Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur - Страница 5

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While the birds and sharks gorged, the hulls of the trawlers sank lower and still lower into the water, until at last a little after the sun had nooned even Lothar had to call enough. There was no room for another load; each time they swung one aboard it merely slithered over the side to feed the circling sharks.

Lothar switched off the winch. There was probably another hundred tons of fish still floating in the main net, most of them drowned and crushed. Empty the net, he ordered. Let them go! Get the net on board. The four trawlers, each of them so low in the water that seawater washed in through the scuppers at each roll, and their speed reduced to an ungainly waddling motion like a string of heavily pregnant ducks, turned towards the land in line astern with Lothar leading them.

Behind them they left an area of almost half a square mile of the ocean carpeted with dead fish, floating silver belly up, as thick as autumn leaves on the forest floor. On top of them drifted thousands of satiated seagulls and beneath them the big sharks swirled and feasted still.

The exhausted crews dragged themselves through the quick-sands of still quivering kicking fish that glutted the deck to the forecastle companionway. Below deck they threw themselves still soaked with fish-slime and seawater onto their cramped bunks.

In the wheelhouse Lothar drank two mugs of hot coffee then checked the chronometer above his head.

Four hours run back to the factory, he said. Just time for our lessons. Oh, Pa! the boy pleaded. Not today, today is special. Do we have to learn today? There was no school at Walvis Bay. The nearest was the German School at Swakopmund, thirty kilometres away.

Lothar had been both father and mother to the boy from the very day of his birth. He had taken him wet and bloody from the child-bed. His mother had never even laid eyes upon him.

That had been part of their unnatural bargain. He had reared the boy alone, unaided except for the milk that the brown Nama wet-nurses had provided. They had grown so close that Lothar could not bear to be parted from him for a single day. He had even taken over his education rather than send him away.

No day is that special, he told Manfred. Every day we learn. Muscles don't make a man strong. He tapped his head. This is what makes a man strong. Get the books! Manfred rolled his eyes at Da Silva for sympathy but he knew better than to argue further.

Take the wheel. Lothar handed over to the old boatman and went to sit beside his son at the small chart-table. Not arithmetic. He shook his head. It's English today., I hate English! Manfred declared vehemently. I hate English and I hate the English. Lothar nodded. Yes! he agreed. The English are our enemies. They have always been and always will be our enemies.

That is why we have to arm ourselves with their weapons.

That is why we learn the language, so when the time comes we will be able to use it in the battle against them. He spoke in English for the first time that day. Manfred started to reply in Afrikaans, the South African Dutch patois that had only obtained recognition as a separate language and been adopted as an official language of the Union of South Africa in 1918, over a year before Manfred was born.

Lothar held up his hand to stop him.

English, he admonished. Speak English only. For an hour they worked together, reading aloud from the King James version of the Bible and from a two-month-old COPY of the Cape Times, and then Lothar set him a page of dictation. The labour in this unfamiliar language made Manfred fidget and frown and nibble his pencil, until at last he could contain himself no longer.

Tell me about Grandpa, and the oath! he wheedled his father.

Lothar grinned. You're a cunning little monkey, aren't you. Anything to get out of work. Please, Pa, I've told you a hundred times. Tell me again. It's a special day. Lothar glanced out of the wheelhouse window at the precious silver cargo. The boy was right, it was a very special day. Today he was free and clear of debt, after five long hard years.

All right. He nodded. I'll tell you again, but in English. And Manfred shut his exercise book with an enthusiastic snap and leaned across the table, his amber eyes glowing with anticipation.

The story of the great rebellion had been repeated so often that Manfred had it by heart and he corrected any discrepancy or departure from the original, or called his father back if he left out any of the details.

Well then, Lothar started, when the treacherous English King George V declared war on Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany in 1914, your grandpa and I knew our duty. We kissed your grandmother goodbye What colour was my grandmother's hair? Manfred demanded.

Your grandmother was a beautiful German noblewoman, and her hair was the colour of ripe wheat in the sunlight. just like mine, Manfred prompted him.

Just like yours, Lothar smiled. And Grandpa and I rode out on our war-horses to join old General Maritz and his six hundred heroes on the banks of the orange river where he was about to go out against old Slim Jannie Smuts., Slim was the Afrikaans word for tricky or treacherous, and Manfred nodded avidly.

Go on, Pa, go on! When Lothar reached the description of the first battle in which Jannie Smuts troops had smashed the rebellion with machine-guns and artillery, the boy's eyes clouded with sorrow.

But you fought like demons, didn't you, Pa? We fought like madmen, but there were too many of them and they were armed with great cannons and machine-guns.

Then your grandpa was hit in the stomach and I put him up on my horse and carried him off the battlefield. Fat tears glistened in the boy's eyes now as Lothar ended.

When at last he was dying your grandfather took the old black Bible from the saddle bag on which his head was pillowed, and he made me swear an oath upon the book. I know the oath, Manfred cut in. 'Let me tell it? What was the oath? Lothar nodded agreement.

Grandpa said: "Promise me, my son, with your hand upon the book, promise me that the war with the English will never end." Yes, Lothar nodded again. That was the oath, the solemn oath I made to my father as he lay dying. He reached out and took the boy's hand and squeezed it hard.

Old Da Silva broke the mood; he coughed and hawked and spat through the wheelhouse window. You should be ashamed, filling the child's head with hatred and death, he said, and Lothar stood up abruptly.

Guard your mouth, old man, he warned. This is no business of yours. Thank the Holy Virgin, Da Silva grumbled, for that is devil's business indeed. Lothar scowled and turned away from him. Manfred, that's enough for today. Put the books away. He swung out of the wheelhouse and scrambled up onto the roof. As he settled comfortably against the coaming, he took a long black cheroot from his top pocket and bit off the tip. He spat the stub overside and patted his pockets for the matches. The boy stuck his head over the edge of the coaming, hesitated shyly and when his father did not send him away, sometimes he was moody and withdrawn and wanted to be alone, Manfred crept up and sat beside him.

Lothar cupped his hands around the flare of the match and sucked the cheroot smoke down deeply into his lungs and then he held up the match and let the wind extinguish it. He flicked it overboard, and let his arm fall casually over his son's shoulders.

The boy shivered with delight, physical display of affection from his father was so rare, and he pressed closer to him and sat still as he could, barely breathing so as not to disturb or spoil the moment.

The little fleet ran in towards the land, and turned the sharp northern horn of the bay. The seabirds were returning with them, squadrons of yellow-throated gannets in long regular lines skimming low over the cloudy green waters, and the lowering sun gilded them and burned upon the tall bronze dunes that rose like a mountain range behind the tiny insignificant cluster of buildings that stood at the edge of the bay.

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