Shout at the Devil by Wilbur Smith Read Free Book Online

bark slimy with mud and encrusted with little colonies of fresh-water mussels. Unwounded Flynn would not have been able to climb any of them – with his leg those branches above him were doubly inaccessible.
    Wildly now he searched for a weapon – anything, no matter how puny – to defend himself. But there was nothing. Not a branch of driftwood, not a rock – only the thick black sheet of mud around him.
    He looked back at the crocodile. It had not moved. His first feeble hope that it might not come out onto the mud bank withered almost before it was born. It would come. Cowardly, loathsome creature it was – but in time it would gather its courage. It had smelled his blood; it knew him to be wounded, helpless. It would come.
    Painfully Flynn leaned his back against the roots of mangrove, and his terror settled down to a steady, pulsing fear – as steady as the pain in his leg. During the frantic flight across the bank, stiff mud had plugged the bullet hole and stopped the bleeding. But it does not matter now, Flynn thought, nothing matters. Only the creature out there, waiting while its appetite overcomes its timidity, swamps its reluctance to leave its natural element. It might take five minutes, or half a day – but, inevitably, it will come.

    There was a tiny ripple around its snout, the first sign of its movement, and the long scaly head inched in towards the edge. Flynn stiffened.
    The back showed, its scales like the patterned teeth of a file, and beyond it, the tail with the coxcomb double crest. Cautiously, on its short bowed legs, it waddled through the shallows. Wet and shiny, as broad across the back as a percheron stallion, more than a ton of cold, armoured flesh, it emerged from the water. Sinking elbow-deep into the soft mud, so its belly left a slide mark behind it. Grinning savagely, but with the jagged, irregular teeth lying yellow and long on its lips, and the small eyes watching him.
    It came so slowly that Flynn lay passively against the tree, mesmerized by the deliberate waddling approach.
    When it was half-way across the bank, it stopped – crouching, grinning – and he smelled it. The heavy odour of stale fish and musk on the warm air.
    â€˜Get away!’ Flynn yelled at it, and it stood unmoving, unblinking. ‘Get away!’ He snatched up a handful of mud and hurled it. It crouched a little lower on its stubby legs and the fat crested tail stiffened, arching slightly.
    Sobbing now, Flynn threw another handful of mud. The long grinning jaws opened an inch, then shut again. He heard the click as its teeth met, and it charged. Incredibly fast through the mud, grinning still, it slithered towards him.
    This time Flynn’s voice was a lunatic babble of horror and he writhed helplessly against the mangrove roots.
    The deep booming note of the gun seemed not part of reality, but the crocodile reared up on its tail, drowning the echoes of the shot with its own hissing bellow, and above the next boom of the gun, Flynn heard the bullet strike the scaly body with a thump.
    Mud sprayed as the reptile rolled in convulsions, and then, lifting itself high on its legs, it lumbered in ungainly
flight towards the water. Again and again the heavy rifle fired, but the crocodile never faltered in its rush, and the surface of the water exploded like blown glass as it launched itself from the bank and was gone in the spreading ripples.
    Standing in the bows of the canoe with the smoking rifle in his hands, while the paddlers drove in towards the bank, Sebastian Oldsmith shouted anxiously, ‘Flynn, Flynn – did it get you? Are you all right?’
    Flynn’s reply was a croak. ‘Bassie. Oh, Bassie boy, for the first time in my life I’m real pleased to see you,’ and he sagged only half conscious against the mangrove roots.

– 9 –
    T he sun burned down on the dhow where it lay at anchor off the Island of the Dogs, yet a steady breeze came down