The Dark of the Sun

The windows of the theatre were fixed and Haig could escape only into

the passage. Bruce knew that he could catch him if he tried to run for it.

He looked into the ward. Shermaine and Ignatius, with the help of an African orderly, had lifted the woman on to the theatre trolley.

“Father, we need more light.”

“I can get you another lantern, that’s all.”

“Good, do that then. I’ll take the woman through.” Father

Ignatius disappeared with the orderly and Bruce helped Shermaine manoeuvre the trolley down the length of the ward and into the passage.

The woman was whimpering with pain, and her face was grey, waxy grey.

They only go like that when they are very frightened, or when they are dying.

“She hasn’t much longer,” he said.

“know,” agreed Shermaine. “We must hurry.” The woman moved restlessly on the trolley and gabbled a few words; then she sighed so that the great blanketcove red mound of her belly rose and fell, and she started to whimper again.

Haig was still in the theatre. He had stripped off his battle-jacket and, in his vest, he stooped over the basin washing. He did not look round as they wheeled the woman in.

“Get her on the table, he said, working the soap into suds up to his elbows.

The trolley was of a height with the table and, using the blanket to lift her, it was easy to slide the woman across.

“She’s ready, Haig,” said Bruce. Haig dried his arms on a clean towel and turned. He came to the woman and stood over her. She did not know he was there; her eyes were open but unseeing. Haig drew a

breath; he was sweating a little across his forehead and the stubble of beard on the lower part of his face was stippled with grey.

He pulled back the blanket. The woman wore a short white jacket, open-fronted, that did not cover her stomach.

Her stomach was swollen out, hard-looking, with the navel inverted. Knees raised slightly and the thick peasant’s thighs spread wide in the act of labour. As Bruce watched, her whole body arched in another contraction. He saw the stress of the muscles beneath the dark greyish skin as they struggled to expel the trapped foetus.

“Hurry, Mike!” Bruce was appalled by the anguish of birth. I

didn’t know it was like this; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children - but this! Through the woman’s dry grey swollen lips burst another of those moaning little cries, and Bruce swung towards Mike Haig.

“Hurry, goddam you?” And Mike Haig began his examination, his hands very pale as they groped over the dark skin. At last he was satisfied and he stood back from the table.

Ignatius and the orderly came in with two more lanterns.

Ignatius started to say something, but instantly he sensed the tension in the room and he fell silent. They all watched Mike Haig’s face.

His eyes were tight closed, and his face was hard angles and harsh planes in the lantern light. His breathing was shallow and laboured.

I must not push him now, Bruce knew instinctively, I have dragged him to the lip of the precipice and now I must let him go over the edge on his own.

Mike opened his eyes again, and he spoke.

“Caesarian section,” he said, as though he had pronounced his own death sentence. Then his breathing stopped. They waited, and at last the breath came out of him in a sigh.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“Gowns and gloves?” Bruce fired the question at Ignatius.

“In the cupboard.”

“Get them!

“You’ll have to help me, Bruce. And you also Shermaine.”

“Yes, show me.” Quickly they scrubbed and dressed. Ignatius held the pale green theatre gowns while they dived into them and flapped and struggled through.

“That tray, bring it here,” Mike ordered as he opened the sterilizer. With a pair of long-nosed forceps he lifted the instruments out of the steaming box and laid them on the tray naming each one as he did so.

“Scalpel, refractors, clamps.” In the meantime the orderly was swabbing the woman’s belly with alcohol and arranging the sheets.

Mike filled the syringe with pentothal and held it up to the

light. He was an unfamiliar figure now; his face masked, the green skull cap covering his hair, and the flowing gown falling to his ankles. He pressed the plunger and a few drops of the pale fluid dribbled down the needle.

He looked at Bruce, only his haunted eyes showing above the mask.

“Ready?”

“Yes,” Bruce nodded. Mike stooped over the woman, took her arm and sent the needle searching under the soft black skin on the

inside of her elbow. The fluid in the syringe was suddenly discoloured with drawn blood as Mike tested for the vein, and then the plunger slid slowly down the glass barrel.

The woman stopped whimpering, the tension went out of her body and

her breathing slowed and became deep and unhurried.

“Come here.” Mike ordered Shermaine to the head of the table, and she took up the chloroform mask and soaked the gauze that filled the

cone.

“Wait until I tell you.” She nodded. Christ, what lovely eyes she has, thought Bruce, before he turned back to the job in hand.

“Scalpel,” said Mike from across the table, pointing to it on the tray, and Bruce handed it to him.

Afterwards the details were confused and lacking reality in

Bruce’s mind.

The wound opening behind the knife, the tight stretched skin parting and the tiny blood vessels starting to squirt.

Pink muscle laced with white; butter-yellow layers of subcutaneous fat, and then through to the massed bluish coils of the gut. Human tissue, soft and pulsing, glistening in the flat glare of the petromax.

Clamps and refractors, like silver insects crowding into the wound as though it were a flower.

Mike’s hands, inhuman in yellow rubber, moving in the open pit of the belly. Swabbing, cutting, clamping, tying off.

Then the swollen purple bag of the womb, suddenly unzipped by the

knife.

And at last, unbelievably, the child curled in a dark grey ball of legs and tiny arms, head too big for its size, and the far pink snake of the placenta enfolding it.

Lifted out, the infant hung by its heels from Mike’s hand like a

small grey bat, still joined to its mother.

Scissors snipped and it was free. Mike worked it little longer, and the infant cried.

It cried with minute fury, indignant and alive. From the head of the table Shermaine laughed with spontaneous delight, and clapped her hands like a child at a Punch and Judy show. Suddenly Bruce was laughing also, It was a laugh from long -ago, coming out from deep inside him take it,” said Haig and Shermaine cradled it. wet and feebl wriggling in her arms. She stood with it while Haig sewed up.

Watching her face and the way she stood, Bruce suddenly and unaccountably felt the laughter snag his throat, and he wanted to cry.

Haig closed the womb, stitching the complicated pattern of knots like a skilled seamstress, then the external sutures laid neatly across

the fat lips of the wound, and at last the immunity white tape hiding it all. He covered the woman, jerked the mask from his face and looked up at Shermaine.

“you can help me clean it up,” he said, and his voice was strong again and proud. The two of them crossed to the basin.

Bruce threw off his gown and left the room, went down the passage and out into the night. He leaned against the bonnet of the Ford and

[lit a cigarette.

Tonight I laughed again, he told himself with wonder, and then I

nearly cried. And all because of a woman and a child. It is finished now, the pretence. The withdrawal. The big act. There was more than one birth in there tonight. I laughed again, I had the need to laugh again, and the desire to cry. A woman and a child, the whole meaning of life.

The abscess had burst, the poison drained, and he was ready to heal.

“Bruce, Bruce, where are you?” She came out through the door; he did not answer her for she had seen the glow of his cigarette and she came to him. Standing close in the darkness.

“Shermaine-” Bruce said, then he stopped himself. He wanted to

hold her, just hold her tightly.

“Yes, Bruce.” Her face was a pale round in the darkness, very close to him.

“Shermaine, I want-” said Bruce and stopped again.

“Yes, me too,” she whispered and then, drawing away, “come, let’s go and see what your doctor is doing now.” She took his hand and lea him back into the building. Her hand was cool and dry with long tapered fingers in his.

Mike Haig and Father Ignatius were leaning over the cradle that now stood next to the table on which lay the blanket-covered body of the Baluba woman. The woman was breathing softly, and the expression on her face was of deep peace.

“Bruce, come and have a look. It’s a beauty,” called Haig.

Still holding hands Bruce and Shermaine crossed to the cradle.

“He’ll go all of eight pounds,” announced Haig proudly.

Bruce looked at the infant; newborn black babies are more handsome than ours - they have not got that half-boiled look.

“Pity he’s not a trout,” murmured Bruce. “That would be a

national record.” Haig stared blankly at him for a second, then he threw back his head and laughed; it was a good sound. There was a different quality in Haig now, a new confidence in the way he held his head, a feeling of completeness about him.

“How about that drink I promised you, Mike?” Bruce tested him.

“You have it for me, Bruce, I’ll duck this one.” He isn’t just saying it either, thought Bruce, as he looked at his face; he really doesn’t need it now.

“I’ll make it a double as soon as we get back to town.” Bruce glanced at his watch. “It’s past ten, we’d better get going.”

“I’ll have to stay until she comes out from the anaesthetic,” demurred Haig.

“You can come back for me in the morning.” Bruce hesitated. “All right then. Come on, Shermaine.” They drove back to Port Reprieve, sitting close together in the intimate darkness of the car. They did not speak until after they had reached the causeway, then Shermaine said:

“He is a good man, your doctor. He is like Paul.”

“Who is Paul?”

“Paul was my husband.”

“Oh.” Bruce was embarrassed. The mention of that name snapped the silken thread of his mood. Shermaine went on, speaking softly and staring down the path of the headlights.

“Paul was of the same age. Old enough to have learned understanding - young men are so cruel.”

“You loved him.” Bruce spoke flatly, trying to keep any trace of jealousy from his voice.

“Love has many shapes,” she answered. Then, “Yes, I had begun to love him. Very soon I would have loved him enough to-” She stopped.

“To what?” Bruce’s voice had gone rough as a wood rasp.

Now it starts, he thought, once again I am vulnerable.

“We were only married four months before he - before the fever.”

“So?” Still harsh, his eyes on the road ahead.

want you to know something. I must explain it all to you. It is very important. Will you be patient with me while I tell you?” There was a pleading in her voice that he could not resist and his expression softened.

“Shermaine, you don’t have to tell me.”

“I must. I want you to know.” She hesitated a moment, and when she spoke again her voice had steadied. “I am an orphan, Bruce. Both my Mama and Papa were killed by the Germans, in the boi-nbing. I was only a few months old when it happened, and I do not remember them. I do not remember anything, not one little thing about them; there is not even a photograph.” For a

second her voice had gone shaky but again it firmed. “The nuns took me, and they were my family. But somehow that is different, not really your own. I have never had anything that has truly belonged to me, something of my very own.” Bruce reached out and took her hand; it lay very still in his grasp. You have now, he thought, you have me for your very own.

“Then when the time came the nuns made the arrangements with Paul

Cartier. He was an engineer with Union Mime du Haut here in the

Congo, a man of position, a suitable man for one of their girls.

“He flew to Brussels and we were married. I was not unhappy, for although he was old - as old as Doctor Mike yet he was very gentle and kind, of great understanding. He did not-” She stopped and turned suddenly to Bruce, gripping his hand with both of hers, leaning towards him with her face serious and pale in the halfdarkness, the plume of dark hair falling forward over her shoulder and her voice full of appeal. “Bruce, do you understand what I am trying to tell you?” Bruce stopped the car in front of the hotel, deliberately he switched off the ignition and deliberately he spoke.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Thank you,” and she flung the door open and went out of it and up the steps of the hotel with her long jeaned legs flying and her hair bouncing on her back.

Bruce watched her go through the double doors. Then he pressed the lighter on the dashboard and fished a cigarette from his pack. He lit it, exhaled a jet of smoke against the windscreen, and suddenly he was happy. He wanted to laugh again.

He threw the cigarette away only a quarter finished and climbed out of the Ford. He looked at his wristwatch; it was after midnight.

My God, I’m tired. Too much has happened today; rebirth is a severe emotional strain. And he laughed out loud, savouring the sensation, letting it come slowly shaking up his throat from his chest.

Boussier was waiting for him in the lounge. He wore a towelling

dressing-gown, and the creases of sleep were on his face.

“Are all your preparations complete, monsieur?”

“Yes,” the old man answered. “The women and the two children are asleep upstairs. Madame

Cartier has just gone up.

“I know,” said Bruce, and Boussier went on, “As you see, I have all the men here.” He gestured at the sleeping bodies that covered the floor of the lounge and bar-room.

“Good,” said Bruce. “We’ll leave as soon as it’s light tomorrow.”

He yawned, then rubbed his eyes, massaging them with his finger tips.

“Where is my officer, the one with the red hair?”

“He has gone back to the train, very drunk. We had more trouble with him after you had left.” Boussier hesitated delicately. “He wanted to go upstairs, to the women.”

“Damn him.” Bruce felt his anger coming again. “What happened?”

“Your sergeant major, the big one, dissuaded him and took him away.”

“Thank God for Ruffy.”

“I leave reserved a place for you to sleep.” Boussier pointed to a comfortable leather armchair. “You must be exhausted.”

“That is kind of you,” Bruce thanked him. “But first I

must inspect our defences.”

Bruce woke with Shermaine leaning “over the chair and tickling his nose. He was fully dressed with his helmet and rifle on the floor beside him and only his boots unlaced.

“You do not snore, Bruce,” she congratulated him, laughing her small husky laugh. “That is a good thing.” He struggled up, dopey with sleep.

“What time is it?”

“Nearly five o’clock. I have breakfast for you in the kitchen.”

“Where is Boussier?”

“He is dressing; then he will start moving them down to the train.”

“my mouth tastes as though a goat slept in it.” Bruce moved his tongue across his teeth, feeling the fur on them.

“Then I shall not kiss you good morning, mon capitaine.” She straightened up with the laughter still in her eyes. “But your toilet requisites are in the kitchen. I sent one of your gendarmes to fetch them from the train. You can wash in the sink.” Bruce laced up his boots and followed her through into the kitchen, stepping over sleeping bodies on the way.

“There is no hot water,” Shermaine apologized.

“That is the least of my worries.” Bruce crossed to the table and opened his small personal pack, taking out his razor and soap and comb.

“I raided the chicken coop for you,” Shermaine confessed.

“There were only two eggs. How shall I cook them?” soft boiled, one minute.” Bruce stripped off his jacket and shirt, went to the sink and filled it. He sluiced his face and lifted handfuls of water over his head, snorting with pleasure.

Then he propped his shaving mirror above the taps and spread soap on his face. Shermaine came to sit on the draining board beside him and watched with frank interest.

“I will be sorry to see the beard go,” she said. “It looked like

the pelt of an otter, I liked it.”

“Perhaps I will grow it for you one day.” Bruce smiled at her. “Your eyes are blue, Shermaine.”

“It has taken you a long time to find that out,” she said and pouted dramatically. Her skin was silky and coollooking, lips pale pink without make-up. Her dark hair, drawn back, emphasized the high cheek bones and the size of her eyes.

“In India “slier” means “tiger”,” Bruce told her, watching her from the corner of his eye. Immediately she abandoned the pout and drew her lips up into a snarl. Her teeth were small and very white and only slightly uneven. Her eyes rolled wide and then crossed at an alarming angle. She growled. Taken by surprise, Bruce laughed and nearly cut himself.

“I cannot abide a woman who clowns before breakfast. It ruins my digestion,” he laughed at her.

“Breakfast!” said Shermaine and uncrossed her eyes, jumped off the draining board and ran to the stove.

“Only just in time.” She checked her watch. “One minute and twenty seconds, will you forgive me?”

“This once only, never again.”

Bruce washed the soap off his face, dried and combed his hair and came to the table.

She had a chair ready for him.

“How much sugar in your coffee?”

“Three, please.” Bruce chopped the top off his egg, and she brought the mug and placed it in front of him.

“I like making breakfast for you.” Bruce didn’t answer her.

This was dangerous talk. She sat down opposite him, leaned forward on her elbows with her chin in her hands.

“You eat too fast,” she announced and Bruce raised an eyebrow.

“But at least you keep your mouth closed.” Bruce started on his second egg.

“How old are you?” “Thirty, said Bruce.

“I’m twenty - nearly twenty-one.”

“A ripe old age.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a soldier,” he answered.

“No, you’re not.”

“All right, I’m a lawyer.”

“You must be clever,” she said solemnly.

“A genius, that’s why I’m here.”

“Are you married?”

“No - I was.

What is this, a formal interrogation?”

“Is she dead?”

“No.” He prevented the hurt from showing in his face, it was easier to do now.

“Oh!” said Shermaine. She picked up the teaspoon and concentrated on stir ing his coffee.

ease

“is she pretty?”

“No - yes, I suppose so.”

“Where is she?” Then

quickly, “I’m sorry it’s none of my business.” Bruce took the coffee from her and drank it. Then he looked at his watch.

“It’s nearly five fifteen. I must go out and get Mike Haig.”

Shermaine stood up quickly.

“I’m ready.”

“I know the way - you had better get down to the station.”

“I want to come with you.”

“Why?”

“Just because, that’s why.”

Searching for a reason. “I want to see the baby again.”

“You win.”

Bruce picked up his pack and they went through into the lounge.

Boussier was there, dressed and efficient. His men were nearly ready to move.

“Madame Cartier and I are going out to the mission to fetch the doctor. We will be back in half an hour or so. I want all your people aboard by then.”

“Very well, Captain.” Bruce called to Ruffy who was standing on the verandah.

“Did you load those supplies for the mission?”

“They’re in the back of the Ford, boss.”

“Good. Bring all your sentries in and take them down to the station. Tell the engine driver to get steam up and keep his hand on the throttle. We’ll shove off as soon as I get back with Lieutenant Haig.”

“Okay, boss.” Bruce handed him his pack. “Take this down for me, Ruffy.” Then his eyes fell on the large heap of cardboard cartons at Ruffy’s feet. “What’s that?” Ruffy looked a little embarrassed. “Coupla bottles of beer, boss. Thought we might get thirsty going home.”

“Good for you!” grinned Bruce. “Put them in a safe place and don’t drink them all before I get back.”

“I’ll save you one or two,” promised Ruffy.

“Come along, tiger girl,” and Bruce led Shermaine out to the Ford.

She sat closer to him than the previous day, but with her legs curled up under her, as before. As they crossed the causeway she lit two cigarettes and passed one to him.

“I’ll be glad to leave this place,” she said, looking out across the swamp with the mist lifting sluggishly off it in the dawn, hanging in grey shreds from the fluffy tops of the papyrus grass.

“I’ve hated it here since Paul died. I hate the swamp the

mosquitoes and the jungle all around. I’m glad we’re going.” “Where will you go?” Bruce asked.

“I haven’t thought about it. Back to Belgium, I suppose.

Anywhere away from the Congo. Away from this heat to a country where you can breathe. Away from the disease and the fear. Somewhere so that I know tomorrow I will not have to run. Where human life has meaning, away from the killing and the burning and the rape.” She drew

on her cigarette almost fiercely. staring ahead at the green wall of the forest.

“I was born in Africa,” said Bruce. “In the time when the judge’s gavel was not the butt of an FN rifle, before you registered your vote with :, burst of gunfire.” He spoke softhe with regret. “In the time before the hatred. But now I don’t know. I haven’t thought much about the future either.” He was silent for a while. They reached the turn-off to the mission and he swung the Ford into it “it has all changed so quickly; I hadn’t realized how quickly until :I came here to the Congo.”

“Are you going to stay here, Bruce? I mean, stay here in the Congo?” “No,” he said, “I’ve had enough. I don’t even know what

I’m fighting for.”

He threw the butt of his cigarette out of the window.

Ahead of them were the mission buildings.

Bruce parked the car outside the hospital buildings and they sat together quietly.

“There must be some other land,” he whispered, “and if there is

I’ll find it.” He opened the door and stepped out. Shermaine slid across the seat under the wheel and joined him. They walked side by

side to the hospital; her hand brushed his and he caught it, held it and felt the pressure of his fingers returned by hers. She was taller than his shoulder, but not much.

Mike Haig and Father Ignatius were together in the women’s ward, too engrossed to hear the Ford arrive.

“Good morning, Michael,” called Bruce. “What’s the fancy dress for?” Mike Haig looked up and grinned. “Morning, Bruce.

Hello, Shermaine.” Then he looked down at the faded brown cassock he wore.

“Borrowed it from Ignatius. A bit long in the leg and tight round the waist, but less out of place in a sick ward than the accoutrements

of war.”

“It suits you, Doctor Mike,” said Shermaine.

“Nice to hear someone call me that again.” The smile spread all over Haig’s face. “I suppose you want to see your baby, Shermaine?”

“Is he well?”

“Mother and child both doing fine,” he assured her and led Shermaine down between the row of beds, each with a black woolly head on the pillow and big curious eyes following their progress.

“May I pick him up?”

“He’s asleep, Shermaine.”

“Oh, please!”

“I doubt it will kill him. Very well, then.”

“Bruce, come and look.

Isn’t he a darling?” She held the tiny black body to her chest and the child snuffled, its mouth automatically starting to search. Bruce leaned forward to peer at it.

“Very nice,” he said and turned to Ignatius. “I have those supplies I promised you. Will you send an orderly to get them out of the car?” Then to Mike Haig, “You’d better get changed, Mike. We’re all ready to leave.” Not looking at Bruce, fiddling with the stethoscope round his neck, Mike shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll be going with you, Bruce.” Surprised, Bruce faced him.

“What?”

“I think I’ll stay on here with Ignatius. He has offered me a job.”

“You must be mad, Mike.”

“Perhaps,” agreed Haig and took the infant from Shermaine, placed it back in the cradle beside its mother and tucked the sheet in round its tiny body, “and then again, perhaps not.” He straightened up and waved a hand down the rows of occupied beds. “There’s plenty to do here, that you must admit.” Bruce stared helplessly at him and then appealed to Shermaine.

“Talk him out of it. Perhaps you can make him see the futility of it.” Shermaine shook her head. “No, Bruce, I will not.”

“Mike, listen to reason, for God’s sake. You can’t stay here in this disease-ridden backwater. I’ll walk out to the car with you, Bruce. I know you’re in a hurry. He led them out through the side door and stood by the

driver’s window of the Ford while they climbed in. Bruce extended his hand and Mike took it, gripping hard.

“Cheerio, Bruce. Thanks for everything.”

“Cheerio, Mike. I suppose you’ll be taking orders and having yourself made into a fully licensed dispenser of salvation?”

“I don’t know about that, Bruce. I doubt it. I just want another chance to do the only work I know. I just want a last-minute tally to reduce the formidable score that’s been chalked up against me so far.” report you

“missing, believed killed” - throw your uniform in the river,” said

Bruce.

“I’ll do that.” Mike stepped back. “Look after each other, you two.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Shermaine informed him primly, trying not to smile.

“I’m an old dog, not easy to fool,” said Mike. “Go to it with a will.” Bruce let out the clutch and the Ford slid forward.

“God speed, my children.” That smile spread all over Mike’s face as he waved.

“Au revoir, Doctor Michael.”

“So long, Mike.” Bruce watched him in the rear-view mirror, tall in his ill-fitting cassock, something proud and worthwhile in his stance. He waved once more and then turned and hurried back into the hospital.

Neither of them spoke until they had almost reached the main road.

Shermaine nestled softly against Bruce, smiling to herself, looking ahead down the tree-lined passage of the road.

“He’s a good man, Bruce.”

“Light me a cigarette, please, Shermaine.” He didn’t want to talk about it. It was one of those things that can only be made grubby by words.

Slowing for the intersection, Bruce dropped her into second gear, automatically glancing to his left to make sure the main road was clear before turning into it.

“Oh my God!” he gasped.

“What is it, Bruce?” Shermaine looked up with alarm from the cigarette she was lighting.

“Look! ” A hundred yards up the road, parked close to the edge of the forest, was a convoy of six large vehicles. The first five were heavy canvas-canopied lorries painted dull military olive, the sixth was a gasoline tanker in bright yellow and red with the Shell Company insignia on the barrel-shaped body. Hitched behind the leading lorry

was a squat, rubbertyred 25-pounder anti-tank gun with its long barrel pointed jauntily skywards. Round the vehicles, dressed in an assortment of uniforms and different styled helmets, were at least sixty men. They were all armed, some with automatic weapons and others with obsolete bolt-action rifles. Most of them were urinating carelessly into the grass that lined the road, while the others were standing in small groups smoking and talking.

“General Moses!” said Shermaine, her voice small with the shock.

“Get down,” ordered Bruce and with his free hand thrust her on to the floor. He rammed the accelerator flat and the Ford roared out into the main road, swerving violently, the back end floating free in the loose dust as he held the wheel over. Correcting the skid, meeting it and straightening out, Bruce glanced at the rear-view mirror. Behind

them the men had dissolved into a confused pattern of movement; he heard their shouts high and thin above the racing engine of the Ford.

Bruce looked ahead; it was another hundred yards to the bend in the road that would hide them and take them down to the causeway across the swamp.

Shermaine was on her knees pulling herself up to look over the back of the seat.

“Keep on the floor, damn you!” shouted Bruce and pushed her head down roughly.

As he spoke the roadside next to them erupted in a rapid series of leaping dust fountains and he heard the high hysterical beat of machine-gun fire.

The bend in the road rushed towards them, just a few more seconds.

Then with a succession of jarring crashes that shook the whole body of the car a burst of fire hit them from behind. The windscreen starred into a sheet of opaque diamond lacework, the dashboard clock exploded powdering Shermaine’s hair with particles of glass, two bullets tore

“through the seat ripping out the stuffing like the entrails of a wounded animal.

“Close your eyes,” shouted Bruce and punched his fist through the windscreen. Slitting his own eyes against the chips of flying glass, he could just see through the hole his fist had made. The corner was right on top of them and he dragged the steering-wheel over, skidding into it, his offside wheels bumping into the verge, grass and leaves brushing the side of the car.

Then they were through the corner and racing down towards the causeway.

“Are you all right, Shermaine?”

“Yes, are you?” She emerged from under the dashboard, a smear of blood across one cheek where the glass had scratched her, and her eyes bigger than ever with fright.

“I only pray that Boussier and Hendry are ready to pull out.

Those bastards won’t be five minutes behind us.” They went across the causeway with the needle of the speedometer touching eighty, up the far side and into the main street of Port Reprieve. Bruce thrust his hand down on the hooter ring, blowing urgent warning blasts.

“Please God, let them be ready,” he muttered. With relief he saw that the street was empty and the hotel seemed deserted. He kept blowing the horn as they roared down towards the station, a great

billowing cloud of dust rising behind them. Braking the Ford hard, he turned it in past the station buildings and on to the platform.

Most of Boussier’s people were standing next to the train.

Boussier himself was beside the last truck with his wife and the small group of women around him. Bruce shouted at them through the open window.

“Get those women into the train, the shufta are right behind us, we’re leaving immediately.” Without question or argument old Boussier gathered them together and hurried them up the steel ladder into the truck. Bruce drove down the station platform shouting as he went.

“Get in! For Chrissake, hurry up! They’re coming!” He braked to

a standstill next to the cab of the locomotive and shouted up at the bald head of the driver.

“Get going. Don’t waste a second. Give her everything she’s got.

There’s a bunch of shufta not five minutes behind US.” The driver’s head disappeared into the cab without even the usual polite,” Oui monsieur.”

“Come on, Shermaine.” Bruce grabbed her hand and dragged her

from the car. Together they ran to one of the covered coaches and

Bruce pushed her half way up the steel steps.

At that moment the train erked forward so violently that she lost her grip on the handrails and tumbled backwards on top of Bruce. He

was caught off balance and they fell together in a heap on the dusty platform. Above them the train gathered speed, pulling away. He remembered this nightmare from his childhood, running after a train and never catching it. He had to fight down his panic as he and Shermaine scrambled up, both of them panting, clinging to each other, the coaches clackety-clacking past them, the rhythm of their wheels mounting.

“Run!” he gasped, “Run!” and with the panic weakening their legs he just managed to catch the handrail of the second coach. He clung to

it, stumbling along beside the train, one arm round Shermaine’s waist.

Sergeant Major Ruffararo leaned out, took Shermaine by the scruff of her neck and lifted her in like a lost kitten. Then he reached down for Bruce.

“Boss, some day we going to lose you if you go on playing around like that.”

“I’m sorry, Bruce,” she panted, leaning against him.

“No damage done.” He could grin at her. “Now I want you to get into that compartment and stay there until I tell you to come out. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Bruce.”

“Off you go.” He turned from her to

Ruffy. “Up on to the roof, Sergeant Major! We’re going to have fireworks. Those shufta have got a field gun with them and we’ll be in full view of the town right up to the top of the hills. By the time they reached the roof of the train it had pulled out of Port Reprieve and was making its first angling turn up the slope of the hills. The sun was up now, well clear of the horizon, and the mist from the swamp had lifted so that they could see the whole village spread out beneath

them.

General Moses’s column had crossed the causeway and was into the main street. As Bruce watched, the leading truck swung sharply across the road and stopped. Men boiled out from under the canopy and swarmed over the field gun, unhitching it, manhandling it into position.

“I hope those Arabs haven’t had any drill on that piece,” grunted

Ruffy.

“We’ll soon find out,” Bruce assured him grimly and looked back along the train. In the last truck Boussier stood protectively over the small group of four women and their children, like an old white-haired collie with its sheep.

Crouched against the steel side of the truck, Andre de Surrier and half a dozen gendarmes were swinging and sighting the two Bren guns.

In the second truck also the gendarmes were preparing to open fire.

“What are you waiting for?” roared Ruffy. “Get me that field gun - start shooting.” They fired a ragged volley, then the Bren guns

joined in.

With every burst Andre’s helmet slipped forward over his eyes and he had to stop and push it back. Lying on the roof of the leading coach, Wally Hendry was firing short businesslike bursts.

The shufta round the field gun scattered, leaving one of their number lying in the road, but there were men behind the armour shield -

Bruce could see the tops of their helmets.

Suddenly there was a long gush of white smoke from the barrel, and the shell rushed over the top of the train, with a noise like the wings of a giant pheasant.

“Over!” said Ruffy.

“Under!” to the next shot as it ploughed into the trees below them.

“And the third one right up the throat,” said Bruce. But it hit the rear of the train. They were using armour-piercing projectiles, not high explosive, for there was not the burst of yellow cordite fumes but only the crash and jolt as it struck.

Anxiously Bruce tried to assess the damage. The men and women in the rear trucks looked shaken but unharmed and he started a sigh of relief, which changed quickly to a gasp of horror as he realized what had happened.

“They’ve hit the coupling,” he said. “They’ve sheared the coupling on the last truck.” Already the gap was widening, as the rear truck started to roll back down the hill, cut off like the tail of a lizard.

“Jump,” screamed Bruce, cupping his hands round his mouth. “Jump before you gather speed.” Perhaps they did not hear him, perhaps they were too stunned to obey, but no one moved. The truck rolled back, faster and faster as gravity took it, down the hill towards the village and the waiting army of General Moses.

“What can we do, boss?” “Nothing,” said Bruce.

The firing round Bruce had petered out into silence as every man, even Wally Hendry, stared down the slope at the receding truck. With a constriction of his throat Bruce saw old Boussier stoop and lift his wife to her feet, hold her close to his side and the two of them looking back at Bruce on the roof of the departing train. Boussier raised his right hand in a gesture of farewell and then he dropped it again and stood very still. Behind him, Andre de Surrier had left the

Bren gun and removed his helmet. He also was looking back at Bruce, but he did not wave.

At intervals the field gun in the village punctuated the stillness with its deep boom and gush of smoke, but Bruce hardly heard it. He was watching the shufta running down towards the station yard to welcome the truck. Losing speed it ran into the platform and halted abruptly as it hit the buffers at the end of the line. The shufta swarmed over it like little black ants over the body of a beetle and faintly Bruce heard the pop, pop, pop of their rifles, saw the low sun glint on their bayonets. He turned away.

They had almost reached the crest of the hills; he could feel the

train increasing speed under him. But he felt no relief, only the prickling at the corners of his eyes and the ache of it trapped in his throat.

“The poor bastards,” growled Ruffy beside him. “The poor bastards.” And then there was another crashing jolt against the train, another hit from the field gun. This time up forward, on the locomotive. Shriek of escaping steam, the train checking its pace, losing power. But they were over the crest of the hills, the village was out of sight and gradually the train speeded up again as they started down the back slope. But steam spouted out of it, hissing white jets of it, and Bruce knew they had received a mortal wound. He switched on the radio.

“Driver, can you hear me? How bad is it?”

Aw

“I cannot see, Captain. There is too much steam. But the pressure on the gauge is dropping swiftly.”

“Use all you can to take us down the hill. It is imperative that we pass the level crossing before we halt. it is absolutely imperative - if we stop this side of the level crossing they will be able to reach us with their lorries.”.

“I will try, Captain.” They rocketed down the hills but as soon as they reached the level ground their speed began to fall off. Peering through the dwindling clouds of steam Bruce saw the pale brown ribbon

of road ahead of them, and they were still travelling at a healthy thirty miles an hour as they passed it. When finally the train trickled to a standstill Bruce estimated that they were three or four miles beyond the level crossing, safely walled in by the forest and hidden from the road by three bends.

“I doubt they’ll find us here, but if they do they’ll have to come down the line from the level crossing to get at us.

We’ll go back a mile and lay an ambush in the forest on each side

of the line,” said Bruce.

“Those Arabs won’t be following us, boss. They’ve got themselves women and a whole barful of liquor. Be two or three days before old

General Moses can sober them up enough to move them on.”

“You’re probably right, Ruffy. But we’ll take no chances.

Get that ambush laid and then we’ll try and think up some idea for getting home.” Suddenly a thought occurred to him: Martin Boussier had the diamonds with him. They would not be too pleased about that in

Elisabethville.

Almost immediately Bruce was disgusted with himself.

The diamonds were by far the least important thing that they had left behind in Port Reprieve.

Andre de Surrier held his steel helmet against his chest the way a man holds his hat at a funeral, the wind blew cool and caressing through his dark sweat-damp hair. His hearing was dulled by the strike

of the shell that had cut the truck loose from the rear of the train, he could hear one of the children crying and the crooning, gentling voice of its mother. He stared back up the railway line at the train, saw the great bulk of Ruffy beside Bruce Curry on the roof of the second coach.

“They can’t help us now.” Boussier spoke softly. “There’s nothing they can do.” He lifted his hand stiffly in almost a military salute and then dropped it to his side. “Be brave, ma cheri,” he said to his

wife. “Please be brave,” and she clung to him.

Andre let the helmet drop from his hands. It clanged on to the metal floor of the truck. He wiped the sweat from his face with nervous fluttering hands and then turned slowly to look down at the

village.

“I don’t want to die,” he whispered. “Not like this, not now, please not now.” One of his gendarmes laughed, a sound without mirth, and stepped across to the Bren. He pushed Andre away from it and started firing at the tiny running figures of the men in the station yard.

“No,” shrilled Andre. Don’t do that, no, don’t antagonize them.

They’ll kill us if you do that-“

“They’ll kill us anyway,” laughed the gendarme and emptied the magazine in one long despairing burst. Andre started towards him, perhaps to pull him away from the gun, but

his resolve did not carry him that far. His hands dropped to his sides, clenching and unclenching. His lips quivered and then opened to spill out his terror.

“No!” he screamed. “Please, no! No! Oh, God have mercy.

Oh, save me, don’t let this happen to me, please, God. Oh, my

God.” He stumbled to the side of the truck and clambered on to it. The truck was slowing as it ran into the platform. He could see men coming with rifles in their hands, shouting as they ran, black men in dirty

tattered uniforms, their faces working with excitement, pink shouting mouths, baying like hounds in a pack.

Andre jumped and the dusty concrete of the platform grazed his cheek and knocked the wind out of him. He crawled to his knees, clutching his stomach and trying to scream. A rifle butt hit him between the shoulder-blades and he collapsed. Above him a voice shouted in French.

“He is white, keep him for the general. Don’t kill him.” And again the rifle butt hit him, this time across the side of the head.

He lay in the dust, dazed, with the taste of blood in his mouth and watched them drag the others from the truck.

They shot the black gendarmes on the platform, without ceremony, laughing as they competed with each other to use their bayonets on the corpses. The two children died quickly torn from their mothers, held by the feet and swung head first against the steel side of the truck

Old Boussier tried to prevent them stripping his wife and was bayoneted from behind in anger, and then shot twice with a pistol held to his head as he lay on the platform.

All this happened in the first few minutes before the officers arrived to control them; by that time Andre and the four women were the only occupants of the truck left alive.

Andre lay where he had fallen, watching in fascinated skin-crawling horror as they tore the clothing off the women and with a man to each arm and each leg held them down on the platform as though they were calves to be branded, hooting with laughter at their struggling naked bodies, bickering for position, already unbuckling belts, pushing each other, arguing, some of them with fresh blood on their clothing.

But then two men, who by their air of authority and the red sashes across their chests were clearly officers, joined the crowd. One of them fired his pistol in the air to gain their attention and both of them started a harangue that slowly had effect. The women were dragged up and herded off towards the hotel.

One of the officers came across to where Andre lay, stooped over him and lifted his head by taking a handful of hair.

“Welcome, mon ami. The general will be very pleased to see you.

It is a pity that your other white friends have left us, but then, one is better than nothing.” He pulled Andre into a sitting position, peered into his face and then spat into his eyes with sudden violence.

“Bring him! The general will talk to him later.” They tied Andre to one of the columns on the front verandah of the hotel and left him there. He could have twisted his head and looked through the large windows into the lounge at what they were doing to the women, but he

did not. He could hear what was happening; by noon the screams had become groans and sobbing; by midafternoon the women were making no sound at all. But the queue of shufta was still out of the front door of the lounge. Some of them had been to the head of the line and back to the tail three or four times.

All of them were drunk now. One jovial fellow carried a bottle of

Parfait Amour liqueur in one hand and a bottle of Harpers whisky in the other. Every time he came back to join the queue again he stopped in front of Andre.

“Will you drink with me, little white boy!” he asked.

“Certainly you will,” he answered himself, filled his mouth from one of the bottles and spat it into Andre’s face. Each time it got a big laugh from the others waiting in the line.

Occasionally one of the other shufta would stop in front of Andre, unsling his rifle, back away a few paces, sight along the bayonet at Andre’s face and then charge forward, at the last moment twisting the point aside so that it grazed his cheek. Each time Andre could not suppress his shriek of terror, and the waiting men nearly collapsed with merriment.

Towards evening they started to burn the houses on the outskirts of town. One group, sad with liquor and rape, sat together at the end of the verandah and started to sing.

Their deep beautiful voices carrying all the melancholy savagery of Africa, they kept on singing while an argument between two shufta developed into a knife fight in the road outside the hotel.

The sweet bass lilt of singing covered the coarse breathing of the two circling, bare-chested knife fighters and the shuffle, shuffle quick shuffle of their feet in the dust. When finally they locked together for the kill, the singing rose still deep and strong but with a triumphant note to it. One man stepped back with his rigid right arm

holding the knife buried deep in the other’s belly and as the loser sank down, sliding slowly off the knife, the singing sank with him, plaintive, regretful and lamenting into silence.

They came for Andre after dark. Four of them less drunk than the others. They led him down the street to the Union Mini&re offices.

General Moses was there, sitting alone at the desk in the front office.

There was nothing sinister about him; he looked like an elderly clerk, a small man with the short woollen cap of hair grizzled to grey above the ears and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. On his chest he wore three rows of full-dress medals; each of his fingers was encased in rings to the second joint, diamonds, emeralds and the occasional red glow of a ruby; most of them had been designed for women, but the metal had been cut to enlarge them for his stubby black fingers. The face was almost kindly, except the eyes.

There was a blankness of expression in them, the lifeless eyes of a madman. On the desk in front of him was a small wooden case made of

unvarnished deal which bore the seal of the Union Mini&e Company stencilled in black upon its side. The lid was open, and as Andre came in through the door with his escort General Moses lifted a white canvas bag from the case, loosened the drawstring and poured a pile of dark grey industrial diamonds on to the blotter in front of him.

He prodded them thoughtfully with his finger, stirring them so they glittered dully in the harsh light of the petromax.

“Was this the only case in the truck?” he asked without looking up.

“Oui, mon general. There was only one,” answered one of Andre’s escorts..

“You are certain?”

“Oui, mon general. I myself have searched thoroughly.” General Moses took another of the canvas bags from the case and emptied it on to the blotter. He grunted with disappointment as he saw the drab little stones. He reached for another bag, and another, his anger mounting steadily as each yielded only dirty grey and black industrial diamonds. Soon the pile on the blotter would have filled a pint jug.

“Did you open the case?” he snarled.

“Non, mon general It was sealed. The seal was not broken, you saw that.” General Moses grunted again, his dark chocolate face set hard with frustration. Once more he dipped his hand into the wooden case and suddenly he smiled.

“Ah!” he said pleasantly. “Yes! yes! what is this?” He brought out a cigar box, with the gaudy wrappers still on the cedarwood. A

thumbnail prised the lid back and he beamed happily. In a nest of cotton wool, sparkling, breaking the white light of the petromax into all the rainbow colours of the spectrum, were the gem stones. General

Moses picked one up and held it between thumb and forefinger.

“Pretty,” he murmured. “Pretty, so pretty.” He swept the industrial stones to one side and laid the gem in the centre of the blotter. Then one by one he took the others from the cigar box, fondling each and laying it on the blotter, counting them, smiling, once chuckling softly, touching them, arranging them in patterns.

“Pretty,” he kept whispering. “Bon - forty-one, forty-two.

Pretty! My darlings! Forty-three.” Then suddenly he scooped them up and poured them into one of the canvas bags, tightened the drawstring, dropped it into his breast pocket above the medals and

buttoned the flap.

He laid his black, bejewelled hands on the desk in front of him and looked up at Andre.

His eyes were smoky yellow with black centres behind his spectacles. They had an opaque, dreamlike quality.

“Take off his clothes,” he said in a voice that was as expressionless as the eyes.

They stripped Andre with rough dispatch and General Moses looked at his body.

“So white,” he murmured. “Why so white?” Suddenly his jaws began chewing nervously and there was a faint shine of sweat on his forehead.

He came round from behind the desk, a small man yet with an intensity about him that doubled his size.

“White like the maggots that feed in the living body of the elephant.” He brought his face close to Andre’s- “You should be fatter, my maggot, having fed so long and so wellyou should be much fatter.” He touched Andre’s body, running his hands down his flanks in a caress.

“ he said, and

“But now it is too late, little white maggot. Andre cringed from his touch and from his voice. “For the elephant has shaken you from the wound, shaken you out on to the ground, shaken you out beneath his feet - and will you pop when he crushes you?” His voice was still soft though the sweat oozed in oily lines down his cheeks and the dreaminess of his eyes had been replaced by a burning black brightness.

“We shall see,” he said and drew back. “We shall see, My maggot,” he repeated, and brought his knee up into Andws crotch with a force that jerked his whole frame and flung his shoulders back.

The agony flared through Andre’s lower body, fierce as the touch of heated steel. It clamped in on his stomach, contracting it in a spasm

like childbirth, it rippled up across the muscles of his chest into his head and burst beneath the roof of his skull in a whiteness that blinded him.

“Hold him,” commanded General Moses, his voice suddenly shrill.

The two guards took Andre by the elbows and forced him to his knees, so that his genitals and lower belly were easily accessible to the general’s boots. They had done this often.

“For the times you gaoled me!” And General Moses swung his booted foot into Andre’s body. The pain blended with the other pain, and it was too strong for Andre to scream.

“This, for the insults,” and Andre could feel his testicles crush beneath it. Still it was too strong - he could not use his voice.

“This, for the times I have grovelled.” The pain had passed its zenith, this time he could scream with it. He opened his mouth and filled his empty lungs.

“This, for the times I have hungered.” Now he must scream. Now he must - the pain, oh, sweet Christ, I must, please let me scream.

“This, for your white man’s justice.” Why can’t I, please let me. Oh, no! No - please. Oh, God, oh, please.

“This, for your prisons and your Kiboko!” The kicks so fast now, like the beat of an insane drummer, like rain on a tin roof In his stomach he felt something tear.

“And this, and this, and this.” The face before him filled the whole field of his vision.

The voice and the sound of the boot into him filled his ears.

“This, and this, and this.” The voice high-pitched and in him the sudden warm flood of internal bleeding.

The pain was fading now as his body closed it out in defence, and he had not screamed. The leap of elation as he knew it. This last thing I can do well, I can die now WITHOUT SCREAMING. He tried to stand up, but they held him down and his legs were not his own, they were on the other side of the great numb warmth of his belly. He lifted his head and looked at the man who was killing him.

“This for the white filth that bore you, and this, and this-” The blows were not a part of reality, he could feel the shock of them as though he stood close to a man who was cutting down a tree with an axe.

And Andre smiled.

He was still smiling when they let him fall forward to the floor.

“I think he is dead,” said one of the guards. General Moses turned away and walked back to his seat at the desk.

He was shaking as though he had run a long way, and his breathing

was deep and fast. The jacket of his uniform was soaked with sweat.

He sank into the chair and his body seemed to crumple; slowly the brightness faded from his eyes until once more they were filmed over, opaque and dreamy. The two guards squatted down quickly on each side of Andre’s body; they knew it would be a long wait.

Through the open window there came an occasional shout of drunken laughter, and the red flicker and leap of flames.

Bruce stood in the centre of the tracks and searched the floor of the forest critically. At last he could make out the muzzle of the

Bren protruding a few inches from the patch of elephant grass. Despite the fact that he knew exactly where to look for it, it had taken him a full two minutes to find it.

“That’ll do, Ruffy,” he decided. “We can’t get it much better than that.”

“I reckon not, boss.” Bruce raised his voice. “Can you hear me?” There were muffled affinnatives from the bush on each side, and Bruce continued.

“If they come You must let them reach this spot before you open fire. I will mark it for you.” He went to a small shrub beside the line, broke off a branch and dropped it on the tracks.

“Can you see that?” Again the affirmatives from the men in ambush.

“You will be relieved before darkness - until then stay where you

are.” The train was hidden beyond a bend in the line, half a mile ahead, and Bruce walked back with Ruffy.

The engine driver was waiting for them, talking with Wally Hendry beside the rear truck.

“Any luck?” Bruce asked him.

regret, mon capitaine, that she is irreparably damaged.

The boiler is punctured in two places and there is considerable disruption of the copper tubing.”

“Thank you,” Bruce nodded. He was neither surprised nor disappointed. It was precisely what his own

judgement had told him after a brief examination of the locomotive.

“Where is Madame Cartier?” he asked Wally.

“Madame is preparing the luncheon, monsir,” Wally told him with heavy sarcasm. “Why do you ask, Bucko? Are you feeling randy again so

soon, hey? You feel like a slice of veal for lunch, is that it?” Bruce snuffed out the quick flare of his temper and walked past him. He found Shermaine with four gendarmes in the cab of the locomotive. They had scraped the coals from the furnace into a glowing heap on the steel floor and were chopping potatoes and onions into the five gallon pots.

The gendarmes were all laughing at something Shermaine had said.

Her usually pale cheeks were flushed with the heat; there was a sooty smudge on her forehead. She wielded the big knife with professional

dexterity. She looked up and saw Bruce, her face lighting instantly and her lips parting.

“We’re having a Hungarian goulash for lunch - bully beef, potatoes and onions.”

“As of now I am rating you acting second cook without pay.”

“You are too kind,” and she put her tongue out at him. It was a pink pointed little tongue like a cat’s. Bruce felt the old familiar tightening of his legs and the dryness in his throat as he looked at it.

“Shermaine, the locomotive is damaged beyond repair. It is of no further use.” He spoke in English.

“It makes a passable kitchen,” she demurred.

“Be serious.” Bruce’s anxiety made him irritable. “We’re stranded here until we think of something.”

“But, Bruce, you are the genius. I

have complete faith in you. I’m sure you’ll think of some truly

beautiful idea.” Her face was solemn but she couldn’t keep the banter out of her eyes. “Why don’t you go and ask General Moses to lend you his transportation?” Bruce’s eyes narrowed in thought and the black inverted curves of his eyebrows nearly touched above the bridge of his nose.

“The food better be good or I’ll break you to third cook,” he warned, clambered down from the cab to the ground and hurried back along the train.

“Hendry, Sergeant Major, come here, please. I want to discuss something with you.” They came to join him and he led the way up the ladder into one of the covered coaches. Hendry dropped on to the bunk and placed his feet on the washbasin.

“That was a quick one,” he grinned through the coppery stubble of his beard.

“You’re the most uncouth, filthy-mouthed son of a bitch I have ever met, Hendry,” said Bruce coldly. “When I get you back to

Elisabethville I’m going to beat you to pulp before I hand you over to the military authority for murder.”

“My, my,” laughed Hendry. “Big talker, hey? Curry, big, big talker.”

“Don’t make me kill you now -

don’t do that, please. I still need you.”

“What’s with you and that

Frenchy, hey? You love it or something? You love it, or you just fancy a bit of that fat little arse? It can’t be her titties - she ain’t got much there, not even a handful each side.” Bruce started for him, then changed his mind and swung round to stare out of the window.

His voice was strangled when he spoke.

“I’ll make a bargain with you, Hendry. Until we get out of this you keep off my back and I’ll keep off yours. When we reach Msapa

Junction the truce is off. You can do and say whatever you like and, if I don’t kill you for it, I’ll try my level best to see you hanged for murder.”

“I’m making no bargain with you or nobody, Curry. I play along until it suits me, and I won’t give you no warning when it doesn’t suit me to play along any more. And let me tell you now, Bucko! I don’t need you and I don’t need nobody. Not Haig or you, with your fancy too-good-to-kiss my-arse talk; when the time comes I’m

going to trim you down to size. - Remember that, Curry. And don’t say I

just didn’t warn you.” Hendry was leaning forward, hands on his knees, body braced and his whole face twisting and contotted with the vehemence of his speech.

“Let’s make it now, Hendry.” Bruce wheeled away from the window, crouching slightly, his hands stiffening into the flat hard blades of the judo fighter.

Sergeant Major Ruffararo stood up from the Opposite bunk with surprising grace and speed for such a big man.

He interposed his great body.

“You wanted to tell us something, boss?” Bruce straightened out of his crouch, his hands Slowly relaxing. Irritably he brushed at the damp lock of dark hair that had fallen on to his forehead, as if to brush Wally Hendry out of his mind with the same movement.

“Yes,” controlling his voice with an effort, “I wanted to discuss our next move.” He fished the cigarette pack from his top pocket and lit one, sucking the smoke down deep.

Then he perched on the lid of the washbasin and studied the ash on the tip of the cigarette. When he spoke again his voice was normal.

“There is no hope of repairing this locomotive, so we have to find

alternative transport out of here. Either we can walk two hundred miles back to Msapa junction with our friends the Baluba ready to dispute our passage, or we can ride back in General Moses’s trucks!” He paused to let it sink in.

“You going to pinch those trucks off him?” asked Ruffy.

“That’s going to take some doing, boss.”

“No, Ruffy, I don’t think we have any chance of getting them out from under his nose. What we will have to do is attack the town and wipe him out.”

“You’re bloody crazy,” exclaimed Wally. “You’re raving bloody mad.” Bruce ignored him. (I estimate that Moses has about sixty men. With Kanaki and nine men on the bridge, Haig and de Surrier and six others gone, we have thirty-four men left.

Correct, Sergeant Major?”

“That’s right, boss.”

“Very well,” Bruce

nodded. “We’ll have to leave at least ten men here to man that ambush in case Moses sends a patrol after us, or in case of an attack by the

Baluba. It’s not enough, I know, but we will just have to risk it.”

“Most of these civilians got arms with them, shotguns and sports rifles,” said Ruffy.

“Yes,” agreed Bruce. “They should be able to look after themselves. So that leaves twenty-four men to carry out the attack, something like three to one.”

“Those shufta will be so full of liquor, half of them won’t be able to stand up.”

“That’s what I am banking on:

drunkenness and surprise.

We’ll hit them and try and finish it before they know what’s happened. I don’t think they will have realized how badly we were hit; they probably expect us to be a hundred miles away by now.”

“When do

you want to leave, boss?”

“We are about twelve miles from Port Reprieve - say, six hours” march in the dark. I want to attack in the early hours of tomorrow morning, but I’d like to be in position around midnight. We’ll leave here at six o’clock, just before dark.”

“I’d better go and start sorting the boys out.”

“Okay, Ruffy. Issue an extra hundred rounds to each man and ten grenades. I’ll want four extra haversacks of grenades also.” Bruce turned to Hendry and looked at him for the first time. “Go with the sergeant major, Hendry, and give him a hand.”

“Jesus, this is going to be a ball,” grinned Wally in anticipation. “With any luck I’ll get me a sackful of ears.” He disappeared down the corridor behind Ruffy, and Bruce lay back on the seat and took off his helmet. He closed his eyes and once again he saw

Boussier and his wife standing together in the truck as it rolled back down the hill, he saw the huddle of frightened women, and Andre standing bareheaded staring back at him with big brown gentle eyes.

He groaned softly. “Why is it always the good ones, the harmless, the weak?” A tap on the door roused him and he sat up quickly.

“Yes?”

“Hello, Bruce.” Shermaine came in with a multipledecked metal canteen in one hand and two mugs in the other. “It’s lunchtime.”

“Already!” Bruce checked his watch. “Good Lord, it’s after one.”

“Are you hungry!”

“Breakfast was a century ago.” “Good,” she said, lowered the collapsible table and began . ng the food.

“Smells good.” sir! “I am a chef Cordon Bleu. My bully beef goulash is demanded by the crowned heads of Europe.” They ate in silence for both of them were hungry. Once they looked at each other and smiled but returned to the food.

“That was good,” sighed Bruce at last.

“Coffee, Bruce?”

“Please.” As she poured it she asked, “So, what happens now?”

“Do you mean what happens now we are alone?”

“You are forward, monsieur. I meant how do we get out of here?”

“I am adopting your suggestion: borrowing General Moses’s transportation.”

“You make jokes, Bruce!”

“No” he said, and explained briefly.

“It will be very dangerous, will it not? You may be hurt?”

“Only the good die young.”

“That is why I worry. Please do not get hurt - I

am starting to think I would not like that.” Her face was very serious and pale. Bruce crossed quickly and stooped over her, lifting her to her feet.

“Shermaine, I-“

“No, Bruce. Don’t talk. Don’t say anything.” Her eyes were closed with thick black lashes interlaced, her chin lifted exposing the long smooth swell of her neck. He touched it with his lips and she made a soft noise in her throat so he could feel the skin vibrate. Her body flattened against his and her fingers closed in the hair at the back of his head.

“Oh, Bruce. My Bruce, please do not get hurt. Do not let them hurt you.” Wanting now, urgently, his mouth hunted upwards and hers came to meet it, willing prey. Her lips were pink and not greased with make-up, they parted to the pressure of his tongue, he felt the tip of her nose cool upon his cheek and his hand moved up her back and closed round the nape of her neck, slender neck with silky down behind her

ears.

“Oh, Bruce-” she said into his mouth. His other hand went down on to the proud, round, deeply divided thrust of her buttocks, he pulled her lower body against his and she gasped as she felt him - the arrogant maleness through cloth.

“No,” she gasped and tried to pull away, but he held her until she

relaxed against him once more. She shook her head, “Non, non,” but her mouth was open still and her tongue fluttered against his. Down came his hand from her neck and twitched her shirt tails loose from under her belt, then up again along her back, touching the deep lateral depression of her spine so that she shuddered, clinging to him.

Stroking velvet skin stretched tight over rubber-hard flesh, finding the outline of her shoulder blades, tracing them upwards then back to the armpits, silky-haired armpits that maddened him with excitement, quickly past them to her breasts, small breasts with soft tips hardening to his touch.

Now she struggled in earnest, her fists beating on his shoulders and her mouth breaking from his, and he stopped himself, dropped the hand away to encircle her waist.

Holding her loosely within his arms.

“That was not good, Bruce. You get naughty very quick.” Her cheeks flamed with colour and her blue eyes had darkened to royal, her lips still wet from his, and her voice was unsteady, as unsteady as his when he answered.

“I’m sorry, Shermaine. I don’t know what happened then, I did not mean to frighten you.”

“You are very strong, Bruce. But you do not frighten me, only a little bit. Your eyes frighten me when they look at me but do not see.” You really made a hash of that one, he rebuked himself.

Bruce Curry, the gentle sophisticated lover. Bruce Curry, the heavyweight, catch-as-catch-can, two-fisted rape artist.

He felt shaky, his legs wobbly, and there was something . usly wrong with his breathing.

seno

“You do not wear a brassieres” he said without thinking, and immediately regretted it, but she chuckled, soft and husky.

“Do you think I need to, Bruce?”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” he protested quickly, remembering the saucy tilt of that small breast. He was silent then, marshalling his words, trying to control his breathing, fighting down the madness of desire.

She studied his eyes. “You can see again now - perhaps I will let you kiss me.”

“Please,” he said and she came back to him.

Gently now, Bruce me boy.

The door of the compartment flew back with a crash and they jumped apart. Wally Hendry stood on the threshold.

“Well, well, well.” His shrewd little eyes took it all in.

That’s nice!” Shermaine was hurriedly tucking in her shirt tail and trying to smooth her hair at the same time.

Wally grinned. “Nothing like it after a meal, I always say.

Gets the digestion going.”

“What do you want?” snapped Bruce.

“There’s no doubt what you want, said Wally. “Looks like you’re getting it too.” He let his eyes travel up from Shermaine’s waist, slowly over her body to her face.

Bruce stepped out into the corridor, pushing Hendry back and slammed the door.

“What do you want?” he repeated.

“Ruffy wants you to check his arrangements, but I’ll tell him you’re busy. We can put the attack off until tomorrow night if you like.” Bruce scowled at him. “Tell him I’ll be with him in two minutes.” Wally leaned against the door. “Okay, I’ll tell him.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing, just nothing,” grinned Wally.

“Well, bugger off then,” snarled Bruce.

“Okay, Okay, don’t get your knickers in a knot, Bucko.” He sauntered off down the corridor.

Shermaine was standing where Bruce had left her, but with her eyes bright with tears of anger.

“He is a pig, that one. A filthy, filthy pig.”

“He’s not worth worrying about.” Bruce tried to take her in his arms again, but she shrugged him off.

“I hate him. He makes everything seem so cheap, so dirty.”

“Nothing between you and I could be cheap and dirty,” said Bruce, and instantly her fury abated.

“I know, my Bruce. But he can make it seem that way.” They kissed gently.

“I must go. They want me.” For a second she clung to him.

“Be careful. Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I promise,” said

Bruce and she let him go.

They left before dark, but the clouds had come up during the afternoon and now they hung low over the forest, trapping the heat beneath them.

Bruce led, with Ruffy in the middle of the line and Hendry in the rear.

By the time they reached the level crossing the night was on them and it had started to rain, soft fat drops weeping like a woman exhausted with grief, warm rain in the darkness. And the darkness was complete. Once Bruce touched the top of his nose with his open palm, but he could not see his hand.

He used a staff to keep contact with the steel rail that ran beside him, tapping along it like a blind man, and at each step the

gravel of the embankment crunched beneath his feet. The hand of the man behind him was on his shoulder, and he could sense the presence of the others that followed him like the body of a serpent, could hear the crunch of their steps and the muted squeak and rattle of their equipment. A man’s voice was raised in protest and immediately quenched by Ruffy’s deep rumble.

They crossed the road and the gradient changed beneath Bruce’s feet so that he had to lean forward against it. They were starting up the Lufira hills.

I will rest them at the top, he thought, and from there we will be able to see the lights of the town.

The rain stopped abruptly, and the quietness after it was surprising. Now he could distinctly hear the breathing of the man behind him above the small sounds of their advance, and in the forest nearby a tree frog clinked as though steel pellets were being dropped into a crystal glass.

It was a sound of great purity and beauty.

All Bruce’s senses were enhanced to compensate for his lack of sight; his hearing; his sense of smell, so that he could catch the oversweet perfume of a jungle-flower and the heaviness of decaying wet vegetation; his sense of touch, so that he could feel the raindrops on his face and the texture of his clothing against his body; then the other animal sense of danger told him with sickening, stomach-tripping certainty that there was something ahead of him in the darkness.

He stopped, and the man following him bumped into him throwing him off balance. All along the line there was a ripple of confusion and then silence. They all waited.

Bruce strained his hearing, half crouched with his rifle held ready. There was something there, he could almost feel it.

Please God, let them not have a machine-gun set up here, he thought; they could cut us into a shambles.

He turned cautiously and felt for the head of the man behind him, found it and drew it towards him until his mouth was an inch from the ear.

“Lie down very quietly. Tell the one behind you that he may pass it back.” Bruce waited poised, listening and trying to see ahead into the utter blackness. He felt a gentle tap on his ankle from the gendarme at his feet. They were all down.

“All right, let’s go take a look.” Bruce detached one of the grenades from his webbing belt. He drew the pin and dropped it into the breast pocket of his jacket. Then feeling for the crossties of the rails with each foot he started forward. Ten paces and he stopped again. Then he heard it, the tiny click of two pebbles just ahead of him. His throat closed so he could not breathe and his stomach was very heavy.

I’m right on top of them. My God, if they open up now, inch by inch he drew back the hand that held the grenade.

I’ll have to lob short and get down fast. Five-second fuse too long, they’ll hear it and start shooting.

His hand was right back, he bent his legs and sank slowly on to his knees.

Here we go, he thought, and at that instant sheet lightning fluttered across the sky and Bruce could see. The hills were outlined black below the pale grey belly of the clouds, and the steel rails

glinted in the sudden light.

The forest was dark and high at each hand, and - a leopard, a big golden and black leopard, stood facing Bruce. In that brief second they stared at each other and then the night closed down again.

The leopard coughed explosively in the darkness, and Bruce tried desperately to bring his rifle up, but it was in his left hand and his

other arm was held back ready to throw.

This time for sure, he thought, this time they lower the boom on you.

It was with a feeling of disbelief that he heard the leopard crash sideways into the undergrowth, and the scrambling rush of its run

dwindle into the bush.

He subsided on to his backside, with the primed grenade in his hand, the hysterical laughter of relief coming up into his throat.

“You okay, boss?” Ruffy’s voice lifted anxiously.

“It was a leopard,” answered Bruce, and was surprised at the squeakiness of his own voice.

There was a buzz of voices from the gendarmes and a rattle and clatter as they started to stand up. Someone laughed.

“That’s enough noise,” snapped Bruce and climbed to his feet; he found the pin in his pocket and fitted it back into the grenade. He groped his way back, picked up the staff from where he had dropped it, and took his position at the head of the column again.

“Let’s go,” he said.

His mouth was dry, his breathing too quick and he could feel the heat beneath the skin of his cheeks from the shock of the leopard.

I truly squirted myself full of adrenalin that time, Bruce grinned precariously in the dark, I’m as windy as hell. And before tonight is over I shall find fear again.

They moved on up the incline of the hills, a serpent of twenty-six men, and the tension was in all of them. Bruce could hear it in the footsteps behind him, feel it in the grip of the hand upon his shoulder and catch it in the occasional whiffs of body smell that came forward to him, the smell of nervous sweat like acid on metal.

Ahead of them the clouds that had crouched low upon the hills lifted slowly, and Bruce could see the silhouette of the crests. It was no longer utterly dark for there was a glow on the belly of the clouds now. A faint orange glow of reflected light that grew in

strength, then faded and grew again. It puzzled Bruce for a while, and thinking about it gave his nerves a chance to settle. He plodded steadily on watching the fluctuations of the light. The ground tilted more sharply upwards beneath his feet and he leaned forward against it, slogging up the last half mile to the pass between the peaks, and at last came out on the top.

“Good God, Bruce spoke aloud, for from here he could see the reason for that glow on the clouds. They were burning Port Reprieve.

The flames were well established in the buildings along the wharf, and as Bruce watched one of the roofs collapsed slowly in upon itself in a storm of sparks leaving the walls naked and erect, the wooden sills of the windows burning fiercely. The railway buildings were also on fire, and there was fire in the residential area beyond the Union

Mini&e offices and the hotel. Quickly Bruce looked towards St. Augustine’s. It was dark, no flames there, no light even, and he felt a small lift of relief.

“Perhaps they have overlooked it, perhaps they’re too busy looting,” and as he looked back at Port Reprieve, his mouth hardened.

“The senseless wanton bastards!” His anger started as he watched the meaningless destruction of the town.

“What can they possibly hope to gain by this?” There were new fires nearer the hotel. Bruce turned to the man behind him.

“We will rest here, but there will be no smoking and no talking.”

He heard the order passed back along the line and the careful sounds of equipment being lowered and men settling gratefully down upon the gravel embankment. Bruce unslung the case that contained his binoculars. He focused them on the burning town.

It was bright with the light of fires and through the glasses he could almost discern the features of the men in the streets. They moved in packs, heavily armed and restless. Many carried bottles and already the gait of some of them was unsteady. Bruce tried to estimate their numbers but it was impossible, men kept disappearing into buildings and reappearing, groups met and mingled and dispersed.

He dropped his glasses on to his chest to rest his eyes, and heard movement beside him in the dark. He glanced sideways. It was Ruffy, his bulk exaggerated by the load he carried; his rifle across one shoulder, on the other a full case of ammunition, and round his neck half a dozen haversacks full of grenades.

“Looks like they’re having fun, hey, boss?”

“Fifth of November,” agreed Bruce. “Aren’t you going to take a breather?”

“Why not?” Ruffy set down the ammunition case and lowered his great backside on to it.

“Can you see any of those folks we left behind?” he asked.

Bruce lifted the glasses again and searched the area beyond the station buildings. It was darker there but he made out the square shape of the truck standing among the moving shadows.

“The truck’s still there,” he murmured,” but I can’t see At that moment the thatched roof of one of the houses exploded upwards in a column of flame, lighting the railway yard, and the truck stood out sharply.

“Yes,” said Bruce, “I can see them now.” They were littered untidily across the yard, still lying where they had died.

Small and fragile, unwanted as broken toys.

“Dead?” asked Ruffy.

“Dead,” confirmed Bruce.

“The women?”

“It’s hard to tell.” Bruce strained his eyes. “I

don’t think SO.

“No.” Ruffy’s voice was soft and very deep. “They wouldn’t waste the women. I’d guess they’ve got them up at the hotel, taking it in turn to give them the business. Four women only - they won’t last till morning. Those bastards down there could shag an elephant to death.” He spat thoughtfully into the gravel at his feet. “What you going to do, boss?” Bruce did not answer for a minute; he swung the glasses slowly back across the town. The field gun was still standing where he had last seen it, its barrel pointing accusingly up towards him. The transports were parked before the Union Mini6re offices; he could see the brilliant yellow and red paint and the Shell sign on the tanker. I

hope it’s full, Bruce thought, we’ll need plenty of gasoline to get us

back to Elisabethville.

“Ruffy, you’d better tell your boys to keep their bullets away from that tanker, otherwise it’ll be a long walk home.”

“I’ll tell them,” grunted Ruffy. “But you know these mad Arabs - once they start shooting they don’t stop till they’re out of bullets, and they not too fussy where those bullets go. “We’ll split into two groups when we get

to the bottom of the hill. You and I will take our lot through the edge of the swamp and cross to the far side of the town. Tell

Lieutenant Hendry to come here.” Bruce waited until Wally came forward to join them, and when the three of them crouched together he went on.

“Hendry, I want you to spread your men out at the top of the main street - there in the darkness on this side of the station. Ruffy and

I are going to cross the edge of the swamp to the causeway and lay out on the far side. For God’s sake keep your boys quiet until Ruffy and I

hit them - all we need is for your lot to start pooping off before we are ready and we won’t need those lorries, we’ll need coffins for the rest of out journey. Do you understand me?”

“Okay, okay, I know what

I’m doing,” muttered Wally.

I hope So,” said Bruce, and then went on. “We’ll hit them at four

o’clock tomorrow morning, just before first light. Ruffy and I will go into the town and bomb the hotel - that’s where most of them will be sleeping. The grenades should force the survivors into the street and as soon as that happens you can open up - but not before. Wait until you get them in the open. Is that clear?”

“Jesus,” growled Hendry.

“Do you think I’m a bloody fool, do you think I can’t understand

English?”

“The crossfire from the two groups should wipe most of them out.” Bruce ignored Wally’s outburst. “But we mustn’t give the remainder a chance to organize. Hit them hard and as soon as they take cover again you must follow them in close with them and finish them off. If we can’t get it over in five to ten minutes then we are going to be in trouble.

They outnumber us three to one, so we have to exploit the element of surprise to the full.”

“Exploit the element of surprise to the full!” mimicked Wally. “What for all the fancy talk - why not just

murder the bastards?” Bruce grinned lightly in the dark. “All right, murder the bastards,” he agreed. “But do it as quickly as bloody possible.” He stood up and inclined the luminous dial of his wristwatch to catch the light. “It’s half past ten now - we’ll move down on them. Come with me, Hendry, and we’ll sort them into two groups.” Bruce and Wally moved back along the line and talked to each man in turn.

“You will go with Lieutenant Hendry.”

“You come with me.” Making sure that the two English-speaking corporals were with Wally, they took

ten minutes to divide them into two units and to redistribute the haversacks of grenades.

Then they moved on down the slope, still in Indian file.

“This is where we leave you, Hendry,” whispered Bruce.

“Don’t go jumping the gun - wait until you hear my grenades.”

“Yeah, okay - I know all about it.” “Good luck,” said Bruce.

“Your bum in a barrel, Captain Curry,” rejoined Wally and moved away.

“Come on, Ruffy.” Bruce led his men off the embankment down into the swamp. Almost immediately the mud and slime was knee-deep and as they worked their way out to the right it rose to their waists and then to their armpits, sucking and gurgling sullenly as they stirred it with their passage, belching little evil-smelling gusts of swamp gas.

The mosquitoes closed round Bruce’s face in a cloud so dense that he breathed them into his mouth and had to blink them out of his eyes.

Sweat dribbled down from under his helmet and clung heavily in his eyebrows and the matted stems of the papyrus grass dragged at his feet.

Their progress was tortuously slow and for fifteen minutes at a time

Bruce lost sight of the lights of the village through the wall of papyrus; he steered by the glow of the fires and the occasional column

of sparks.

It was an hour before they had half completed their circuit of

Port Reprieve. Bruce stopped to rest, still waistdeep in swamp ooze and with his arms aching numb from holding his rifle above his head.

“I could use a smoke now, boss,” grunted Ruffy.

Me too,” answered Bruce, and he wiped his face on the sleeve of his jacket. The mosquito bites on his forehead and round his eyes burnt like fire.

What a way to make a living,” he whispered.

“You go on living and you’ll be one of the lucky ones,” answered

Ruffy. “My guess is there’ll be some dying before tomorrow.” But the fear of death was submerged by physical discomfort. Bruce had almost forgotten that they were going into battle; right now he was more worried that the leeches which had worked their way through the openings in his anklets and were busily boring into his lower legs

might find their way up to his crotch. There was a lot to be said in favour of a zip fly, he decided.

“Let’s get out of this,” he whispered. “Come on, Ruffy.

Tell your boys to keep it quiet.” He worked in closer to the shore and the level fell to their knees once more. Progress was more noisy now as their legs broke the surface with each step and the papyrus rustled and brushed against them.

It was almost two o “clock when they reached the causeway. Bruce left his men crouched in the papyrus while he made a stealthy reconnaissance along the side of the concrete bridge, keeping in its shadow, moving doubled up until he came to dry land on the edge of the village. There were no sentries posted and except for the crackle of

the flames the town was quiet, sunk into a drunken stupor, satiated.

Bruce went back to call his men up.

He spread them in pairs along the outskirts of the village.

He had learned very early in this campaign not to let his men act singly; nothing drains an African of courage more than to be on his own, especially in the night when the ghosts are on the walk-about.

To each couple he gave minute instructions.

“When you hear the grenades you shoot at anybody in the streets or at the windows. When the street is empty move in close beside that building there. Use your own grenades on every house and watch out for Lieutenant Hendry’s men coming through from the other side. Do you understand?”

“It is understood.”

“Shoot carefully. Aim each shot - not like you did at the road bridge, and in the name of God do not hit the gasoline tanker. We need that to get us home.” Now it was three o’clock, Bruce saw by the luminous figures on his wristwatch.

Eight hours since they had left the train, and twenty-two hours since

Bruce had last slept.

But he was not tired, although his body ached and there was that gritty feeling under his eyelids, yet his mind was clear and bright as a flame.

He lay beside Ruffy under a low bush on the outskirts of Port

Reprieve and the night wind drifted the smoke from the burning town down upon them, and Bruce was not tired. For I am going to another rendezvous with fear.

Fear is a woman, he thought, with all the myriad faces and voices of a woman. Because she is a woman and because I am a man I must keep going back to her. Only this time the appointment is one that I cannot avoid, this time I am not deliberately seeking her out.

I know she is evil, I know that after I have possessed her I will feel sick and shaken. I will say, “That was the last time, never again.” But just as certainly I know I will go back to her again, hating her, dreading her, but also needing her.

I have gone to find her on a mountain - on Dutoits Kloof Frontal, on Turret Towers, on the Wailing Wall, and the Devil’s Tooth.

And she was there, dressed in a flowing robe of rock, a robe that fell sheer two thousand feet to the scree slope below. And she shrieked with the voice of the wind along the exposed face. Then her voice was soft, tinkling like Aft

*ad cooling glass in the Berg ice underfoot, whispering like nylon rope running free, grating as the rotten rock moved in my hand.

I have followed her into the Jessie bush on the banks of the Sabi and the Luangwa, and she was there, waiting, wounded, in a robe of buffalo hide with the blood dripping from her mouth. And her smell was the sour-acid smell of my own sweat, and her taste was like rotten tomatoes in the back of my throat.

I have looked for her beyond the reef in the deep water with the demand valve of a scuba repeating my breathing with metallic hoarseness. And she was there with rows of white teeth in the semicircle of her mouth, a tall fin on her back, dressed this time in shagreen, and her touch was cold as the ocean, and her taste was salt and the taint of dying things.

I have looked for her on the highway with my foot pressed to the floorboards and she was there with her cold arm draped round my shoulders, her voice the whine of rubber on tarmac and the throaty hum of the motor.

With Colin Butler at the helm (a man who treated fear not as a lover, but with tolerant contempt as though she were his little sister)

I went to find her in a small boat. She was dressed in green with plumes of spray and she wore a necklace of sharp black rock. And her voice was the roar of water breaking on water.

We met in darkness at the road bridge and her eyes glinted like bayonets. But that was an enforced meeting not of my choosing, as tonight will be.

I hate her, he thought, but she is a woman and I am a man.

Bruce lifted his arm and turned his wrist to catch the light of the fires.

“Fifteen minutes to four, Ruffy. Let’s go and take a look.”

“That’s a good idea, boss.” Ruffy grinned with a show of white teeth in the darkness.

Are you afraid, Ruffy?” he asked suddenly, wanting to know, for his own heart beat like a war drum and there was no saliva in his mouth.

“Boss, some questions you don’t ask a man.” Ruffy rose slowly into a crouch. “Let’s go take a look around.” So they moved quickly together into the town, along the street, hugging the hedges and the buildings, trying to keep in shadow, their eyes moving everywhere, breathing quick and shallow, nerves screwed up tight until they reached the hotel.

There were no lights in the windows and it seemed deserted until

Bruce made out the untidy mass of humanity strewn in sleep upon the front verandah.

“How many there, Ruffy?”

“Dunno - perhaps ten, fifteen.” Ruffy breathed an answer.

“Rest of them will be inside.”

“Where are the women - be careful of them.”

“They’re dead long ago, you can believe me.”

“All right then, let’s get round the back.” Bruce took a deep breath and then moved quickly across the twenty yards of open firelit street to the corner of the hotel. He stopped in the shadow and felt Ruffy close beside him.

“I want to take a look into the main lounge, my guess is that most of them will be in there,” he whispered.

“There’s only four bedrooms,” agreed Ruffy. “Say the officers upstairs and the rest in the lounge.” Now Bruce moved quickly round the corner and stumbled over something soft. He felt it move against his foot.

“Ruffy!” he whispered urgently as he teetered off balance.

He had trodden on a man, a man sleeping in the dust beside the wall. He could see the firelight on his bare torso and the glint of the bottle clutched in one outflung hand. The man sat up, muttering, and then began to cough, hacking painfully, swearing as he wiped his mouth with his free hand. Bruce regained his balance and swung his rifle up to use the bayonet, but Ruffy was quicker. He put one foot on the man’s chest and trod him flat on to his back once more, then standing over him he used his bayoneted rifle the way a gardener uses a spade to lift potatoes, leaning his weight on it suddenly and the blade

vanished into the man’s throat.

The body stiffened convulsively, legs thrust out straight and arms rigid, there was a puffing of breath from the severed windpipe and then the slow melting relaxation of death. Still with his foot on the chest, Ruffy withdrew the” bayonet and stepped over the corpse.

That was very close, thought Bruce, stifling the qualm of horror

he felt at the execution. The man’s eyes were fixed open in almost comic surprise, the bottle still in his hand, his chest bare, the front of his trousers unbuttoned and stiff with dried blood - not his blood, guessed Bruce angrily.

They moved on past the kitchens. Bruce looked in and saw that they were empty with the white enamel tiles reflecting the vague light

and piles of used plates and pots cluttering the tables and the sink.

Then they reached the bar-room and there was a hurricane lamp on the counter diffusing a yellow glow; the stench of liquor poured out through the half-open window, the shelves were bare of bottles and men were asleep upon the counter, men lay curled together upon the floor like a pack of dogs, broken glass and rifles and shattered furniture littered about them.

Someone had vomited out of the window leaving a yellow streak down the whitewashed wall.

“Stand here,” breathed Bruce into Ruffy’s ear. “I will go round to the front where I can throw on to the verandah and also into the lounge. Wait until you hear my first grenade blow.” Ruffy nodded and leaned his rifle against the wall; he took a grenade in each fist and

pulled the pins.

Bruce slipped quickly round the corner and along the side wall. He reached the windows of the lounge. They were tightly closed and he peered in over the sill. A little of the light from the lamp in the bar-room came through the open doors and showed up the interior. Here again there were men covering the floor and piled upon the sofas along the far wall. Twenty of them at least, he estimated by the volume of

their snoring, and he grinned without humour.

My God, what a shambles it is going to be.

Then something at the foot of the stairs caught his eye and the grin on his face became fixed, baring his teeth and narrowing his eyes to slits. It was the mound of nude flesh formed by the bodies of the four women; they had been discarded once they had served their purpose, dragged to )the side to clear the floor for sleeping space, lying upon

“each other in a jumble of naked arms and legs and cascading hair.

No mercy now, thought Bruce with hatred replacing his fear as he looked at the women and saw by the attitudes in which they lay that there was no life left in them. No mercy now!

He slung his rifle over his left shoulder and filled his hand with grenades, pulled the pins and moved quickly to the corner so that he could look down the length of the covered verandah. He rolled both grenades down among the sleeping figures, hearing clearly the click of the priming ,and the metallic rattle against the concrete floor.

Quickly he ducked back to the lounge window, snatching two more grenades from his haversack and pulling the pins, he hurled them through the closed windows. The crash of breaking glass blended with the double thunder of the explosions on the verandah.

Someone shouted in the room, a cry of surprise and alarm, then the windows above Bruce blew outwards, showering him with broken glass and the noise half deafening him as he tossed two more grenades through the gaping hole of the window. They were screaming and groaning in the lounge. Ruffy’s grenades roared in the bar-room bursting through the double doors, then Bruce’s grenades snuffed out the sounds of life in the lounge with violent white flame and thunder. Bruce tossed in two more grenades and ran back to the corner of the verandah unslinging his rifle.

A man with his hands over his eyes and blood streaming through his fingers fell over the low verandah wall and crawled to his knees.

Bruce shot him from so close that the shaft of gun flame joined the muzzle of his rifle and the man’s chest, punching him over backwards, throwing him spreadeagled on to the earth.

He looked beyond and saw two more in the road, but before he could raise his rifle the fire from his own gendarmes found them, knocking them down amid spurts of dust.

Bruce hurdled the verandah wall. He shouted, a sound without form

or meaning. Exulting, unafraid, eager to get into the building, to get amongst them. He stumbled over the dead men on the verandah. A burst of gunfire from down the street rushed past him, so close he could feel the wind on his face. Fire from his own men.

“You stupid bastards” Shouting without anger, without fear, with only the need to shout, he burst into the lounge through the main doors. It was half dark but he could see through the darkness and the haze of plaster dust.

A man on the stairs, the bloom of gunfire and the sting of the bullet across Bruce’s thigh, fire in return, without aiming from the

hip, miss and the man gone up and round the head of the stairs, yelling as he ran.

A grenade in Bruce’s right hand, throw it high, watch it hit the wall and bounce sideways round the angle of the stairs. The explosion shocking in the confined space and the flash of it lighting the building and outlining the body of the man as it blew him back into the lounge, lifting him clear of the banisters, shredded and broken by the

blast, falling heavily into the room below.

Up the stairs three at a time and into the bedroom passage, another man naked and bewildered staggering through a doorway still drunk or half asleep, chop him down with a single shot in the stomach, jump over him and throw a grenade through the glass skylight of the

second bedroom, another through the third and kick open the door of the last room in the bellow and flash of the explosions.

A man was waiting for Bruce across the room with a pistol in his hand, and both of them fired simultaneously, the clang of the bullet glancing off the steel of Bruce’s helmet, jerking his head back savagely, throwing him sideways against the wall, but he fired again, rapid fire, hitting with every bullet, so that the man seemed to dance, a grotesque twitching jig, pinned against the far wall by the bullets.

On his knees now Bruce was stunned, ears singing like a million mad mosquitoes, hands clumsy and slow on the reload, back on his feet, legs rubbery but the loaded rifle in his hands making a man of him.

Out into the passage, another one right on top of him, a vast dark shape in the darkness - kill him! kill him!

Don’t shoot, boss!” Ruffy, thank God, Ruffy.

“Are there any more?”

“All finished, boss - you cleaned them out good.” “How many?” Bruce shouted above the singing in his ears.

“Forty or so. Jesus, what a mess! There’s blood all over the place. Those grenades-“

“There must be more.”

“Yes, but not in here, boss. Let’s go and give the boys outside a hand.” They ran back down the passage, down the stairs, and the floor of the lounge was sodden and sticky, dead men everywhere; it smelt like an abattoir - blood and ripped bowels. One still on his hands and knees, creepy-crawling towards the door. Ruffy shot him twice, flattening him.

“Not the front door, boss. Our boys will get you for sure.

Go out the window.” Bruce dived through the window head first, rolled over behind the cover of the verandah wall and came to his knees in one movement. He felt strong and invulnerable.

Ruffy was beside him.

“Here come our boys,” said Ruffy, and Bruce could see them coming down the street, running forward in short bursts, stopping to fire, to

throw a grenade, then coming again.

“And there are Lieutenant Hendry’s lot.” From the opposite direction but with the same dodging, checking run, Bruce could see

Wally with them. He was holding his rifle across his hip when he fired, his whole body shaking with the juddering of the gun.

Like a bird rising in front of the beaters one of the shufta broke from the cover of the grocery store and ran into the street unarmed, his head down and his arms pumping in time with his legs. Bruce was

close enough to see the panic in his face. He seemed to be moving in slow motion, and the flames lit him harshly, throwing a distorted shadow in front of him. When the bullets hit him he stayed on his feet, staggering in a circle, thrashing at the air with his hands as though he were beating off a swarm of bees, the bullets slapping loudly against his body and lifting little puffs of dust from his clothing.

Beside Bruce, Ruffy aimed carefully and shot him in the head, ending it.

“There must be more, protested Bruce. “Where are they hiding?”

“in the offices, I’d say.” And Bruce turned his attention quickly to the block of Union Mini&e offices. The windows were in darkness and as he stared he thought he saw movement. He glanced quickly back at

Wally’s men and saw that four of them had bunched up close behind Wally as they ran.

“Hendry, watch out!” he shouted with all his strength.

“On your right, from the offices!” But it was too late, gunfire sparkled in the dark windows and the little group of running men disintegrated.

Bruce and Ruffy fired together, raking the windows, emptying their automatic rifles into them. As he reloaded Bruce glanced back at where

Wally’s men had been hit.

With disbelief he saw that Wally was the only one still on his feet; crossing the road, sprinting through an area of bullet-churned earth towards them, he reached the verandah and fell over the low wall.

“Are you wounded?” Bruce asked.

“Not a touch - those bastards couldn’t shoot their way out of a

French letter, Wally shouted defiantly, and his voice carried clearly in the sudden hush. He snatched the off the bottom of his rifle, threw

it aside empty magazine and clipped on a fresh one. “Move over,” he growled, “let me get a crack at those bastards.” He lifted his rifle and rested the stock on top of the wall, knelt behind it, cuddled the butt into his shoulder and began firing short bursts into the windows of the office block.

“This is what I was afraid of.” Bruce lifted his voice above the clamour of the guns. “Now we’ve got a pocket of resistance right in the centre of the town. There must be fifteen or twenty of them in there - it might take us days to winkle them out.” He cast a longing look at the canvascovered trucks lined up outside the station yard.

“They can cover the lorries from here, and as soon as they guess what we’re after, as soon as we try and move them, they’ll knock out that tanker and destroy the trucks.” The firelight flickered on the shiny yellow and red paint of the tanker. It looked so big and vulnerable standing there in the open. It needed just one bullet out of the many

hundred that had already been fired to end its charmed existence.

We’ve got to rush them now, he decided. Beyond the office block the remains of Wally’s group had taken cover and were keeping up a heated fire. Bruce’s group straggled up to the hotel and found positions at the windows.

“Ruffy.” Bruce caught him by the shoulder. “We’ll take four men with us and go round the back of the offices. From that building there we’ve got only twenty yards or so of open ground to cover. Once we get up against the wall they won’t be able to touch us and we can toss grenades in amongst them.”

“That twenty yards looks like twenty miles from here,” rumbled Ruffy, but picked up his sack of grenades and crawled back from the verandah wall.

“Go and pick four men to come with us,” ordered Bruce.

“Okay, boss. We’ll wait for you in the kitchen.”

“Hendry. Listen to me.”

“Yeah. What is it?”

“When I reach that corner over there I’ll give you a wave. We’ll be ready to go then. I want you to give us all the cover you can - keep their heads down.”

“Okay,” agreed Wally and fired another short burst.

“Try not to hit us when we close in.” Wally turned to look at

Bruce and he grinned wickedly.

“Mistakes happen, you know. I can’t promise anything.

You’d look real grand in my sights.”

“Don’t joke,” said Bruce.

“Who’s joking?” grinned Wally and Bruce left him. He found Ruffy and four gendarmes waiting in the kitchen.

“Come on,” he said and led them out across the kitchen yard, down the sanitary lane with the steel doors lor the buckets behind the outhouses and the smell of them thick and fetid, round the corner and across the road to the buildings beyond the office i lock. “They stopped then and crowded together, as though to draw courage and comfort from each other. Bruce measured the distance with his eye.

“It’s not far,” he announced.

“Depends on how you look at it,” grunted Ruffy.

“There are only two windows opening out on to this side.”

“Two’s enough - how many do you want?”

“Remember, Ruffy, you can only die once.”

“Once is enough,” said Ruffy. “Let’s cut out the talking, boss.

Too much talk gets you in the guts.” Bruce moved across to the corner of the building out of the shadows. He waved towards the hotel and imagined that he saw an acknowledgement from the end of the verandah.

“All together,” he said, sucked in a deep breath, held it a second and then launched himself into the open. He felt small now, no longer brave and invulnerable, and his legs moved so slowly that he seemed to be standing still. The black windows gaped at him.

Now, he thought, now you die.

Where, he thought, not in the stomach, please God, not in the stomach.

And his legs moved stiffly under him, carrying him half way across.

Only ten more paces, he thought, one more river, just one more river to Jordan. But not in the stomach, please God, not in my stomach. And his flesh cringed in anticipation, his stomach drawn in hard as he ran.

Suddenly the black windows were brightly lit, bright white oblongs in the dark buildings, and the glass sprayed out of them like untidy spittle from an old man’s mouth.

Then they were dark again, dark with smoke billowing from them and the memory of the explosion echoing in his ears.

“A grenade!” Bruce was bewildered. “Someone let off a grenade in there!” He reached the back door without stopping and it burst open before his rush. He was into the room, shooting, coughing in the fumes, firing wildly at the small movements of dying men..

In the half darkness something long and white lay against the far wall. A body, a white man’s naked body. He crossed to it and looked down.

“Andre,” he said, “it’s Andre - he threw the grenade.” And he knelt beside him.

Curled naked upon the concrete floor, Andre was alive but dying as the haemorrhage within him leaked his life away. His mind was alive and he heard the crump, crump of Bruce’s grenades, then the gunfire in the street, and the sound of running men. The shouts in the night and then the guns very close, they were in the room in which he lay, He opened his eyes. There were men at each of the windows, crouched below the sills, and the room was thick with cordite fumes and the clamour of the guns as they fired out into the night.

Andre was cold, the coldness was all through him. Even his hands drawn up against his chest were cold and heavy.

His stomach only was warm, warm and immensely bloated.

It was an effort to think, for his mind also was cold and the noise of the guns confused him.

He watched the men at the windows with a detached disinterest, and slowly his body lost its weight. He seemed to float clear of the floor and look down upon the room from the roof. His eyelids sagged and he dragged them up again, and struggled down towards his own body.

There was suddenly a rushing sound in the room and plaster sprayed from the wall above Andre’s head, filling the air with pale floating dust. One of the men at the windows fell backwards, his weapon ringing loudly on the floor as it dropped from his hands; he flopped over twice and lay still, face down within arm’s length of Andre.

Ponderously Andres mind analysed the sights his eyes were

recording. Someone was firing on the building from outside. The man beside him was dead and from his head wound the blood spread slowly across the floor towards him.

Andre closed his eyes again, he was very tired and very cold.

There was a lull in the sound of gunfire, one of those freak silences in the midst of battle. And in the lull Andre heard a voice far off, shouting. He could not hear the words but he recognized the voice and his eyelids flew open. There was an excitement in him, a new force, for it was Wally’s voice he had heard.

He moved slightly, clenching his hands and his brain started to sing.

Wally has come back for me - he has come to save me. He rolled his head slowly, painfully, and the blood gurgled in his stomach.

I must help him, I must not let him endanger himself these men are trying to kill him. I must stop them. I mustn’t let them kill Wally.

And then he saw the grenades hanging on the belt of the man that lay beside him. He fastened his eyes on the round polished metal bulbs and he began to pray silently.

“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” He moved again, straightening his body.

“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” His hand crept out into the pool of blood, and the sound of the guns filled his head so he could not hear himself pray.

Walking on its fingers, his hand crawled through the blood as slowly as a fly through a saucer of treacle.

“Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Pray for me now, and at the hour. Full of grace.” He touched the smooth, deeply segmented steel of the grenade.

“Us sinners - at the day, at the hour. This day - this day our daily bread.” He fumbled at the clip, fingers stiff and cold.

“Hallowed be thy - Hallowed be thy-” The clip clicked open and he held the grenade, curling his fingers round it.

“Hail, Mary, full of grace.” He drew the grenade to him and held it with both hands against his chest. He lifted it to his mouth and took the pin between his teeth.

“Pray for us sinners,” he whispered, and pulled the pin.

“Now and at the hour of our death.” And he tried to throw it. It

rolled from his hand and bumped across the floor. The firing handle flew off and rattled against the wall. General Moses turned from the window and saw it, - his lips opened and his spectacles glinted above the rose-pink cave of his mouth. The grenade lay at his feet. Then everything was gone in the flash and roar of the explosion.

Afterwards in the acrid swirl of fumes, in the patter of falling plaster, in the tinkle and crunch of broken glass, in the small scrabbling noises and the murmur and moan of dying men, Andre was still alive. The body of the man beside him had shielded his head and chest from the full force of the blast.

There was still enough life in him to recognize Bruce Curry’s face close to his, though he could not feel the hands that touched him.

“Andre!” said Bruce. “It’s Andre - he threw the grenade!”

“Tell him-” whispered Andre and stopped.

“Yes, Andre-?” said Bruce.

“I didn’t, this day and at the hour. I had to - not this time.”

He could feel it going out in him like a candle in a high wind and he

tried to cup his hands around it.

“What is it, Andre? What must I tell him?” Bruce’s voice, but so far away.

“Because of him - this time - not of it, I didn’t.” He stopped again and gathered all of what was left. His lips quivered as he tried

so hard to say it.

“Like a man!” he whispered and the candle went out.

“Yes,” said Bruce softly, holding him. “This time like a man.

He lowered Andre gently until his head touched the door again; then he stood upright and looked down at the terribly mutilated body.

He felt empty inside, a hollowness, the same feeling as after love.

He moved across to the desk near the far wall. Outside the gunfire dwindled like half-hearted applause, flared up again and then ceased. Around him Ruffy and the four gendarmes moved excitedly, inspecting the dead, exclaiming, laughing the awkward embarrassed laughter of men freshly released from mortal danger.

Loosening the chin straps of his helmet with slow steady fingers, Bruce stared across the room at Andre’s body.

“Yes,” he whispered again. “This time like a man. All the other times are wiped Out, the score is levelled.” His cigarettes were damp from the swamp, but he took one from the centre of the pack and straightened it with calm nerveless fingers. He found his lighter and flicked it open - then, without warning, his hands started to shake.

The flame of the lighter fluttered and he had to hold it steady with both hands. There was blood on his hands, new sticky blood. He

snapped the lighter closed and breathed in the smoke. It tasted bitter and the saliva flooded into his mouth. He swallowed it down, nausea in his stomach, and his breathing quickened.

It was not like this before, he remembered, even that night at the road bridge when they broke through on the flank and we met them with bayonets in the dark. Before it had no meaning, but now I can feel again. Once more I’m alive.

Suddenly he had to be alone; he stood up.

“Ruffy.”

“Yes, boss?”

“Clean up here. Get blankets from the hotel for de Sullier and the women, also those men down in the station yard.”

It was someone else speaking; he could hear the voice as though it were a long way off.

“You okay, boss?”

“Yes.”

“Your head? Bruce lifted his hand and touched the long dent in his helmet.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“Your leg?”

“Just a touch, get on with it.”

“Okay, boss. What shall we do with these others?”

“Throw them in the river,” said Bruce and walked out into the street. Hendry and his gendarmes were still on

the verandah of the hotel, but they had started on the corpses there, using their bayonets like butchers” knives, taking the ears, laughing also the strained nervous laughter.

Bruce crossed the street to the station yard. The dawn was coming, drawing out across the sky like a sheet of steel rolled from the mill, purple and lilac at first, then red as it spread above the forest.

The Ford Ranchero stood on the station platform where he had left it. He opened the door, slid in behind the wheel, and watched the dawn become day.

Captain, the sergeant major asks you to come. There is something he wants to show you.” Bruce lifted his head from where it was resting on the steering wheel. He had not heard the gendarme approach.

“I’ll come,” he said, picked up his helmet and his rifle from the seat beside him and followed the man back to the office block.

His gendarmes were loading a dead man into one of the trucks, swinging him by his arms and legs.

Un, deux, trois,” and a shout of laughter as the limp body flew over the tailboard on to the gruesome pile already there.

Sergeant Jacque came out of the office dragging a man by his heels. The head bumped loosely down the steps and there was a wet brown drag mark left on the cement verandah.

“Like pork,” Jacque called cheerily. The corpse was that of a small grey-headed man, skinny, with the marks of spectacles on the bridge of his nose and a double row of decorations on his tunic. Bruce noted that one of them was the purple and white ribbon of the military cross - strange loot for the Congo. Jacque dropped the man’s heels, drew his bayonet and stooped over the man. He took one of the ears that lay flat against the grizzled skull, pulled it forward and freed it with a single stroke of the knife. The opened flesh was pink with the dark hole of the eardrum in the centre.

Bruce walked on into the office and his nostrils flared at the abattoir stench.

“Have a look at this lot, boss.” Ruffy stood by the desk.

“Enough to buy you a ranch in Hyde Park,” grinned Hendry beside him. In his hand he held a pencil. Threaded on to it like a kebab were a dozen human ears.

“Yes,” said Bruce as he looked at the pile of industrial and gem

diamonds on the blotter. “I know about those. Better count them, Ruffy, then put them back in the bags.”

“You’re not going to turn them in?” protested Hendry.

“Jesus, if we share this lot three ways - you, Ruffy and I there’s enough to make us all rich.” “Or put us against a wall,” said Bruce grimly. “What makes you think the gentlemen in Elisabethville don’t

know about them?” He turned his attention back to Ruffy. “Count them and pack them. You’re in charge of them. Don’t lose any.” Bruce looked across the room at the blanket-wrapped bundle that was Andre de

Surrier.

“Have you detailed a burial squad?”

“Yes, boss. Six of the boys are out back digging.”

“Good,” Bruce nodded. “Hendry, come with me.

We’ll go and have a look at the trucks.” Half an hour later Bruce closed the bonnet of the last vehicle. “This is the only one that won’t run. The carburettor’s smashed. We’ll take the tyres off it for spares.” He wiped his greasy hands on the sides of his trousers.

“Thank God, the tanker is untouched. We’ve got six hundred gallons there, more than enough for the return trip.”

“You going to take the

Ford?” asked Hendry.

“Yes, it may come in useful.”

“And it will be more comfortable for you and your little French thing.” Heavy sarcasm in Hendry’s voice.

“That’s right,” Bruce answered evenly. “Can you drive?”

“What you think? You think I’m a bloody fool?”

“Everyone is always trying to get at you, aren’t they? You can’t trust anyone, can you?” Bruce asked softly.

“You’re so bloody right!” agreed Hendry.

Bruce changed the subject. “Andre had a message for you before he died.”

“Old doll boy!”

“He threw that grenade. Did you know that?”

“Yeah. I knew it.” “Don’t you want to hear what he said?”

“Once a queer, always a queer, and the only good queer is a dead queer.”

“All right.” Bruce frowned. “Get a couple of men to help you. Fill the

trucks with gas. We’ve wasted enough time already.”

IF

They buried their dead in a communal grave, packing them in quickly and covering them just as quickly. Then they stood embarrassed and silent round the mound.

“You going to say anything, boss?” Ruffy asked, and they all looked at Bruce.

“No.” Bruce turned away and started for the trucks.

What the hell can you say, he thought angrily. Death is not someone to make conversation with. All YOU can say is, “These were men; weak and strong, evil and good, and a lot in between. But now they’re dead - like pork.” He looked back over his shoulder.

“All right, let’s move out.” The convoy ground slowly over the

causeway. Bruce led in the Ford and the air blowing in through the shattered windscreen was too humid and steamy to give relief from the rising heat.

The sun stood high above the forest as they passed the turn-off to the mission.

Bruce looked along it, and he wanted to signal the convoy to continue while he went up to St. Augustine’s. He wanted to see Mike

Haig and Father Ignatius, make sure that they were safe.

Then he put aside the temptation. If there is more horror up there at St. Augustine’s, if the shufta have found them and there are

raped women and dead men there, then there is nothing I can do and I

don’t want to know about it.

It is better to believe that they are safely hidden in the jungle.

It is better to believe that out of all this will remain something good.

He led the convoy resolutely past the turn-off an dover the hills

towards the level crossing.

Suddenly another idea came to him and he thought about it, turning it over with pleasure.

Four men came to Port Reprieve, men without hope, men abandoned by

God.

And they learned that it was not too late, perhaps it is never too late.

For one of them found the strength to die like a man, although he had lived his whole life with weakness.

Another rediscovered the self-respect he had lost along the way, -and with it the chance to start again.

The third found - he hesitated - yes, the third found love.

And the fourth? Bruce’s smile faded as he thought of Wally

Hendry. It was a neat little parable, except for Wally Hendry. What

had he found? A dozen human ears threaded on a pencil?

“Can’t you get up enough steam to move us back to the crossing -

only a few miles.”

“I am desolate, m’sieur. She will not hold even a belch, to say nothing of a head of steam.” The engine driver spread his pudgy little’hands in a gesture of helplessness.

Bruce studied the rent in the boiler. The metal was torn open like the petals of a flower. He knew it had been a forlorn request.

“Very well. Thank you.” He turned to Ruffy. “We’ll have to carry everything back to the convoy. Another day wasted.”

“It’s a long walk,” Ruffy agreed. “Better get started.”

“How much food have we?”

“Not too much. We’ve been feeding a lot of extra mouths, and we sent a lot out to the mission.”

“How much?”

“About two more days.”

“That should get us to Elisabethville.”

“Boss, you want to carry everything to the lorries?

Searchlights, ammunition, blankets - all of it?” Bruce paused for a moment. “I think so. We may need it.”

“It’s going to take the rest of the day.”

“Yes,” agreed Bruce. Ruffy walked back along the train but Bruce called after him.

“Ruffy!”

“Boss?”

“Don’t forget the beer.” Ruffy’s black moon of a face split laterally into a grin.

“You think we should take it?”

“Why not?” Bruce laughed.

“Man, you talked me right into it.” And the night was almost on them before the last of the equipment had been carried back from the

Abandoned train to the convoy and loaded into the trucks.

Time is a slippery thing, even more so than wealth. No bank vault can hold it for you, this precious stuff which we spend in such prodigal fashion on the trivialities. By the time we have slept and eaten and moved from one place to the next there is such a small percentage left for the real business of living.

Bruce felt futile resentment as he always did when he thought about it. And if you discount the time spent at an office desk, then how much is there left? Half of one day a week, that’s how much the average man lives! That’s how far short of our potential is the actuality of existence.

Take it further than that: we are capable of using only a fraction of our physical and mental strength. Only under hypnosis are we able to exert more than a tenth of what is in us. So divide that half of one day a week by ten, and the rest is waste! Sickening waste!

“Ruffy, have you detailed sentries for tonight?” Bruce barked at him.

“Not yet. I was just-“

“Well, do it, and do it quickly.” Ruffy looked at Bruce in speculation and through his anger Bruce felt a qualm of regret that he had selected that mountain of energy on which to vent his frustration.

“Where the hell is Hendry?” he snapped.

Without speaking Ruffy pointed to a group of men round one of the

trucks at the rear of the convoy and Bruce left him.

Suddenly consumed with impatience Bruce fell upon his men.

Shouting at them, scattering them to a dozen different tasks. He walked along the convoy making sure that his instructions were being

carried out to the letter; checking the siting of the Brens and the searchlights, making sure that the single small cooking fire was screened from Baluba eyes, stopping to watch the refuelling of the trucks and the running maintenance he had ordered. Men avoided catching his eye and bent to their tasks with studied application.

There were no raised voices or sounds of laughter in the camp.

Again Bruce had decided against a night journey. The temptation itched within him, but the exhaustion of those gendarmes who had not slept since the previous morning and the danger of travelling in the dark he could not ignore.

“We’ll leave as soon as it’s light tomorrow,” Bruce told Ruffy.

“Okay, boss,” Ruffy nodded, and then soothingly, “you’re tired.

Food’s nearly ready, then you get some sleep.” Bruce glared at him, opening his mouth to snarl a retort, and then closed it again. He turned and strode out of the camp into the forest.

He found a fallen tree, sat down and lit a cigarette. It was dark now and there were only a few stars among the rain clouds that blackened the sky. He could hear the faint sounds from the camp but there were no lights - the way he had ordered it.

The fact that his anger had no focal point inflamed it rather than quenched it. It ranged restlessly until at last it found a target, -

himself. He recognized the brooding undirected depression that was descending upon him. It was a thing he had not experienced for a long time, nearly two years. Not since the wreck of his marriage and the loss of his children. Not since he had stifled all emotion and trained himself not to participate in the life around him.

But now his barrier was gone, there was no sheltered harbour from

the storm surf and he would have to ride it out.

The anger was gone now. At least anger had heat but this other thing was cold; icy waves of it broke over him, and he was small and insignificant in the grip of it.

His mind turned to his children and the loneliness howled round him like a winter wind from the south. He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against the lids. Their faces formed in the eye of his mind.

Christine with pink fat legs under her frilly skirt, and the face of a thoughtful cherub, below soft hair cropped like a page boy.

“I love you best of all,” she said with much seriousness, holding his face with small hands only a little sticky with ice cream.

Simon, a miniature reproduction of Bruce even to the nose. Scabs on the knees and dirt on the face. No demonstrations of affection from him, but in its place something much better, a companionship far beyond his six years.

Long discussions on everything from religion, “Why didn’t Jesus used to shave?” to politics, “When are you going to be prime minister, Dad?” And the loneliness was a tangible thing now, like the coils of a reptile squeezing his chest. Bruce ground out the cigarette beneath his heel and tried to find refuge in his hatred for the woman who had been his wife. The woman who had taken them from him.

But his hatred was a cold thing also, dead ash with a stale taste.

For he knew that the blame was not all hers. It was another of his failures; perhaps if I had tried harder, perhaps if I had left some of the cruel things unsaid, perhaps - yes, it might have been, and perhaps and maybe. But it was not. It was over and finished and now I am alone.

There is no worse condition; no state beyond loneliness. It is the waste land and the desolation.

Something moved near him in the night, a soft rustle of grass, a presence felt rather than seen. And Bruce stiffened.

His right hand closed over his rifle. He brought it up slowly, his eyes straining into the darkness.

The movement again, closer now. A twig popped underfoot. Bruce slowly trained his rifle round to cover it, pressure on the trigger and his thumb on the safety. Stupid to have wandered away from the camp; asking for it, and now he had got it. Baluba tribesmen! He could see the figure now in the dimness of starlight, stealthily moving across his front. How many of them, he wondered. If I hit this one, there could be a dozen others with him. Have to take a chance. One quick

burst and then run for it. A hundred yards to the camp, about an even chance. The figure was stationary now, standing listening. Bruce could see the outline of the head - no helmet, can’t be one of us. He raised the rifle and pointed it. Too dark to see the sights, but at that range he couldn’t miss. Bruce drew his breath softly, filling his lungs, ready to shoot and run.

“Bruce?” Shermaine’s voice, frightened, almost a whisper.

He threw up the rifle barrel. God, that was close. He had nearly killed her.

“Yes, I’m here.” His own voice was scratchy with the shock of realization.

“Oh, there you are.”

“What the hell are you doing out of the camp?” he demanded furiously as anger replaced his shock.

“I’m sorry, Bruce, I came to see if you were all right. You were gone such a long time.”

“Well, get back to the camp, and don’t try any more tricks like that.” There was a long silence, and then she spoke softly, unable to keep the hurt out of her tone.

“I brought you something to eat. I thought you’d be hungry. I’m sorry if I did wrong.” She came to him, stooped and placed something on the ground in front of him. Then she turned and was gone.

“Shermaine.” He wanted her back, but the only reply was the fading rustle of the grass and then silence. He was alone again.

He picked up the plate of food.

You fool, he thought. You stupid, ignorant, thoughtless fool.

You’ll lose her, and you’ll have deserved it. You deserve everything you’ve had, and more.

You never learn, do you, Curry? You never learn that there is a penalty for selfishness and for thoughtlessness.

He looked down at the plate in his hands. Bully beef and sliced onion, bread and cheese.

Yes, I have learned, he answered himself with sudden determination.

I will not spoil this, this thing that is between this girl and me.

That was the last time; now I am a man I will put away childish things, like temper and selfpity.

He ate the food, suddenly aware of his hunger. He ate quickly, wolfing it. Then he stood up and walked back to the camp.

A sentry challenged him on the perimeter and Bruce answered with alacrity. At night his gendarmes were very quick on the trigger; the challenge was an unusual courtesy.

“It is unwise to go alone into the forest in the darkness,” the sentry reprimanded him.

“Why?” Bruce felt his mood changing. The depression evaporated.

“It is unwise,” repeated the man vaguely.

“The spirits?” Bruce teased him delicately.

“An aunt of my sister’s husband disappeared not a short throw of a spear from my hut. There was no trace, no shout, nothing. I was there. It is not a matter for doubt,” said the man with dignity.

“A lion perhaps?” Bruce prodded him.

“If you say so, then it is so. I know what I know. But I say only that there is no wisdom in defying the custom of the land.”

Suddenly touched by the man’s concern for him, Bruce dropped a hand on to his shoulder and gripped it in the old (expression of affection.

“I will remember. I did it without thinking. He walked into the camp. The incident had confirmed something he had vaguely suspected, but in which previously he had felt no interest. The men liked him. A

hundred similar indications of this fact he had only half noted, not caring one way or the other. But now it gave him intense pleasure, fully compensating for the loneliness he had just experienced.

He walked past the little group of men round the cooking fire to where the Ford stood at the head of the convoy.

Peering through the side window he could make out Shermaine’s blanket-wrapped form on the back seat. He tapped on the glass and she sat up and rolled down the window.

“Yes?” she asked coolly.

“Thank you for the food.”

“It is nothing.” The slightest hint of warmth in her voice.

“Shermaine, sometimes I say things I do not mean. You startled me. I nearly shot you.”

“It was my fault. I should not have followed you.”

“I was rude he persisted.

“Yes.” She laughed now. That husky little chuckle. “You were

rude but with good reason. We shall forget it.” She placed her hand on his arm. “You must rest, you haven’t slept for two days.”

“Will you ride in the Ford with me tomorrow to show that I am forgiven?”

“of course,” she nodded.

“Good night, Shermaine.”

“Good night, Bruce,” No, Bruce decided as he spread his blankets beside the fire, I am not alone. Not any more.

What about breakfast, boss?”

“They can eat on the road. Give them a tin of bully each - we’ve wasted enough time on this trip.” The sky was paling and pinking above the forest. It was light enough to read the dial of his wristwatch. Twenty minutes to five.

“Get them moving, Ruffy. If we make Msapa Junction before dark we can drive through the night. Home for breakfast tomorrow.”

“Now you’re talking, boss.” Ruffy clapped his helmet on to his head and went off to rouse the men who lay in the road beside the trucks.

Shermaine was asleep. Bruce leaned into the window of the Ford and studied her face. A wisp of hair lay over her mouth, rising and falling with her breathing. It tickled her nose and in her sleep it twitched like a rabbit.

Bruce felt an almost unbearable pang of tenderness towards her.

With one finger he lifted the hair off her face.

Then he smiled at himself If you can feel like this before breakfast, then you’ve got it in a bad way, he told himself.

Do you know something, he retorted. I like the feeling.

“Hey, you lazy wench!” He pulled the lobe of her ear.

“Time to wake up.” It was almost half past five before the convoy got under way. It had taken that long to bully and cajole the sleep out of sixty men and get them into the lorries. This morning Bruce did not find the delay unbearable. He had managed to find time for four hours” sleep during the night. Four hours was not nearly enough to make up for the previous two days.

Now he felt light-headed, a certain unreal quality of gaiety overlaying his exhaustion, a carnival spirit. There was no longer the same urgency, for the road to Elisabethville was clear and not too long. Home for breakfast tomorrow!

“We’ll be at the bridge in a little under an hour.” He glanced

sideways at Shermaine.

“You’ve left a guard on it?”

“Ten men,” answered Bruce. “We’ll pick them up almost without stopping, and then the next stop, room 201, Grand Hotel Leopold II, Avenue du Kasai.” He grinned in anticipation.

“A bath so deep it will slop over on to the floor, so hot it will take five minutes to get into it. Clean clothes. A steak that thick, with

French salad and a bottle of Liebfraumilch.”

“For breakfast!” protested

Shermaine.

“For breakfast,” Bruce agreed happily. He was silent for a while, savouring the idea. The road ahead of him was tiger-striped with the shadows of the trees thrown by the low sun. The air that blew in through the missing windscreen was cool and clean-smelling. He felt good. The responsibility of command lay lightly on his shoulders this

morning; a pretty girl beside him, a golden morning, the horror of the last few days half-forgotten, - they might have been going on a picnic.

“What are you thinking?” he asked suddenly. She was very quiet beside him.

“I was wondering about the future,” she answered softly.

“There is no one I know in Elisabethville, and I do not wish to stay there.” “Will you return to Brussels?” he asked. The question was without significance, for Bruce Curry had very definite plans for the immediate future, and these included Shermaine.

“Yes, I think so. There is nowhere else.”

“You have relatives there?”

“An aunt.”

“Are you close?” Shermaine laughed, but there was

bitterness in the husky chuckle. “Oh, very close. She came to see me once at the orphanage. Once in all those years. She brought me a comic book of a religious nature and told me to clean my teeth and brush my hair a hundred strokes a day.” “There is no one else?” asked

Bruce.

“No.”

“Then why go back?” “What else is there to do?” she asked.

“Where else is there to go?”

“There’s a life to live, and the rest of the world to visit.”

“Is that what you are going to do?”

“That is exactly what I’m going to do, starting with a hot bath.” Bruce could feel it between them. They both knew it was there, but it was too soon to talk about it. I have only kissed her once, but that was enough.

So what will happen?

Marriage? His mind shied away from that word with startling violence, then came hesitantly back to examine it. Stalking it as though it were a dangerous beast, ready to take flight again as soon as it showed its teeth.

For some people it is a good thing. It can stiffen the spineless; ease the lonely; give direction to the wanderers; spur those without ambition - and, of course, there was the final unassailable argument in its favour. Children.

But there are some who can only sicken and shrivel in the colourless cell of matrimony. With no space to fly, your wings must weaken with disuse; turned inwards, your eyes become shortsighted; when all your communication with the rest of the world is through the glass windows of the cell, then your contact is limited.

And I already have children. I have a daughter and I have a son.

Bruce turned his eyes from the road and studied the girl beside him. There is no fault I can find. She is beautiful in the delicate, almost fragile way that is so much better and longer-lived than blond hair and big bosoms. She is unspoilt; hardship has long been her travelling companion and from it she has learned kindness and humility.

She is mature, knowing the ways of this world; knowing death and fear, the evilness of men and their goodness. I do not believe she has ever lived in the fairy-tale cocoon that most young girls spin about themselves.

And yet she has not forgotten how to laugh.

Perhaps, he thought, perhaps. But it is too soon to talk about it.

“You are very grim.” Shermaine broke the silence, but the laughter shivered just below the surface of her voice. “Again you are

Bonaparte. And when you are grim your nose is too big and cruel. It is a nose of great brutality and it does not fit the rest of your face.

I think that when they had finished you they had only one nose left in

stock. “It is too big,” they said, “but it is the only nose left, and when he smiles it will not look too bad.” So they took a chance and stuck it on anyway.”

“Were you never taught that it is bad manners to poke fun at a man’s weakness?” Bruce fingered his nose ruefully.

“Your nose is many things, but not weak. Never weak.” She laughed now and moved a little closer to him.

“You know you can attack me from behind your own perfect nose, and

I cannot retaliate.”

“Never trust a man who makes pretty speeches so easily, because he surely makes them to every girl he meets.” She slid an inch further across the seat until they were almost touching. “You waste your talents, mon capitaine. I am immune to your charm.”

“In just one minute I will stop this car and-“

“You cannot.” Shermaine jerked her head to indicate the two gendarmes in the seat behind them.

“What would they think, Bonaparte? It would be very bad for discipline.”

“Discipline or no discipline, in just one minute I will stop this car and spank You soundly before I kiss you.”

“One threat does not frighten me, but because of the other I will leave your poor nose.” She moved away a little and once more Bruce studied her face.

Beneath the frank scrutiny she fidgeted and started to blush.

“Do you mind! Were you never taught that it is bad manners to stare?” So now I am in love again, thought Bruce. This is only the third time, an average of once every ten years or so. It frightens me a little because there is always pain with it.

The exquisite pain of loving and the agony of losing.

It starts in the loins and it is very deceptive because you think it is only the old thing, the tightness and tension that any well-rounded stern or cheeky pair of breasts will give you. Scratch it, you think, it’s just a small itch. Spread a little of the warm salve on it and it will be gone in no time.

But suddenly it spreads, upwards and downwards, all through you.

The pit of your stomach feels hot, then the flutters round the heart.

It’s dangerous now; once it gets this far it’s incurable and you can scratch and scratch but all you do is inflame it.

Then the last stages, when it attacks the brain. No pain there, that’s the worst sign. A heightening of the senses; your eyes are

sharper, your blood runs too fast, food tastes good, your mouth wants to shout and legs want to run.

Then the delusions of grandeur: you are the cleverest, strongest, most masculine male in the universe, and you stand ten feet tall in your socks.

How tall are you now, Curry, he asked himself. About nine feet six and I weigh twenty stone, he answered, and almost laughed aloud.

And how does it end? It ends with words. Words can kill anything. It ends with cold words; words like fire that stick in the structure and take hold and lick it up, blackening and charring it, bringing it down in smoking ruins.

It ends in suspicion of things not done, and in the certainty of

things done and remembered. It ends with selfishness and carelessness, and words, always words.

It ends with pain and gteyness, and it leaves scar tissue and damage that will never heal.

Or it ends without fuss and fury. It just crumbles and blows away like dust on the wind. But there is still the agony of loss.

Both these endings I know well, for I have loved twice, and now I

love again.

Perhaps this time it does not have to be that way.

Perhaps this time it will last. Nothing is for ever, he thought.

Nothing is for ever, not even life, and perhaps this time if I cherish it and tend it carefully it will last that long, as long as life.

“We are nearly at the bridge,” said Shermaine beside him, and

Bruce started. The miles had dropped unseen behind them and now the forest was thickening. It crouched closer to the earth, greener and darker along the river.

Bruce slowed the Ford and the forest became dense bush around them, the road tunnel through it. They came round one last bend in the track and out of the tunnel of green vegetation into the clearing where the road met the railway line and ran beside it on to the heavy timber platform of the bridge.

Bruce stopped the Ranchero, switched off the engine and they all sat silently, staring out at the solid jungle on the far bank with its screen of creepers and monkey-ropes hanging down, trailing the surface of the deep green swiftflowing river. They stared at the stumps of the bridge thrusting out from each bank towards each other like the arms of parted lovers; at the wide gap between with the timbers still smouldering and the smoke drifting away downstream over the green water.

“It’s gone,” said Shermaine. “It’s been burnt.”

“Oh, no,” groaned

Bruce.” Oh, God, no!” With an effort he pulled his eyes from the charred remains of the bridge and turned them on to the jungle about them, a hundred feet away, ringing them in. Hostile, silent. “Don’t get out of the car,” he snapped as Shermaine reached for the door handle.

“Roll your window up, quickly.” She obeyed.

“They’re waiting in there.” He pointed at the edge of the jungle.

Behind them the first of the convoy came round the bend into the clearing. Bruce jumped from the Ford and ran back towards the leading truck.

“Don’t get out, stay inside,” he shouted and ran on down the line, repeating the instruction to each of them as he passed.

When he reached Ruffy’s cab he jumped on to the running board, jerked the door open, slipped in on to the seat and slammed the door.

“They’ve burnt the bridge.”

“What’s happened to the boys we left to guard it?”

“I don’t know but we’ll find out. Pull up alongside the others so that I can talk to them.” Through the half-open window he issued his orders to each of the drivers and within ten minutes all the vehicles had been manoeuvred into the tight defensive circle of the laager, a formation Bruce’s ancestors had used a hundred years before.

“Ruffy, get out those tarpaulins and spread them over the top to form a roof We don’t want them dropping arrows in amongst us.” Ruffy

selected half a dozen gendarmes and they went to work, dragging out the heavy folded canvas.

“Hendry, put a couple of men under each truck. Set up the Brens in case they try to rush us.” In the infectious urgency of defence, Wally did not make his usual retort, but gathered his men. They wriggled on their stomachs under the vehicles, rifles pointed out towards the silent jungle.

“I want the extinguishers here in the middle so we can get them in a hurry. They might use fire again.” Two gendarmes ran to each of the cabs and unclipped the fire-extinguishers from the dashboards.

“What can I do?” Shermaine was standing beside Bruce.

“Keep quiet and stay out of the way,” said Bruce as he turned and hurried across to help Ruffy’s gang with the tarpaulins.

It took them half an hour of desperate endeavour before they completed the fortifications to Bruce’s satisfaction.

“That should hold them.” Bruce stood with Ruffy and Hendry in the centre of the laager and surveyed the green canvas roof above them and the closely packed vehicles around them. The Ford was parked beside the tanker, not included in the outer ring for its comparative size would have made it a weak point in the defence.

“It’s going to be bloody hot and crowded in here,” grumbled

Hendry.

“Yes, I know.” Bruce looked at him. “Would you like to relieve the congestion by waiting outside?”

“Funny boy, big laugh,” answered

Wally.

“What now, boss?” Ruffy put into words the question Bruce had been asking himself.

“You and I will go and take a look at the bridge,” he said.

“You’ll look a rare old sight with an arrow sticking out of your back,” grinned Wally. “Boy, that’s going to kill me!”

“Ruffy, get us half a dozen gas capes each. I doubt their arrows will go through them at a range of a hundred feet, and of course we’ll wear helmets.”

“Okay, boss.” It was like being in a sauna bath beneath the six layers of rubberized canvas. Bruce could feel the sweat squirting from his pores with each pace, and rivulets of it coursing down his back and flanks as he and Ruffy left the laager and walked up the road to the bridge.

Beside him Ruffy’s bulk was so enhanced by the gas capes that he reminded Bruce of a prehistoric monster reaching the end of its gestation period.

“Warm enough, Ruffy?” he asked, feeling the need for humour. The ring of jungle made him nervous. Perhaps he had underestimated the carry of a Baluba arrow - despite the light reed shaft, they used iron heads, barbed viciously and ground to a needle point, and poison smeared thickly between the barbs.

man, look at me shiver,” grunted Ruffy and the sweat greased down his jowls and dripped from his chin.

Long before they reached the access to the bridge the stench of putrefaction crept out to meet them. In Bruce’s mind every smell had its own colour, and this one was green, the same green as the sheen of

putrefaction on rotting meat. The stench was so heavy he could almost feel it bearing down on them, choking in his throat and coating his tongue and the roof of his mouth with the oily oversweetness.

“No doubt what that is!” Ruffy spat, trying to get the taste out of his mouth.

“Where are they?” gagged Bruce, starting to pant from the heat and the effort of breathing the fouled air.

They reached the bank and Bruce’s question was answered as they looked down on to the narrow beach.

There were the black remains of a dozen cooking fires along the water’s edge, and closer to the high bank were two crude structures of poles. For a moment their purpose puzzled Bruce and then he realized what they were. He had seen those crosspieces suspended between two uprights often before in hunting camps throughout Africa. They were paunching racks! At intervals along the crosspieces were the hark ropes that had been used to string up the game, heels first, with head and forelegs dangling and belly bulging forward so that at the long abdominal stroke of the knife the viscera would drop out easily.

But the game they had butchered on these racks were men, his men.

He counted the hanging ropes. There were ten of them, so no one had escaped.

“Cover me, Ruffy. I’m going down to have a look.” It was a penance Bruce was imposing upon himself. They were his men, and he had left them there.

“Okay, boss.” Bruce clambered down the well-defined path to the beach. Now the smell was almost unbearable and he found the source of

it. Between the racks lay a dark shapeless mass. It moved with flies; its surface moved, trembled, crawled with flies. Suddenly, humming, they lifted in a cloud from the pile of human debris, and then settled once more upon it.

A single fly buzzed round Bruce’s head and then settled on his hand. Metallic blue body, wings cocked back, it crouched on his skin and gleefully rubbed its front legs together. Bruce’s throat and stomach convulsed as he began to retch. He struck at the fly and it

darted away.

There were bones scattered round the cooking fires and a skull lay near his feet, split open to yield its contents.

Another spasm took Bruce and this time the vomit came up into his mouth, acid and warm. He swallowed it, turned away and scrambled up the bank to where Ruffy waited. He stood there gasping, suppressing his nausea until at last he could speak.

“All right, that’s all I wanted to know,” and he led the way back to the circle of vehicles.

Bruce sat on the bonnet of the Ranchero and sucked hard on his cigarette, trying to get the taste of death from his mouth.

“They probably swam downstream during the night and climbed the supports of the bridge. Kanaki and his boys wouldn’t have known anything about it until they came over the sides.” He drew on the cigarette again and trickled the smoke out of his nostrils, fumigating

the back of his throat and his nasal passages. “I should have thought of that. I should have warned Kanaki of that.”

“You mean they ate all ten of them - Jesus!” even Wally Hendry was impressed. “I’d like to have a look at that beach.

It must be quite something.”

“Good!” Bruce’s voice was suddenly

harsh. “I’ll put you in charge of the burial squad. You can go down there and clean it up before we start work on the bridge.” And Wally did not argue.

“You want me to do it now?” he asked.

“No,” snapped Bruce. “You and Ruffy are going to take two of the trucks back to Port Reprieve and fetch the materials we need to repair the bridge.” They both looked at Bruce with rising delight.

“I never thought of that,” said Wally.

“There’s plenty of roofing timber in the hotel and the office block,” grinned Ruffy.

“Nails,” said Wally as though he were making a major contribution.

“We’ll need nails.” Bruce cut through their comments. “It’s two o’clock now. You can get back to Port Reprieve by nightfall, collect the material tomorrow morning and return here by the evening. Take those two trucks there. - check to see they’re full of gas and you’ll

need about fifteen men.

Say, five gendarmes, in case of trouble, and ten of those civilians.”

“That should be enough,” agreed Ruffy.

“Bring a couple of dozen sheets of corrugated iron back with you.

We’ll use them to make a shield to protect us from arrows while we’re working.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” They settled the details, picked men to go back, loaded the trucks, worked them out of the laager, and

Bruce watched them disappear down the road towards Port Reprieve. An ache started deep behind his eyes and suddenly he was very tired, drained of energy by too little sleep, by the heat and by the emotional pace of the last four days.

He made one last circuit of the laager, checking the defences, chatting for a few minutes with his gendarmes and then he stumbled to the Ford, slid on to the front seat, laid his helmet and rifle aside, lowered his head on to his arms and was instantly asleep.

Shermaine woke him after dark with food unheated from the cans and a bottle of Ruffy’s beer.

“I’m sorry, Bruce, we have no fire to cook upon. It is very unappetizing and the beer is warm.” Bruce sat up and rubbed his eyes.

Six hours” sleep had helped; they were less swollen and inflamed. The headache was still there.

“I’m not really hungry, thank you. It’s this heat.”

“You must eat, Bruce. Try just a little,” and then she smiled. “At least you are more gallant after having rested. It is

“Thank you” now, instead of

“Keep quiet and stay out of the way”.” Ruefully Bruce grimaced.

“You are one of those women with a built-in recording unit; every word remembered and used in evidence against a man later.” Then he touched her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I like your apologies, mon capitaine. They are like the rest of you, completely

masculine. There is nothing about you which is not male, sometimes almost overpoweringly so.” Impishly she watched his eyes; he knew she was talking about the little scene on the train that Wally Hendry had interrupted.

“Let’s try this food,” he said, and then a little later, “not bad - you are an excellent cook.”

“This time the credit must go to Mr. Heinz-and his fifty-seven children. But one day I shall make for you one of my tournedos all Prince. It is my special.”

“Speciality,” Bruce corrected her automatically.

The murmur of voices within the laager was punctuated occasionally by a burst of laughter. There was a feeling of relaxation. The canvas roof and the wall of vehicles gave security to them all. Men lay in

dark huddles of sleep or talked quietly in small groups.

Bruce scraped the metal plate and filled his mouth with the last

of the food.

“Now I must check the defences again.”

“Oh, Bonaparte. It is always duty.” Shermaine sighed with resignation.

“I will not be long.”

“And I’ll wait here for you.” Bruce picked up his rifle and helmet, and was half-way out of the Ford when out in the jungle the drum started.

“Bruce!” whispered Shermaine and clutched his arm. The voices round them froze into a fearful silence, and the drum beat in the night. It had a depth and resonance that you could feel, the warm

sluggish air quivered with it. Not fixed in space but filling it, beating monotonously, insistently, like the pulse of all creation.

“Bruce!” whispered Shermaine again; she was trembling and the fingers on his arm dug into his flesh with the strength of terror. It steadied his own leap of fear.

“Baby, baby,” he soothed her, taking her to his chest and holding her there. “It’s only the sound of two pieces of wood being knocked together by a naked savage. They can’t touch us here, you know that.”

“Oh, Bruce, it’s horrible - it’s like bells, funeral bells.”

“That’s silly talk.” Bruce held her at arm’s length. “Come with me. Help me calm down these others, they’ll be terrified. You’ll have to help me.”

And he pulled her gently across the seat out of the Ford, and with one arm round her waist walked her into the centre of the laager.

What will counteract the stupefying influence of the drum, the hypnotic beat of it, he asked himself. Noise, our own noise.

“Joseph, M’pophu-” he shouted cheerfully picking out the two best singers ” amongst his men. “I regret the drumming is of a low standard, but the Baluba are monkeys with no understanding of music.

Let us show them how a Bambala can sing.” They stirred; he could feel the tension diminish.

“Come, Joseph-” He filled his lungs and shouted the opening chorus of one of the planting songs, purposely offkey, singing so badly that it must sting them.

Someone laughed, then Joseph’s voice hesitantly starting the chorus, gathering strength. M’pophu coming in with the bass to give a solid foundation to the vibrant, sweet-ringing tenor. Half-beat to the drum, hands clapped in the dark; around him Bruce could feel the rhythmic swinging of bodies begin.

Shermaine was no longer trembling; he squeezed her waist and felt her body cling to him.

Now we need light, thought Bruce. A night lamp for my children who fear the darkness and the drum.

With Shermaine beside him he crossed the laager.

“Sergeant Jacque.”

“Captain?”

“You can start sweeping with the searchlights.”

“Oui, Captain.” The answer was less subdued. There were two spare batteries for each light, Bruce knew. Eight hours” life in each, so they would last tonight and tomorrow night.

From each side of the laager the beams leapt out, solid white shafts through the darkness; they played along the edge of the jungle and reflected back, lighting the interior of the laager sufficiently to make out the features of each man. Bruce looked at their faces.

They’re all right now, he decided, the ghosts have gone away.

“Bravo, Bonaparte,” said Shermaine, and Bruce became aware of the grins on the faces of his men as they saw him embracing her. He was about to drop his arm, then stopped himself. The hell with it, he

decided, give them something else to think about. He led her back to the Ford.

“Tired?” he asked.

“A little,” she nodded.

“I’ll fold down the seat for you. A blanket over the windows will give you privacy.” “You’ll stay closep she asked quickly.

“I’ll be right outside.” He unbuckled the webbing belt that carried his pistol. “You’d better wear this from now on.” Even at its minimum adjustment the belt was too large for her and the pistol hung down almost to her knee.

“The Maid of Orleans.” Bruce revenged himself. She pulled a face at him and crawled into the back of the station wagon.

A long while later she called softly above the singing and the throb of the drum.

“Bruce.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to make sure you were there. Good night.”

“Good night, Shermaine.” Bruce lay on a single blanket and sweated. The singing had long ago ceased but the drum went on and on, never faltering, throb-throb-throbbing out of the jungle. The searchlights swept regularly back and forth, at times lighting the laager clearly and at others leaving it in shadow. Bruce could hear around him the soft sounds of sleep, the sawing of breath, a muted cough, a gabbled sentence, the stirring of dreamers.

But Bruce could not sleep. He lay on his back with one hand under his head, smoking, staring up at the canvas.

The events of the preceding four days ran through his mind:

snatches of conversation, Andre dying. Boussier standing with his wife, the bursting of grenades, blood sticky on his hands, the smell of death, the violence and the horror.

He moved restlessly, flicked away his cigarette and covered his eyes with his hands as though to shut out the memories. But they went on flickering through his mind like the images of a gigantic movie projector, confused now, losing all meaning but retaining the horror.

He remembered the fly upon his arm, grinning at him, rubbing its legs together, gloating, repulsive. He rolled his head from side to

side on the blanket.

I’m going mad, he thought, I must stop this.

He sat up quickly hugging his knees to his chest and the memories faded. But now he was sad, and alone. So terribly alone, so lost, so without purpose.

He sat alone on the blanket and he felt himself shrinking, becoming small and frightened.

I’m going to cry, he thought, I can feel it there heavy in my throat. And like a hurt child crawling into its mother’s lap, Bruce

Curry groped his way over the tailboard of the station wagon to

Shermaine.

“Shermaine! he whispered, blindly, searching for her.

“Bruce, what is it?” She sat up quickly. She had not been sleeping either.

“Where are you?” There was panic in Bruce’s voice.

“Here I am - what’s the matter?” And he found her; clumsily he caught her to him.

“Hold me, Shermaine, please hold me.”

“Darling.” She was anxious.

“What is it? Tell me, my darling.”

“Just hold me, Shermaine. Don’t talk.” He clung to her, pressing his face into her neck. “I need you so much - oh, God! How I need you!”

“Bruce.” She understood, and her fingers were at the nape of his neck, stroking, soothing.

“My Bruce,” she said and held him. Instinctively her body began to rock, gentling him as though he were her child.

Slowly his body relaxed, and he sighed against her - a gusty broken sound.

“My Bruce, my Bruce.” She lifted the thin cotton vest that was all she wore and, instinctively in the ageless ritual of comfort, she gave him her breasts. Holding his mouth to them with both her arms clasped around his neck, her head bowed protectively over his, her hair falling forward and covering them both.

With the hard length of his body against hers, with the soft tugging at her bosom, and in the knowledge that she was giving strength to the man she loved, she realized she had never known happiness before

this moment. Then his body was no longer quiescent; she felt her own mood change, a new urgency.

“Oh yes, Bruce, yes!” Speaking up into his mouth, his hungry hunting mouth and he above her, no longer child, but full man again.

“So beautiful, so warm.” His voice was strangely husky, she shuddered with the intensity of her own need.

“Quickly, Bruce, oh, Bruce.” His cruel loving hands, seeking, finding.

“Oh, Bruce - quickly,” and she reached up for him with her hips.

“I’ll hurt you.”

“No, - yes, I want the pain.” She felt the resistance to him within her and cried out impatiently against it.

“Go through!” and then, “Ah! It burns.”

“I’ll stop.”

“No, No!”

“Darling. It’s too much.”

“Yes - I can’t - oh, Bruce. My heart -

you’ve touched my heart.” Her clenched fists drumming on his back. And in to press against the taut, reluctantly yielding springiness, away, then back, away, and back to touch the core of all existence, leave it, and come long gliding back to it, nuzzle it, feel it tilt, then come away, then back once more. Welling slowly upwards scalding, no longer to be contained, with pain almost - and gone, and gone, and gone.

“I’m falling. Oh, Bruce! Bruce! Bruce!” Into the gulf together - gone, all gone. Nothing left, no time, no space, no bottom to the gulf.

Nothing and everything. Complete.

Out in the jungle the drum kept beating.

Afterwards, long afterwards, she slept with her head on his arm and her face against his chest. And he unsleeping listened to her sleep. The sound of it was soft, so gentle breathing soft that you could not hear it unless you listened very carefully - or unless you loved her, he thought.

Yes. I think I love this woman - but I must be certain.

In fairness to her and to myself I must be entirely certain, for I

cannot live through another time like the last, and because I love her

I don’t want her to take the terrible wounding of a bad marriage.

Better, much better to leave it now, unless it has the strength to endure.

Bruce rolled his head slowly until his face was in her hair, and the girl nuzzled his chest in her sleep.

But it is so hard to tell, he thought. It is so hard to tell at the beginning. It is so easy to confuse pity or loneliness with love, but I cannot afford to do that now. So I must try to think clearly about my marriage to Joan. It will be difficult, but I must try.

Was it like this with Joan in the beginning? It was so long ago, seven years, that I do not know, he answered truthfully. All I have left from those days are the pictures of places and the small heaps of

words that have struck where the wind and the pain could not blow them away.

A beach with the sea mist coming in across it, a whole tree of driftwood half buried in the sand and bleached white with the salt, a basket of strawberries bought along the road, so that when I kissed her

I could taste the sweet tartness of the fruit on her lips.

I remember a tune that we sang together, “The mission bells told me that I mustn’t stay, South of the border, down Mexico way.” I have forgotten most of the words.

And I remember vaguely how her body was, and the shape of her breasts before the children were born.

But that is all I have left from the good times.

The other memories are clear, stinging, whiplash clear.

Each ugly word, and the tone in which it was said. The sound of sobbing in the night, the way it dragged itself on for three long grey years after it was mortally wounded, and both of us using all our strength to keep it moving because of the children.

The children! Oh, God, I mustn’t think about them now. It hurts too much. Without the children to complicate it, I must think about her for the last time; I must end this woman Joan. So now finally and for all to end this woman who made me cry. I do not hate her for the man with whom she went away. She deserved another try for happiness.

But I hate her for my children and for making shabby the love that I

could have given Shermaine as a new thing. Also, I pity her for her inability to find the happiness for which she hunts so fiercely. I

pity her for her coldness of body and of mind, I pity her for her prettiness that is now almost gone (it goes round her eyes first, cracking like oil paint) and I pity her for her consuming selfishness which will lose her the love of her children.

My children - not hers! My children!

That is all, that is an end to Joan, and now I have Shermaine who is none of the things that Joan was. I also deserve another try.

“Shermaine,” he whispered and turned her head slightly to kiss her. “Shermaine, wake up.” She stirred and murmured against him.

“Wake up.” He took the lobe of her ear between his teeth and bit it gently. Her eyes opened.

“Bon matin, madame.” He smiled at her.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” she answered and closed her eyes to press her face once more against his chest.

“Wake up. I have something to tell you.”

“I am awake, but tell me first if I am still dreaming. I have a certainty that this cannot be reality.” “You are not dreaming.” She sighed softly, and held him closer.

“Now tell me the other thing.”

“I love you,” he said.

“No. Now I am dreaming.”

“In truth,” he said.

“No, do not wake me. I could not bear to wake now.”

“And you?” he asked.

“You know it-” she answered. “I do not have to tell you.” “It is almost morning,” he said. “There is only a little time.”

“Then I will fill that little time with saying it-” He held her and listened to her whispering it to him.

No, he thought, now I am certain. I could not be that wrong.

This is my woman.

The drum stopped with the dawn. And after it the silence was very heavy, and it was no relief They had grown accustomed to that broken rhythm and now in some strange way they missed it.

As Bruce moved around the laager he could sense the uneasiness in his men. There was a feeling of dread anticipation on them all.

They moved with restraint, as though they did not want to draw attention to themselves.

The laughter with which they acknowledged his jokes was nervous, quickly cut off, as though they had laughed in a cathedral. And their

eyes kept darting back towards the ring of jungle.

Bruce found himself wishing for an attack. His own nerves were rubbed sensitive by contact with the fear all around him.

If only they would come, he told himself. If only they would show themselves and we could see men not phantoms.

But the jungle was silent. It seemed to wait, it watched them.

They could feel the gaze of hidden eyes. Its malignant presence pressed closer as the heat built up.

Bruce walked across the laager to the south side, trying to move casually. He smiled at Sergeant Jacque, squatted beside him and peered from under the truck across open ground at the remains of the bridge.

“Trucks will be back soon,” he said. “Won’t take long to repair that.” Jacque did not answer. There was a worried frown on his high intelligent forehead and his face was shiny with perspiration.

“It’s the waiting, Captain. It softens the stomach.”

“They will

be back soon,” repeated Bruce. If this one is worried, and he is the best of them, then the others must be almost in a jelly of dread.

Bruce looked at the face of the man on the other side of Jacque.

His expression shrieked with fear.

If they attack now, God knows how it will turn out. An African can think himself to death, they just lie down and die. They are getting to that stage now; if an attack comes they will either go

berserk or curl up and wait with fear.

You can never tell.

Be honest with yourself - you’re not entirely happy either, are you? No, Bruce agreed, it’s the waiting does it.

It came from the edge of the clearing on the far side of the laager. A high-pitched inhuman sound, angry, savage.

Bruce felt his heart trip and he spun round to face it. For a second the whole laager seemed to cringe from it.

It came again. Like a whip across aching nerves. Immediately it was lost in the roar of twenty rifles.

Bruce laughed. Threw his head back and let it come from the belly.

The gunfire stammered into silence and others were laughing also.

The men who had fired grinned sheepishly and made a show of reloading.

It was not the first time that Bruce had been startled by the cry of a yellow hornbill. But now he recognized his laughter and the laughter of the men around him, a mild form of hysteria.

“Did you want the feathers for your hat?” someone shouted and the laughter swept round the laager.

The tension relaxed as the banter was tossed back and forth.

Bruce stood up and brought his own laughter under Control.

No harm done, he decided. For the price of fifty rounds of ammunition, a purchase of an hour’s escape from tension.

A good bargain.

He walked across to Shermaine. She was smiling also.

“How is the catering section?” He grinned at her. “What miracle of the culinary art is there for lunch?”

“Bully beef.”

“And onions?”

“No, just bully beef. The onions are finished.” Bruce stopped smiling.

“How much is left?” he asked.

“One case - enough to last till lunchtime tomorrow.” It would take at least two days to complete the repairs to the bridge; another day’s travel after that.

“Well,” he said, “we should all have healthy appetites by the time we get home. You’ll have to try and spread it out.

Half rations from now on.” He was so engrossed in the study of this new complication that he did not notice the faint hum from outside the laager.

“Captain,” called Jacques. “Can you hear it?” Bruce inclined his head and listened.

“The trucks!” His voice was loud with relief, and instantly there was an excited murmur round the laager.

The waiting was over.

They came growling out of the bush into the clear, Heavily loaded, timber and sheet-iron protruding backwards from under the canopies, sitting low on their suspensions.

Ruffy leaned from the cab of the leading truck and shouted.

“Hello boss. Where shall we dump?”

“Take it up to the bridge.

Hang on a second and I’ll come with you.” Bruce slipped out of the laager and crossed quickly to Ruffy’s truck. He could feel his back tingling while he was in the open and he slammed the door behind him with relief.

“I don’t relish stopping an arrow,” he said.

“You have any trouble while we were gone?”

“No,” Bruce told him.

“But they’re here. They were drumming in the jungle all night.”

“Calling up their buddies,” grunted Ruffy and let out the clutch.

“We’ll have some fun before we finish this bridge.

Most probably take them a day or two to get brave, but in the end they’ll have a go at us.”

“Pull over to the side of the bridge, Ruffy,” Bruce instructed and rolled down his window. “I’ll signal Hendry to pull in beside us. We’ll off-load into the space between the two trucks and start building the corrugated iron shield there.” While

Hendry manoeuvred his truck alongside, Bruce forced himself to look down on the carnage of the beach.

“Crocodiles,” he exclaimed with relief. The paunching racks still stood as he had last seen them, but the reeking pile of human remains was gone. The smell and the flies, however, still lingered.

“During the night,” agreed Ruffy as he surveyed the long slither marks in the sand of the beach.

“Thank God for that.”

“Yeah, it wouldn’t have made my boys too joyful having to clean up that lot.”

“We’ll send someone down to tear out those racks. I don’t want to look at them while we work.”

“No, they’re not very pretty.” Ruffy ran his eyes over the two sets of gallows.

Bruce climbed down into the space between the trucks.

“Hendry.”

“That’s my name.” Wally leaned out of the window.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but the crocs have done the chore for you.”

“I can see. I’m not blind.”

“Very well then. On the assumption

that you are neither blind nor paralysed, how about getting your trucks unloaded?”

“Big deal,” muttered Hendry, but he climbed down and began shouting at the men under the canvas canopy.

“Get the lead out there, you lot. Start jumping about!”

“What were the thickest timbers you could find?” Bruce turned to Ruffy.

“Nine by threes, but we got plenty of them.”

“They’ll do,” decided

Bruce. “We can lash a dozen of them together for each of the main supports.” Frowning with concentration, Bruce began the task of organizing the repairs.

“Hendry, I want the timber stacked by sizes. Put the sheet-iron over there.” He brushed the flies from his face.

“Ruffy, how many hammers have we got?”

“Ten, boss, and I found a couple of handsaws.”

“Good. What about nails and rope?”

“We got

plenty. I got a barrel of six4inch and,-” Preoccupied, Bruce did not notice one of the coloured civilians leave the shelter of the trucks.

He walked a dozen paces towards the bridge and stopped. Then unhurriedly he began to unbutton his trousers and Bruce looked up.

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted and the man started guiltily. He did not understand the English words, but Bruce’s tone was sufficiently clear.

“Monsieur,” he explained, “I wish to-“

“Get back here!” roared

Bruce. The man hesitated in confusion and then he began closing his fly.

“Hurry up - you bloody fool.” Obediently the man hastened the closing of his trousers.

Everyone had stopped work and they were all watching him. His face was dark with embarrassment and he fumbled clumsily.

“Leave that.” Bruce was frantic. “Get back here.” The first arrow rose lazily out of the undergrowth along the river in a silent parabola. Gathering speed in its descent, hissing softly, it dropped into the ground at the man’s feet and stuck up jauntily. A thin reed, fletched with green leaves, it looked harmless as a child’s plaything.

“Run,” screamed Bruce. The man stood and stared with detached disbelief at the arrow.

Bruce started forward to fetch him, but Ruffy’s huge black hand closed on his arm and he was helpless in its grip.

He struck out at Ruffy, struggling to free himself but he could not break that hold.

A swarm of them like locusts on the move, high arching, fluting softly, dropping all around the man as he started to run.

Bruce stopped struggling and watched. He heard the metal heads clanking on the bonnet of the truck, saw them falling wide of the man, some of the frail shafts snapping as they hit the ground.

Then between the shoulders, like a perfectly placed banderilla, one hit him. It flapped against his back as he ran and he twisted his arms behind him, vainly trying to reach it, his face twisted in horror and in pain.

“Hold him down,” shouted Bruce as the coloured man ran into the shelter. Two gendarmes jumped forward, took his arms and forced him face downwards on to the ground.

He was gabbling incoherently with horror as Bruce straddled his back and gripped the shaft. Only half the barbed head had buried itself - a penetration of less than an inch - but when Bruce pulled the shaft it snapped off in his hand leaving the steel twitching in the flesh.

“Knife,” shouted Bruce and someone thrust a bayonet into his hand.

“Watch those barbs, boss. Don’t cut yourself on them.”

“Ruffy, get your boys ready to repel them if they rush us,” snapped Bruce and ripped away the shirt. For a moment he stared at the crudely hand-beaten iron arrowhead. The poison coated it thickly, packed in behind the barbs, looking like sticky black toffee.

He’s dead,” said Ruffy from where he leaned over the “bonnet of the truck. “He just ain’t stopped breathing Yet.” The man screamed and twisted under Bruce as he made the first incision, cutting in deep beside the arrowhead with the point of the bayonet.

“Hendry, get those pliers out of the tool kit.”

“Here they are.”

Bruce gripped the arrowhead with the steel jaws and pulled. The flesh clung to it stubbornly, lifting in a pyramid.

with the bayonet, feeling it tear. Bruce imagined It was like trying to get the hook out of the rubbery mouth of a cat-fish.

“You’re wasting your time, boss!” grunted Ruffy with all eptance of violent death, “the calm African in him, fresh This boy’s a goner. That’s no horse! That’s snake juice mixed. He’s finished.”

“Are You sure, Ruffy!” Bruce looked up, “Are you sure it’s snake venom?”

“That’s what they use. They mix it with kassava meal.”

“Hendry, where’s the snake bite outfit!”

“It’s in the medicine box back at the camp.” Bruce tugged once more at the arrowhead and it came away, leaving a deep black hole between the man’s shoulder blades.

“Everybody into the trucks, we’ve got to get him back.

Every second is vital.”

“Look at his eyes,” grunted Ruffy. “That injection stuff ain’t going to help him much.” The pupils had

contracted to the size of match heads and he was shaking uncontrollably as the poison spread through his body.

“Get him into the truck.” They lifted him into the cab and everybody scrambled aboard. Ruffy started the engine, slammed into reverse and the motor roared as he shot backwards over the intervening thirty yards to the laager.

take him out,” instructed Bruce. “Bring him into the “shelter.”

The man was blubbering through slack lips and he had started to sweat.

Little rivulets of it coursed down his face and naked upper body.

There was hardly any blood from the wound, just a trickle of brownish fluid. The poison must be a coagulant, Bruce decided.

“Bruce, are you all right?” Shermaine ran to meet him.

“Nothing wrong with me.” Bruce remembered to check his tongue this time. “But one of them has been hit.”

“Can I help you?”

“No, I don’t want you to watch.” And he turned from her. “Hendry, where’s that bloody snake bite outfit?” he shouted.

They had dragged the man on a blanket into the laager and laid him in the shade. Bruce went to him and knelt beside him. He took the scarlet tin that Hendry handed him and opened it.

ruffy, get those two trucks worked into the circle and make sure your boys are on their toes. With this success they may get brave sooner than you expected.”

as Bruce fitted the hypodermic needle on to the syringe he spoke. “Hendry, get them to rig some sort of screen round us.

“You can use blankets.” With his thumb he snapped the top off the ampoule and filled the syringe with the pale yellow serum.

“Hold him,” he said to the two gendarmes, lifted a pinch of skin close beside the wound and ran the needle under it.

The man’s skin felt like that of a frog, damp and clammy. As he expelled the serum Bruce was trying to calculate the time that had elapsed since the arrow had hit. Possibly seven or eight minutes, mamba venom kills in fourteen minutes.

“Roll him over,” he said.

The man’s head lolled sideways, his breathing was quick and shallow and the saliva poured from the corners of his mouth, running down his cheeks.

“Get a load of that!”” breathed Wally Hendry, and Bruce glanced up at his face. His expression was a glow of deep sensual pleasure and

his breathing was as quick and shallow as that of the dying man.

“Go and help Ruffy,” snapped Bruce as his stomach heaved with disgust.

“Not on your Nelly. This I’m not going to miss.” Bruce had no time to argue. He lifted the skin of the man’s stomach and ran the needle in again. There was an explosive spitting sound as the bowels started to vent involuntarily.

“Jesus,” whispered Hendry.

“Get away,” snarled Bruce. “Can’t you let him die without gloating over it?” Hopelessly he injected again, under the skin of the chest above the heart. As he emptied the syringe the man’s body twisted violently in the first seizure and the needle snapped off under the skin.

“There he goes,” whispered Hendry, “there he goes. Just look at him, man. That’s really something.” Bruce’s hands were trembling and slowly a curtain descended across his mind.

“You filthy swine,” he screamed and hit Hendry across the face

with his open hand, knocking him back against the side of the gasoline tanker. Then he went for his throat and found it with both hands. The windpipe was ropey and elastic under his thumbs.

“Is nothing sacred to you, you unclean animal?” he yelled into

Hendry’s face. “Can’t you let a man die without,-” Then Ruffy was there, effortlessly plucking Bruce’s hands from the throat, interposing the bulk of his body, holding them away from each other.

“Let it stand, boss.”

“For that,-” gasped Hendry as he massaged his throat.

“For that I’m going to make you pay.” Bruce turned away, sick and ashamed, to the man on the blanket.

“Cover him up.” His voice was shaky. “Put him in the back of one of the trucks. We’ll bury him tomorrow.” before nightfall they had completed the corrugated iron screen. It was a simple four-walled structure with no roof to it. One end of it was detachable and all four walls were pierced at regular intervals with small loop holes for defence.

Long enough to accommodate a dozen men in comfort, high enough to

reach above the heads of the tallest, and exactly the width of the bridge, it was not a thing of beauty.

“How you going to move it, boss?” Ruffy eyed the screen dubiously.

“I’ll show you. We’ll move it back to the camp now, so that in the morning we can commute to work in it.” Bruce selected twelve men

and they crowded through the open end into the shelter, and closed it behind them.

“Okay, Ruffy. Take the trucks away.” Hendry and Ruffy reversed the two trucks back to the laager, leaving the shelter standing at the head of the bridge like a small Nissen hut. Inside it Bruce stationed his men at intervals along the walls.

“Use the bottom timber of the frame to lift on,” he shouted. “Are you all ready? All right, liftv The shelter swayed and rose six inches above the ground.

From the laager they could see only the boots of the men inside.

“All together,” ordered Bruce. “Walk!” Rocking and creaking over the uneven ground the structure moved ponderously back towards the laager. Below it the feet moved like those of a Caterpillar.

The men in the laager started to cheer, and from inside the shelter they answered with whoops of laughter. It was fun. They were enjoying themselves enormously, completely distracted from the horror of poison arrows and the lurking phantoms in the jungle around them.

They reached the camp and lowered the shelter. Then one at a time the gendarmes slipped across the few feet of open ground into the safety of the laager to be met with laughter, and back-slapping and mutual congratulation.

“Well, it works, boss,” Ruffy greeted Bruce in the uproar.

“Yes.” Then he lifted his voice. “That’s enough. Quiet down all of you. Get back to your posts.” The laughter subsided and the confusion became order again. Bruce walked to the centre of the laager and looked about him. There was complete quiet now. They were all watching him. I have read about this so often, he grinned inwardly, the heroic speech to the men on the eve of battle.

Let’s pray I don’t make a hash of it.

“Are you hungry?” he asked loudly in French and received a chorus of hearty affirmatives.

“There is bully beef for dinner.” This time humorous groans.

“And bully beef for breakfast tomorrow,” he paused, “and then it’s finished.” They were silent now.

“So you are going to be truly hungry by the time we cross this river. The sooner we repair the bridge the sooner you’ll get your bellies filled again.” I might as well rub it in, decided Bruce.

“You all saw what happened to the person who went into the open today, so I don’t have to tell you to keep under cover. The sergeant major is making arrangements for sanitation - five-gallon drums. They won’t be very comfortable, so you won’t be tempted to sit too long.”

They laughed a little at that.

“Remember this. As long as you stay in the laager or the shelter they can’t touch you. There is absolutely nothing to fear. They can beat their drums and wait as long as they like, but they can’t harm us.” A murmur of agreement.

And the sooner we finish the bridge the sooner we will be on our way.” Bruce looked round the circle of faces and was satisfied with what he saw. The completion of the shelter had given their morale a boost.