”