Shout at the Devil by Wilbur Smith Page B

marched hard all that day and when they camped at nightfall, Flynn was semi-paralysed with palm wine, while Sebastian shivered and his teeth chattered uncontrollably.
    From the swamps of the Rufiji delta, Sebastian had brought with him a souvenir of his visit – his first full go of malaria.
    They reached Lalapanzi the following day, a few hours
before the crisis of Sebastian’s fever. Lalapanzi was Flynn’s base camp and the name meant ‘Lie Down’, or more accurately, The Place of Rest’.
    It was in the hills on a tiny tributary of the great Rovuma river, a hundred miles from the Indian Ocean, but only ten miles from German territory across the river. Flynn believed in living close to his principal place of business.
    Had Sebastian been in full possession of his senses, and not wandering in the hot shadow land of malaria, he would have been surprised by the camp at Lalapanzi. It was not what anybody who knew Flynn O’Flynn would have expected.
    Behind a palisade of split bamboo to protect the lawns and gardens from the attentions of the duiker and steenbok and kudu, it glowed like a green jewel in the sombre brown of the hills. Much hard work and patience must have gone into damming the stream, and digging the irrigation furrows, which suckled the lawns and flower-beds and the vegetable gardens. Three indigenous fig trees dwarfed the buildings, crimson frangipani burst like fireworks against the green kikuyu grass, beds of bright barberton daisies ringed the gentle terraces that fell away to the stream, and a bougain-villaea creeper smothered the main building in a profusion of dark green and purple.
    Behind the long bungalow, with its wide, open veranda, stood half a dozen circular rondavels, all neatly capped with golden thatch and gleaming painfully white, with burned limestone paint, in the sunlight.
    The whole had about it an air of feminine order and neatness. Only a woman, and a determined one at that, could have devoted so much time and pain to building up such a speck of prettiness in the midst of brown rock and harsh thorn veld.
    She stood on the veranda in the shade like a valkyrie, tall and sun-browned and angry. The full-length dress of
faded blue was crisp with new ironing, and the neat mends in the fabric invisible except at close range. Gathered close about her waist, her skirt ballooned out over her woman’s hips and fell to her ankles, slyly concealing the long straight legs beneath. Folded across her stomach, her arms were an amber brown frame for the proud double bulge of her bosom, and the thick braid of black hair that hung to her waist twitched like the tail of an angry lioness. A face too young for the marks of hardship and loneliness that were chiselled into it was harder now by the expression of distaste it wore as she watched Flynn and Sebastian arriving.
    They lolled in their maschilles, unshaven, dressed in filthy rags, hair matted with sweat and dust; Flynn full of palm wine, and Sebastian full of fever – although it was impossible to distinguish the symptoms of their separate disorders.
    â€˜May I ask where you’ve been these last two months, Flynn Patrick O’Flynn?’ Although she tried to speak like a man, yet her voice had a lift and a ring to it.
    â€˜You may not ask, daughter!’ Flynn shouted back defiantly.
    â€˜You’re drunk again!’
    â€˜And if I am?’ roared Flynn. ‘You’re as bad as that mother of yours (may her soul rest in peace), always going on and on. Never a civil word of welcome for your old Daddy, who’s been away trying to earn an honest crust.’
    The girl’s eyes switched to the maschille that carried Sebastian, and narrowed in mounting outrage. ‘Sweet merciful heavens, and what’s this you’ve brought home with you now?’
    Sebastian grinned inanely, and tried valiantly to sit up as Flynn introduced him. That is Sebastian Oldsmith. My very dear friend, Sebastian