As an ardent admirer of C. S. Forester for his right noble Hornblower series, I found this piece a fresh diversion. Though the author gives in to his propensity to have his characters misbehave a bit, it is the choice of characters which surprises me.
The man purposely made his hero and heroine un-beautiful, a hard sell in this age of beauty-obsessed readers. And yet… he does so, and they become beloved icons of courage and spirit in the face of nearly-unbearable obstacles.
Rose, whose only pretty attribute is her name, is a 33-year-old missionary who came with her brother Samuel to central Africa in order to spread the Gospel in the region. This was done quite a bit in those days; i. e. the Scottish, Olympic runner in ‘Chariots of Fire’ and his sister eventually head to China to be missionaries.
Though brave and nobly intentioned, the siblings’ mission soon falls victim to German troops during the first World War. In contrast to the invaders, the two missionaries had set up a thriving mission, with the natives learning modern farming methods to improve their own little plots of ground, learning to read and write, etc. The Germans come in, however and strip the mission of its food stores, its converts (to act as bearers) and finally they dismantle the little chapel for scrap. Samuel and Rose are left with no one to neither preach to nor aid.
Rose is at first hesitant in character, through surprisingly resilient and due to her good, British upbringing of that era, she does not complain nor give up. Her brother dies of an unknown fever (I’ll go out on a limb here and guess malaria) and Rose is left as a capable woman with nothing to do; she is standing forlorn on the veranda of the small mission bungalow in the forest when the hero of the book shows up.
Mr. Allnut is perhaps the antithesis of what most would cast as the ‘hero’, being a rather gamey, slender, sallow fellow; he is rather idle of habit and about as unlikely a male role model as you’d ever want to read about. To top it off Forester gave the man a ‘cockney’ accent, which if you’ve ever heard a south Londoner speak, you’d know that they do not even understand themselves, and communicate by passing notes when tourists are not looking. Rose is reviled by this man whom brings them mail and supplies occasionally ; to her his devil-may-care attitude is not acceptable. However, in her grief Rose cares little to think on this much.
To his credit, Mr. Allnut buries the body for her and feels bound to somehow bring her to safety; leaving a defenseless woman in a jungle by herself with no food or firearms was something to be frowned upon, even in this character’s just-a-trifle-less-than-shady mind.
Rose, angered at the Germans for stealing all their hard-earned food and converts, places her brother’s death squarely on their shoulders and resolved deep in her British soul to get back at them, to do her part for King and Country. It was fortunate for her that England had been drawn into the conflict by now, so her efforts at patriotism were not for nothing. When she discovers that Mr. Allnut’s 30-foot, shabby boat (which the author calls ‘loquaciously named The African Queen’) is carrying amonog other stores hundreds of pounds of gelignite (old stuff used in explosions, usually mining) she begins hatching a daring plot.
The main German advantage in the area is not a fort nor a large army, but a ship; a floating fortress called the Köningen Luise, * a vessel made famous of its 6-pound guns which could shell just about anything on or around the 80 mile-wide lake. *With it patrolling the, Rose figures out that any counter-attacks by England will be rendered null and void, as getting around by the rivers and lakes was the fastest, most efficient way to do anything in that region. (Thick jungle and all that…)
(review contnued in comments below, due to lack of space)