The Dark of the Sun

“All right, Sergeant Jacque. You can start sweeping with the searchlights as soon as it’s dark.” Bruce finished and went across to join Shermaine beside the Ford. He loosed the straps of his helmet and lifted it off his head. His hair was damp with perspiration and he ran his fingers through it.

“You are tired,” Shermaine said softly, examining the dark hollows under -his eyes and the puckered marks of strain at the corners of his mouth.

“No. I’m all right, he denied, but every muscle in his body ached with fatigue and nervous tension.

“Tonight you must sleep all night,” she ordered him. “I will make the bed in the back of the car.” Bruce looked at her quickly. “With you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You do not mind that everyone should know?”

“I am not ashamed of us.” There was a fierceness in her tone.

“I know, but-” “You said once that nothing between you and I could ever be dirty.”

“No, of course it couldn’t be dirty. I just thought-“

“Well then, I love you and from now on we have only one bed between us.” She spoke with finality.

Yesterday she was a virgin, he thought with amazement, and now -

well, now it’s no holds barred. Once she is roused a woman is more reckless of consequences than any man.

They are such wholesale creatures. But she’s right, of course.

She’s my woman and she belongs in my bed. The hell with the rest of the world and what it thinks!

“Make the bed, wench.” He smiled at her tenderly.

Two hours after dark the drum started again. They lay together, holding close, and listened to it. It held no terror now, for they were warm and secure in the afterglow of passion. It was like lying and listening to the impotent fury of a rainstorm on the roof at night.

They went out to the bridge at sunrise, the shelter moving across the open ground like the carapace of a multi-legged metallic turtle.

The men chartered and joked loudly inside, still elated by the novelty

of it.

“All right, everybody. That’s enough talking,” Bruce shouted them down. “There’s work to do now.” And they began.

Within an hour the sun had turned the metal box into an oven.

They stripped to the waist and the sweat dripped from them as they worked. They worked in a frenzy, gripped by a new urgency, oblivious of everything but the roughsawed timber that drove white splinters into their skin at the touch. They worked in the confined heat, amidst the racket of hammers and in the piney smell of sawdust. The labour fell into its own pattern with only an occasional grunted order from Bruce or Ruffy to direct it.

By midday the four main trusses that would span the gap in the bridge had been made up. Bruce tested their rigidity by propping one at both ends and standing all his men on the middle of it. It gave an inch under their combined weight.

“What do you think, boss?” Ruffy asked without conviction.

“Four of them might just do it. We’ll put in kingposts

underneath,” Bruce answered.

“Man, I don’t know. That tanker weighs plenty.”

“It’s no flyweight,” Bruce agreed. “But we’ll have to take the chance. We’ll bring the Ford across first, then the trucks and the tanker last.”

Ruffy nodded and wiped his face on his forearm, the muscles below his armpits knotted as he moved and there was no flabbiness in the powerful

bulge of his belly above his belt.

Thew!” He blew his lips out. “I got the feeling for a beer now.

This thirst is really stalking me.”

“You’ve got some with you?” Bruce asked as he passed his thumbs across his eyebrows and squeezed the moisture from them so it ran down his cheeks.

“Two things I never travel without, my trousers and a stock of the brown and bubbly.” Ruffy picked up the small pack from the corner of the

shelter and it clinked coyly.

“You hear that sound, boss?”

“I hear it, and it sounds like music,” grinned Bruce.

“All right, everybody.” He raised his voice. “Take ten minutes.”

Ruffy opened the bottles and passed them out, issuing one to be shared between three gendarmes. “These Arabs don’t properly appreciate this stuff” he explained to Bruce.

“It’d just be a waste.” The liquor was lukewarm and gassy, it merely aggravated Bruce’s thirst. He drained the bottle and tossed it out of the shelter.

“All right.” He stood up. “Let’s get these trusses into position.”

“That’s the shortest ten minutes I ever lived,” commented

Ruffy.

“Your watch is slow,” said Bruce.

Carrying the trusses within it, the shelter lumbered out on to the bridge. There was no laughter now, only laboured breathing and curses.

“Fix the ropes!” commanded Bruce. He tested the knots personally, then looked up at Ruffy and nodded.

“That’ll do.”

“Come on, you mad bastards,” Ruffy growled. “Lift it.” The first truss rose to the perpendicular and swayed there like a grotesque maypole with the ropes hanging from its top.

“Two men on each rope,” ordered Bruce. “Let it down gently.” He glanced round to ensure that they were all ready.

“Drop it over the edge, and I’ll throw you bastards in after it,” warned Ruffy.

“Lower away!” shouted Bruce.

The truss leaned out over the gap towards the fire-blackened stump

of bridge on the far side slowly at first, then faster as gravity took it.

“Hold it, damn you. Hold it!” roared Ruffy with the muscles in his shoulders humped out under the strain. They lay back against the ropes, but the weight of the truss dragged them forward as it fell.

It crashed down across the gap, lifted a cloud of dead wood ash as it struck, and lay there quivering.

“Man, I thought we’d lost that one for sure,” growled Ruffy, then turned savagely on his men.

“You bastards better be sharper with the next one - if you don’t want to swim this river.” They repeated the process with the second truss, and again they could not hold its falling length, but this time they were not so lucky. The end of the truss hit the far side, bounced and slid sideways.

“It’s going! Pull, you bastards, pull!” shouted Ruffy.

The truss toppled slowly sideways an dover the edge. It hit the river below them with a splash, disappeared under the surface, then bobbed up and floated away downstream until checked by the ropes.

Both Bruce and Ruffy filmed and swore during the lengthy exasperating business of dragging it back against the current and manhandling its awkward bulk back on to the bridge.

Half a dozen times it slipped at the crucial moment and splashed back into the river.

Despite his other virtues, Ruffy’s vocabulary of cursing words was limited and it added to his frustration that he had to keep repeating himself. Bruce did much better - he remembered things that he had heard and he made up a few.

When finally they had the dripping baulk of timber back on the bridge and were resting, Ruffy turned to Bruce with honest admiration.

“You swear pretty good,” he said. “Never heard you before, but no doubt about it, you’re good! What’s that one about the cow again?” Bruce repeated it for him a little self-consciously.

“You make that up yourself?” asked Ruffy.

“Spur of the moment,” laughed Bruce.

“That’s “bout the dirtiest I ever heard.” Ruffy could not conceal his envy. “Man, you should write a book.” “Let’s get this bridge finished first,” said Bruce. “Then I’ll think about it.” Now the truss was almost servile in its efforts to please.

It dropped neatly across the gap and lay beside its twin.

“You curse something good enough, and it works every time,” Ruffy announced sagely. “I think your one about the cow made all the difference, boss.” With two trusses in position they had broken the back of the project. They carried the shelter out and set it on the trusses, straddling the gap. The third and fourth trusses were dragged into position and secured with ropes and nails before nightfall.

When the shelter waddled wearily back to the laager at dusk, the men within it were exhausted. Their hands were bleeding and bristled with wood splinters, but they were also mightily pleased with themselves.

Sergeant Jacque, keep one of your searchlights trained on the bridge all night. We don’t want our friends to come out and set fire to it again.”

“There are only a few hours” life left in each of the batteries.” Jacque kept his voice low.

at a time then.” Bruce spoke without hesitation.

“We must have that bridge lit up all night.

“You think you could spare a beer for each of the boys that worked

on the bridge today?”

“A whole one each!” Ruffy was shocked. “I only got a Couple cases left.” Bruce fixed him with a stern eye and Ruffy grinned.

“Okay, boss. Guess they’ve earned it.” Bruce transferred his attention to Wally Hendry who sat on the running-board of one of the trucks cleaning his nails with the point of his bayonet.

“Everything under control here, Hendry?” he asked coolly.

“Sure, what’d you think would happen? We’d have a visit from the archbishop? The sky’d fall in? Your French thing’d have twins or something?” He looked up from his nails at Bruce. “When are you jokers going to get that bridge finished, instead of wandering around asking damn-fool questions?”

“You’ve got the Bruce was too tired to feel annoyed.

night watch, Hendry,” he said, “from now until dawn.”

“Is that right, hey? And you? What’re you going to do all night, or does that question make you blush?”

“I’m going to sleep, that’s what I’m going to do. I haven’t been lolling round camp all day.” Hendry pegged the bayonet into the earth between his feet and snorted.

“Well, give her a little bit of sleep for me too, Bucko.” Bruce left him and crossed to the Ford.

“Hello, Bruce. How did it go today? I missed you,” Shermaine greeted him, and her face lit up as she looked at him. It is a good feeling to be loved, and some of Bruce’s fatigue lifted.

“About half finished, another day’s work.” Then he smiled back at her. “I won’t lie and say I missed you - I’ve been too damn busy.” “Your hands!” she said with quick concern and lifted them to examine them. “They’re in a terrible state.”

“Not very pretty, are they?”

“Let me get a needle from my case. I’ll get the splinters out.” From across the laager Wally Hendry caught Bruce’s eye and with one hand made a

suggestive sign below his waist.

Then, at Bruce’s frown of anger, he threw back his head and laughed with huge delight.

ruce’s stomach grumbled with hunger as he stood with Ruffy and

Hendry beside the cooking fire. In the early morning light he could just make out the dark shape of the bridge at the end of the clearing.

That drum was still beating in the jungle, but they hardly noticed it now. It was taken for granted like the mosquitoes. “The batteries are finished,” grunted Ruffy. The feeble yellow beam of the searchlight reached out tiredly towards the bridge.

“Only just lasted the rught,” agreed Bruce.

“Christ, I’m hungry,” complained Hendry. “What could I do to a couple of fried eggs and a porterhouse steak.” At the mention of food

Bruce’s mouth flooded with saliva. He shut his mind against the picture that Wally’s words had evoked in his imagination.

“We won’t be able to finish the bridge and get the trucks across today,” he said, and Ruffy agreed.

“There’s a full day’s work left on her, boss.”

“This is what we’ll do then,” Bruce went on. “I’ll take the work party out to the bridge.

Hendry, you will stay here in the laager and cover us the same as yesterday. And Ruffy, you take one of the trucks and a dozen of your boys. Go back ten miles or so to where the forest is open and they won’t be able to creep up on you. Then cut us a mountain of firewood; thick logs that will burn all night. We will set a ring of watch fires round the camp tonight.”

“That makes sense, , Ruffy nodded. “But what

about the bridge?”

“We’ll have to put a guard on it,” said Bruce, and the -expressions on their faces changed as they thought about this.

“More pork chops for the boys in the bushes,” growled Hendry.

“You won’t catch me sitting out on the bridge anight.”

“No one’s asking you to,” snapped Bruce. “All right, Ruffy.

Go and fetch the wood, and plenty of it.” Bruce completed the repairs to the bridge in the late afternoon. The most anxious period was in the middle of the day when he and four men had to leave the shelter and clamber down on to the supports a few feet above the surface of the river to set the kingposts in place. Here they were exposed at random range to arrows from the undergrowth along the banks.

But no arrows came and they finished the job and climbed back to safety again with something of a sense of anticlimax.

They nailed the crossties over the trusses and then roped everything into a compact mass.

Bruce stood back and surveyed the fruit of two full days” labour.

“Functional,” he decided, speaking aloud. “But we certainly aren’t going to win any prizes for aesthetic beauty or engineering design.” He picked up his jacket and thrust his arms into the sleeves; his sweaty upper body was cold now that the sun was almost down.

Home, gentlemen,” he said, and his gendarmes scattered to their positions inside the shelter.

The metal shelter circled the laager, squatting every twenty or thirty paces like an old woman preparing to relieve herself. When it lifted and moved on it left a log fire behind it. The ring of fires was completed by dark and the shelter returned to the laager.

“Are you ready, Ruffy?” From inside the shelter Bruce called across to where Ruffy waited.

“All set, boss.” Followed by six heavily armed. gendarmes, Ruffy crossed quickly to join Bruce and they set off to begin their all night vigil on the bridge.

Before midnight it was cold in the corrugated iron shelter, for the wind blew down the river and they were completely exposed to it, and there was no cloud cover to hold the day’s warmth against the earth.

The men in the shelter huddled under their gas capes and waited.

Bruce and Ruffy leaned together against the corrugated iron wall, their shoulders almost touching, and there was sufficient light from the stars to light the interior of the shelter and allow them to make out the guard rails of the bridge through the open ends.

“Moon will be up in an hour,” murmured Ruffy.

“Only a quarter of it, but it will give us a little more light,” Bruce concurred, and peered down into the black hole between his feet where he had prised up one of the newly laid planks.

“How about taking a shine with the torch?” suggested Ruffy.

“No.” Bruce shook his head, and passed the flashlight into his other hand. “Not until I hear them.”

“You might not hear them.”

“If they swim downstream and climb up the piles, which is what I expect, then we’ll hear them all right. They’ll be dripping water all over the place,” said Bruce.

“Kanaki and his boys didn’t hear them,” Ruffy pointed out.

“Kanaki and his boys weren’t listening for it,” said Bruce.

They were silent then for a while. One of the gendarmes started to snore softly and Ruffy shot out a huge booted foot that landed in

the small of his back. The man cried out and scrambled to his knees, looking wildly about him.

“You have nice dreams?” Ruffy asked pleasantly.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” the man protested. “I was thinking.”

“Well, don’t think so loudly,” Ruffy advised him. “Sounds though you sawing through the bridge with a cross cut.” Another half hour dragged itself by like a cripple.

“Fires are burning well,” commented Ruffy, and Bruce turned his head and glanced through the loophole in the corrugated iron behind him at the little garden of orange flame-flowers in the darkness.

“Yes, they should last till morning.” Silence again, with only the singing of the mosquitoes and the rustle of the river as it flowed by the piles of the bridge. Shermaine has my pistol, Bruce remembered with a small trip in his pulse, I should have taken it back from her.

He unclipped the bayonet from the muzzle of his rifle, tested the edge of the blade with his thumb, and slid it into the scabbard on his

web-belt. Could easily lose the rifle if we start mixing it in the dark, he decided.

“Christ, I’m hungry,” grunted Ruffy beside him.

“You’re too fat,” said Bruce. “The diet will do you good.” And they waited.

Bruce stared down into the hole in the floorboards. His eyes began weaving fantasies out of the darkness, he could see vague shapes that moved, like things seen below the sud ce of the sea. His stomach tightened and he fought the impulse to shine his flashlight into the hole. He closed his eyes to rest them. I will count slowly to ten, he decided, and then look again.

Ruffy’s hand closed on his upper arm; the pressure of his fingers transmitted alarm like a current of electricity. Bruce’s eyelids flew open.

Listen,” breathed Ruffy.

Bruce heard it. The stealthy drip of water on water below them.

Then something bumped the bridge, but so softly that he felt rather than heard the jar.

“Yes,” Bruce whispered back. He reached out and tapped the shoulder of the gendarme beside him and the man’s body stiffened at his

touch.

With his breath scratching his dry throat, Bruce waited until he was sure the warning had been passed to all his men. Then he shifted the weight of his rifle from across his knees and aimed down into the hole.

He drew in a deep breath and switched on the flashlight.

The beam shot down and he looked along it over his rifle barrel.

The square aperture in the floorboards formed a frame for the picture that flashed into his eyes. Black bodies, naked, glossy with wetness, weird patterns of tattoo marks, a face staring up at him, broad sloped forehead above startlingly white eyes and flat nose. The

long gleaming blade of a panga. Clusters of humanity clinging to the wooden piles like ticks on the legs of a beast. Legs and arms and shiny trunks merged into a single organism, horrible as some slimy sea-creature.

Bruce fired into it. His rifle shuddered against his shoulder and the long orange spurts from its muzzle gave the picture a new flickering horror. The mass of bodies heaved, and struggled like a pack of rats trapped in a dry well. They dropped splashing into the river, swarmed up the timber piles, twisting and writhing as the bullets hit them, screaming, babbling over the sound of the rifle.

Bruce’s weapon clicked empty and he groped for a new magazine.

Ruffy and his gendarmes were hanging over the guard rails of the bridge, firing downwards, sweeping the piles below them with long bursts, the flashes lighting their faces and outlining their bodies against the sky.

“They’re still coming!” roared Ruffy. “Don’t let them get over the side.” Out of the hole at Bruce’s feet thrust the head and naked upper body of a man. There was a panga in his hand; he slashed at

Bruce’s legs, his eyes glazed in the beam of the flashlight.

Bruce jumped back and the knife missed his knees by inches. The man wormed his way out of the hole towards Bruce. He was screaming

shrilly, a high meaningless sound. Bruce lunged with the barrel

of his empty rifle at the contorted black face. All his weight was behind that thrust and the muzzle went into the Baluba’s eye. “The foresight and four inches of the barrel disappeared into his head, stopping only when it hit bone. Colourless fluid from the burst eyeball gushed from round the protruding steel.

Tugging and twisting, Bruce tried to free the rifle, but the foresight had buried itself like the barb of a fish hook.

The Baluba had dropped his panga and was clinging to the rifle barrel with both hands. He was wailing and rolling on his back upon the floorboards, his head jerking every time Bruce tried to pull the muzzle out of his head.

Beyond him the head and shoulders of another Baluba appeared through the aperture.

Bruce dropped his rifle and gathered up the fallen panga; he jumped over the writhing body of the first Baluba and lifted the heavy knife above his head with both hands.

The man was jammed in the hole, powerless to protect himself. He

looked up at Bruce and his mouth fell open.

Two-handed, as though he were chopping wood, Bruce swung his whole body into the stroke. The shock jarred his shoulders and he felt blood

splatter his legs. The untempered blade snapped off at the hilt and stayed imbedded in the Baluba’s skull.

Panting heavily, Bruce straightened up and looked wildly about him. Baluba were swarming over the guard rail on one side of the bridge. The starlight glinted on their wet skins. One of his gendarmes was lying in a dark huddle, his head twisted back and his rifle still in his hands. Ruffy and the other gendarmes were still firing down over the far side.

“Ruffy!” shouted Bruce. “Behind you! They’re coming over!” and he dropped the handle of the panga and ran towards the body of the gendarme. He needed that rifle.

Before he could reach it the naked body of a Baluba rushed at him.

Bruce ducked under the sweep of the panga and grappled with him. They fell locked together, the man’s body slippery and sinuous against him, and the smell of him fetid as rancid butter.

Bruce found the pressure point below the elbow of his knife arm and dug in with his thumb. The Baluba yelled and his panga clattered on the floorboards. Bruce wrapped his arm round the man’s neck while with his free hand he reached for his bayonet.

The Baluba was clawing for Bruce’s eyes with his fingers, his nails scored the side of Bruce’s nose, but Bruce had his bayonet out now. He placed the point against the man’s chest and pressed it in.

He felt the steel scrape against the bone of a rib and the man redoubled his struggles at the sting of it. Bruce twisted the blade, working it in with his wrist, forcing the man’s head backwards with his

other arm.

The point of the bayonet scraped over the bone and found the gap between. Like taking a virgin, suddenly the resistance to its entrance was gone and it slid home full length. The Baluba’s body jerked mechanically and the bayonet twitched in Bruce’s fist.

Bruce did not even wait for the man to die. He pulled the blade out against the sucking reluctance of tissue that clung to it and scrambled to his feet in time to see Ruffy pick another Baluba from his feet and hurl him bodily over the guard rail.

Bruce snatched the rifle from the gendarme’s dead hands and stepped to the guard rail. They were coming over the side, those below shouting and pushing at the ones above.

Like shooting a row of sparrows from a fence with a shotgun, thought Bruce grimly, and with one long burst he cleared the rail.

Then he leaned out and sprayed the piles below the bridge. The rifle was empty. He reloaded with a magazine from his pocket. But it was all over. They were dropping back into the river, the piles below the bridge were clear of men, their heads bobbed away downstream.

Bruce lowered his rifle and looked about him. Three of his gendarmes were killing the man that Bruce had wounded, standing over him and grunting as they thrust down with their bayonets. The man was still wailing.

Bruce looked away.

One horn of the crescent moon showed above the trees; it had a gauzy halo about it.

Bruce lit a cigarette and behind him those gruesome noises ceased.

“Are you okay, boss?”

“Yes, I’m fine. How about you, Ruffy?”

“I got me a terrible thirst now. Hope nobody trod on my pack.” About four minutes from the first shot to the last, Bruce guessed. That’s the way of war, seven hours of waiting and boredom, then four minutes of frantic endeavour. Not only of war either, he thought. The whole of life is like that.

Then he felt the trembling in his thighs and the first spasm of

nausea as the reaction started.

“What’s happening?” A shout floated across from the laager. Bruce recognized Hendry’s voice. “Is everything all right?”

“We’ve beaten them off,” Bruce shouted back. “Everything under control. You can go to sleep again,” And now I have got to sit down quickly, he told

himself.

Except for the tattoos upon his cheeks and forehead the dead

Baluba’s features were little different from those of the Barnbala and

Bakuha men who made up the bulk of Bruce’s command.

Bruce played the flashlight over the corpse. The arms and legs were thin but stringy with muscle, and the belly bulged out from years of malnutrition. It was an ugly body, gnarled and crabbed. With distaste Bruce moved the light back to the features. The bone of the skull formed harsh angular planes beneath the skin, the nose was flattened and the thick lips had about them a repellent brutality.

They were drawn back slightly to reveal the teeth which had been filed to sharp points like those of a shark.

“This is the last one, boss. I’ll toss him overboard.” Ruffy spoke in the darkness beside Bruce.

“Good.” Ruffy heaved and grunted, the corpse splashed below them and Ruffy wiped his hands on the guard rail, then came to sit beside

Bruce.

“Goddam apes.” Ruffy’s voice was full of the bitter tribal antagonism of Africa. “When we get shot of these U.N. people there’ll be a bit of sorting out to do. They’ve got a few things to learn, these bloody Baluba.” And so it goes, thought Bruce, Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, black and white, Bambala and

Baluba.

He checked the time, another two hours to dawn. His nervous reaction from physical violence had abated now; the hand that held the cigarette no longer trembled.

“They won’t come again,” said Ruffy. “You can get some sleep now if you want. I’ll keep an eye open, boss.”

“No, thanks. I’ll wait with you.” His nerves had not settled down enough for sleep.

“How’s it for a beer?”

“Thanks.” Bruce sipped the beer and stared out at the watch fires round the laager. They had burned down to puddles of red ash but Bruce knew that Ruffy was right. The Baluba would not attack again that night.

“So how do you like freedom?”

“How’s that, boss?” The question puzzled Ruffy and he turned to Bruce questioningly.

all?

“How do you like it now the Belgians have gone?”

“It’s pretty good, I reckon.”

“And if Tshombe has to give in to the Central

Government?”

“Those mad Arabs!” snarled Ruffy. “All they want is our copper. They’re going to have to get up early in the morning to take

it. We’re in the saddle here.” The great jousting tournament of the

African continent.

“I’m in the saddle, try to unhorse me! As in all matters of survival it was not a question of ethics and political doctrine (except to the spectators in Whitehall, Moscow, Washington and Peking). There were big days coming, thought Bruce. My own country, when she blows, is going to make Algiers look like an old ladies-sewing circle.

The sun was up, throwing long shadows out into the clearing, and

Bruce stood beside the Ford and looked across the bridge at the

corrugated iron shelter on the far bank.

He relaxed for a second and let his mind run unhurriedly over his preparations for the crossing. Was there something left undone, some disposition which could make it more secure?

Hendry and a dozen men were in the shelter across the bridge, ready to meet any attack on that side.

Shermaine would take the Ford across first. Then the lorries would follow her. They would cross empty to minimize the danger of the bridge collapsing, or being weakened for the passage of the tanker.

After each lorry had crossed, Hendry would shuttle its load and passengers over in the shelter and deposit them under the safety of the canvas canopy.

The last lorry would go over fully loaded. That was regrettable but unavoidable.

Finally Bruce himself would drive the tanker across. Not as an act of heroism, although it was the most dangerous business of the morning, but because he would trust no one else to do it, not even

Ruffy. The five hundred gallons of fuel it contained was their safe-conduct home. Bruce had taken the precaution of filling all the gasoline tanks in the convoy in case of accidents, but they would need replenishing before they reached Msapa junction.

He looked down at Shermaine in the driver’s seat of the Ford.

“Keep it in low gear, take her over slowly but steadily.

Whatever else you do, don’t stop.” She nodded. She was composed and she smiled at him.

Bruce felt a stirring of pride as he looked at her, so small and lovely, but today she was doing man’s work. He went on. “As soon as you are over, I will send one of the trucks after you. Hendry will put six of his men into it and then come back for the others.”

“Oui, Monsieur Bonaparte.”

“You’ll pay for that tonight,” he threatened her. ““Now you go. Shermaine let out the clutch and the Ford bounced over rough ground to the road, accelerated smoothly out on to the bridge.

Bruce held his breath, but there was only a slight check and sway as it crossed the repaired section.

“Thank God for that.” Bruce let out his breath and watched while - the line drew up alongside the shelter.

Bruce shouted “Next!” colod was ready at the wheel of the first truck. The man smiled his cheerful chubby-faced smile, waved, and the truck rolled forward.

Watching anxiously as it went on to the bridge, Bruce saw the new timbers give perceptibly beneath the weight of the truck, and he heard them creak loudly in protest.

“Not so good,” he muttered.

“No-” agreed Ruffy. “Boss, why don’t you let someone else take the tanker over?”

“We’ve been over that already,” Bruce

answered him without turning his head. Across the river Hendry was transferring his men from the shelter to the back of the truck.

Then the shelter started its tedious way back towards them.

Bruce fretted impatiently during the four hours that it took to get four trucks across. The long business was the shuttling back and forth of the corrugated iron shelter, at least ten minutes for each trip.

Finally there was only the fifth truck and the tanker left on the north bank. Bruce started the engine of the tanker and put her into auxiliary low, then he blew a single blast on the horn. The driver of the truck ahead of him waved an acknowledgement and pulled forward.

The truck reached the bridge and went out into the middle. It was fully loaded, twenty men aboard. It came to the repaired section and

slowed down, almost stopping.

“Go on! Keep it going, damn you,” Bruce shouted in impotent anger. The fool of a driver was forgetting his orders. He crawled forward and the bridge gave alarmingly under the full weight, the high canopied roof rocked crazily, and even above the rumble of his own engine Bruce could hear the protesting groan of the bridge timbers.

“The fool, oh, the bloody fool,” whispered Bruce to himself.

Suddenly he felt very much alone and unprotected here on the north bank with the bridge being mutilated by the incompetence of the truck driver.

He started the tanker moving.

Ahead of him the other driver had panicked. He was racing his engine, the rear wheels spun viciously, blue smoke of scorched tyres, and one of the floorboards tore loose. Then the truck lurched forward and roared up the south bank.

Bruce hesitated, applying the brakes and bringing the tanker to a standstill on the threshold of the bridge.

He thought quickly. The sensible thing would be to repair the damage to the bridge before chancing it with the weight of the tanker.

But that would mean another day’s delay. None of them had eaten since the previous morning. Was he justified in gambling against even odds, for that’s what they were? A fifty-fifty chance, heads you get across, tails you dump the tanker in the middle of the river.

Then unexpectedly the decision was made for him.

From across the river a Bren gun started firing. Bruce jumped in his seat and looked up. Then a dozen other guns joined in and the tracer flew past the tanker. They were firing across towards him, close on eachside of him. Bruce struggled to drag from his uncomprehending brain an explanation of this new development. Suddenly

everything was moving too swiftly. Everything was confusion and chaos.

Movement in the rear-view mirror of the tanker caught his eye. He stared at it blankly. Then he twisted quickly in his seat and looked back.

“Christ!” he swore with fright.

From the edge of the jungle on both sides of the clearing Baluba were swarming into the open. Hundreds of them running towards him, the animal-skin kilts swirling about their legs, feather headdresses fluttering, sun bright on the long blades of their pangas. An arrow rang dully against the metal body of the tanker.

Bruce revved the engine, gripped the wheel hard with both hands and took the tanker out on to the bridge. Above the sound of the guns he could hear the shrill ululation, the excited squealing of two hundred Baluba. It sounded very close, and he snatched a quick look in the mirror. What he saw nearly made him lose his head and give the tanker full throttle. The nearest Baluba, screened from the guns on the south bank by the tanker’s bulk, was only ten paces away.

So close that Bruce could see the tattoo marks on his face and chest.

With an effort Bruce restrained his right foot from pressing down too hard, and instead he bore down on the repaired section of the bridge at a sedate twenty miles an hour. He tried to close his mind to the squealing behind him and the thunder of gunfire ahead of him.

The front wheels hit the new timbers, and above the other sounds he heard them groan loudly, and felt them sag under him.

The tanker rolled on and the rear wheels brought their weight to bear. The groan of wood became a cracking, rending sound. The tanker slowed as the bridge subsided, its wheels spun without purchase, it tilted sideways, no longer moving forward.

A sharp report, as one of the main trusses broke, and Bruce felt the tanker drop sharply at the rear; its nose pointed upwards and it started to slide back.

“Get outv his brain shrieked at him. “Get out, it’s falling!” He reached for the door handle beside him, but at that moment the bridge collapsed completely. The tanker rolled off the edge.

Bruce was hurled across the cab with a force that stunned him, his legs wedged under the passenger seat and his arms tangled in the strap of his rifle. The tanker fell free and Bruce felt his stomach swoop up and press against his chest as though he rode a giant roller coaster.

The sickening drop lasted only an instant, and then the tanker hit the river. Immediately the sounds of gunfire and the screaming of

Baluba were drowned out as the tanker disappeared below the surface.

Through the windscreen Bruce saw now the cool cloudy green of water, as though he looked into the windows of an aquarium. With a gentle rocking motion the tanker sank-down through the green water.

“Oh, my God, not this!” He spoke aloud as he struggled up from the floor of the cab. His ears were filled with the hiss and belch of escaping air bubbles; they rose in silver clouds past the windows.

The truck was still sinking, and Bruce felt the pain in his eardrums as the pressure built up inside the cab. He opened his mouth and swallowed convulsively, and his eardrums squeaked as the pressure equalized and the pain abated.

Water was squirting in through the floor of the cab and jets of it spurted out of the instrument panel of the dashboard.

The cab was flooding.

Bruce twisted the handle of the door beside him and hit it with his shoulder. It would not budge an inch. He flung all his weight against it, anchoring his feet on the dashboard and straining until he felt his eyeballs starting out of their sockets. It was jammed solid

by the immense pressure of water on the outside.

“The windscreen,” he shouted aloud. “Break the windscreen.” He groped for his rifle. The cab had flooded to his waist as he sat in

the passenger’s seat. He found the rifle and brought it dripping to his shoulder. He touched the muzzle to the windscreen and almost fired. But his good sense warned him.

Clearly he saw the danger of firing. The concussion in the confined cab would burst his eardrums, and the avalanche of broken glass that would be thrown into his face by the water pressure outside

would certainly blind and maim him.

He lowered the rifle despondently. He felt his panic being slowly replaced by the cold certainty of defeat. He was trapped fifty feet below the surface of the river. There was no way out.

He thought of turning the rifle on himself, ending the inevitable, but he rejected the idea almost as soon as it had formed. Not that way, never that way!

He flogged his mind, driving it out of the cold lethargic clutch of certain death. There must be something. Think!

Damn you, think!

The tanker was still rocking; it had not yet settled into the ooze of the river bottom. How long had he been under?

About twenty seconds. Surely it should have hit the bottom long ago.

Unless! Bruce felt hope surge into new life within him.

The tank! By God, that was it.

The great, almost empty tank behind him! The fivethousand-gallon

tank which now contained only four hundred gallons of gasoline - it would have a displacement of nearly eighteen tons! It would float.

As if in confirmation of his hope, he felt his eardrums creak and pop. The pressure was falling! He was rising.

Bruce stared out at green water through the glass. The silver clouds of bubbles no longer streamed upwards; they seemed to hang outside the cab. The tanker had overcome the initial impetus that had driven it far below the surface, and now it was floating upwards at the same rate of ascent as its bubbles.

The dark green of deep water paled slowly to the colour of

Chartreuse. And Bruce laughed. It was a gasping hysterical giggle and the sound of it shocked him. He cut it off abruptly.

The tanker bobbed out on to the surface, water streamed from the windscreen and through it Bruce caught a misty distorted glimpse of the south bank.

He twisted the door handle and this time the door burst open readily, water poured into the cab and Bruce floundered out against its rush, With one quick glance he took in his position. The tanker had floated down twenty yards below the bridge, the guns on the south bank

had fallen silent, and he could see no Baluba on the north bank. They must have disappeared back into the jungle.

Bruce plunged into the river and struck out for the south bank.

Vaguely he heard the thin high shouts of encouragement from his gendarmes.

Within a dozen strokes he knew he was in difficulties.

The drag of his boots and his sodden uniform was enormous.

Treading water he tore off his steel helmet and let it sink.

Then he tried to struggle out of his battle-jacket. It clung to his arms and chest and he disappeared under the surface four times before he finally got rid of it. He had breathed water into his lungs and his legs were tired and heavy.

The south bank was too far away. He would never make it.

Coughing painfully he changed his objective and struck upstream against

the current towards the bridge.

He felt himself settling lower in the water; he had to force his arms to lift and fall forward into each stroke.

1 Something plopped into the water close beside him. He paid no attention to it; suddenly a sense of disinterest had come over him, the first stage of drowning. He mistimed a breath and sucked in more water. The pain of it goaded him into a fresh burst of coughing. He hung in the water, gasping and hacking painfully.

Again something plopped close by, and this time he lifted his head. An arrow floated past him - then they began dropping steadily around him.

Baluba hidden in the thick bush above the beach were shooting at him; a gentle pattering rain of arrows splashed around his head. Bruce started swimming again, clawing his way frantically upstream. He swam until he could no longer lift his arms clear of the surface and the weight of his boots dragged his feet down.

Again he lifted his head. The bridge was close, not thirty feet away, but he knew that those thirty feet were as good as thirty miles.

He could not make it.

The arrows that fell about him were no longer a source f terror.

He thought of them only with mild irritation.

Why the hell can’t they leave me alone? I don’t want to play any more. I just want to relax. I’m so tired, so terribly tired.

He stopped moving and felt the water rise up coolly over his mouth and nose.

Hold on, boss. I’m coming.” The shout penetrated through the grey fog of Bruce’s drowning brain. He kicked and his head rose once more above the surface. He looked up at the bridge.

Stark naked, big belly swinging with each pace, thick legs flying, the great dangling bunch of his genitals bouncing merrily, black as a charging hippopotamus, Sergeant Major Ruffararo galloped out along the bridge.

He reached the fallen section and hauled himself up on to the guard rail. The arrows were falling around him, hissing down like angry insects. One glanced off his shoulder without penetrating and

Ruffy shrugged at it, then launched himself up and out, falling in an ungainly heap of arms and legs to hit the water with a splash.

“Where the hell are you, boss?” Bruce croaked a water-strangled reply and Ruffy came ploughing down towards him with clumsy overarm

strokes.

He reached Bruce.

“Always playing around,” he grunted. “Guess some guys never learn!” His fist closed on a handful of Bruce’s hair.

Struggling unavailingly Bruce felt his head tucked firmly under

Ruffy’s arm and he was dragged through the water.

Occasionally his face came out long enough to suck a breath but mostly he was under water. Consciousness receded and he felt himself going, going.

His head bumped against something hard but he was too weak to reach out his hand.

“Wake up, boss. You can have a sleep later.” Ruffy’s voice bellowed in his ear. He opened his eyes and saw beside him the pile of the bridge.

“Come on. I can’t carry you up here.” Ruffy had worked round the side of the pile, shielding them from arrows, but the current was strong here, tugging at their bodies. Without the strength to prevent it Bruce’s head rolled sideways and his face flopped forward into the water.

“Come on, wake up.” With a stinging slap Ruffy’s open hand hit

Bruce across the cheek. The shock roused him, he coughed and a mixture of water and vomit shot up his throat and out of his mouth and nose.

Then he blenched painfully and retched again.

“How’s it feel now?” Ruffy demanded.

Bruce lifted a hand from the water and wiped his mouth.

He felt much better.

“Okay? Can you make it?” Bruce nodded.

“Let’s go then.” With Ruffy dragging and pushing him, he worked his way up the pile. Water poured from his clothing as his body emerged, his hair was plastered across his forehead and he could feel each breath gurgle in his lungs.

“Listen boss. When we get to the top we’ll be in the open again.

There’ll be more arrows - not time to sit around and chat. We’re going over the rail fast and then run like hell, okay?” Bruce nodded again.

Above him were the floorboards of the bridge. With one hand he reached

up and caught an upright of the tie guard rail, and he hung there,-

without strength to pull himself the rest of the way.

“Hold it there,” grunted Ruffy and Wriggled his shiny wet bulk up and over.

The arrows started falling again; one pegged into the wood six inches from Bruce’s face and stood there quivering.

Slowly Bruce’s grip relaxed. I can’t hold on, he thought, I’m going.

Then Ruffy’s hand closed on his wrist, he felt himself dragged up, his legs dangled. He hung suspended by one arm and the water swirled smoothly past twenty feet below.

Slowly he was drawn upwards, his chest scraped over the guard rail, tearing his shirt, then he tumbled over it into an untidy heap on the bridge.

Vaguely he heard the guns firing on the south bank, the flit and thump of the arrows, and Ruffy’s voice.

“Come on, boss. Get up.” He felt himself being lifted and dragged along. With his legs boneless soft under him, he staggered beside

Ruffy.

Then there were no more arrows; the timbers of the bridge became solid earth under his feet. Voices and hands on him. He was being lifted, then lowered face down on to the wooden floor of a truck. The rhythmic pressure on his chest as someone started artificial respiration above him, the warm gush of water up his throat, and

Shermaine’s voice. He could not understand what she was saying, but just the sound of it was enough to make him realize he was safe.

Darkly through the fog he became aware that her voice was the most important sound in his life.

He vomited again.

Hesitantly at first, and then swiftly, Bruce came back from the

edge of oblivion.

“That’s enough,” he mumbled and rolled out from under Sergeant

Jacque who was administering the artificial respiration. The movement started a fresh paroxysm of coughing and he felt Shermaine’s hands on his shoulders restraining him.

“Bruce, you must rest.”

“No.” He struggled into a sitting position. “We’ve got to get out into the open,” he gasped.

“No hurry, boss. We’ve left all the Balubes on the other bank.

There’s a river between us.”

“How do you know?” Bruce challenged him.

“Well-“

“You don’t!” Bruce told him flatly. “There could easily be another few hundred on this side.” He coughed again painfully and then went on. “We’re leaving in five minutes, get them ready.”

“Okay.”

Ruffy turned to leave.

“Ruffy!”

“Boss?” He turned back expectantly.

“Thank you.” Ruffy grinned self-consciously. “At’s all right. I

needed a wash anyway.”

“I’ll buy you a drink when we get home.” “I wont forget,” Ruffy warned him, and climbed down out of the truck.

Bruce heard him shouting to his boys.

“I thought I’d lost you.” Shermaine’s arm was still round his shoulders and Bruce looked at her for the first time.

“My sweet girl, you won’t get rid of me that easily,” he assured her. He was feeling much better now.

“Bruce, I want to - I can’t explain-” Unable to find the words she leaned forward instead and kissed him, full on the mouth.

When they drew apart, Sergeant Jacque and the two gendarmes with him were grinning delightedly.

“There is nothing wrong with you now, Captain.”

“No, there isn’t,” Bruce agreed. “Make your preparations for departure.” From the passenger seat of the Ford Bruce took one last look at the bridge.

The repaired section hung like a broken drawbridge into the water.

Beyond it on the far bank were scattered a few dead Baluba, like celluloid dolls in the sunlight. Far downstream the gasoline tanker had been washed by the current against the beach. It lay on its side, half-submerged in the shallows and the white Shell insignia showed clearly.

And the river flowed on, green and inscrutable, with the jungle pressing close along its banks.

“Let’s get away from here,” said Bruce.

Shermaine started the engine and the convoy of trucks followed them along the track through the belt of thick river bush and into the open forest again.

Bruce looked at his watch. The inside of the glass was dewed with moisture and he lifted it to his ear.

“Damn thing has stopped. What’s your time?”

“Twenty minutes to one.”

“Half the day wasted,” Bruce grumbled.

“Will we reach Msapa Junction before dark?”

“No, we won’t. For two good reasons. Firstly, it’s too far, and secondly, we haven’t enough gas.”

“What are you going to do?” Her voice was unruffled, already she had complete faith in him. I wonder how long it will last, he mused cynically. At first you’re a god. You have not a single human weakness. They set a standard for You, and the standard is perfection. Then the first time you fall short of it, their whole

world blows up.

“We’ll think of something,” he assured her.

“I’m sure you will,” she agreed complacently and Bruce grinned.

The big joke, of course, was that when she said it he also believed it.

Damned if being in love doesn’t make you feel one hell of a man.

He changed to English so as to exclude the two gendarmes in the back seat from the conversation.

“You are the best thing that has happened to me in thirty years.”

“Oh, Bruce.” She turned her face towards him and the expression of trusting love in it and the intensity of his own emotion struck Bruce like a physical blow.

I will keep this thing alive, he vowed. I must nourish it with care and protect it from the dangers of selfishness and familiarity.

“Oh, Bruce, I do love you so terribly much. This morning when -

when I thought I had lost you, when I saw the tanker go over into the

riven” She swallowed and now her eyes were full of tears. “it was as though the light had gone - it was so dark, so dark and cold without you.” Absorbed with him so that she had forgotten about the road, Shermaine let the Ford veer and the offside wheels pumped into the rough verge.

“Hey, watch it!” Bruce cautioned her. “Dearly as I love you also, I have to admit that you’re a lousy driver. Let me take her.”

“Do you feel up to it?”

“Yes, pull into the side.” Slowly, held to the speed of the lumbering vehicles behind them, they drove on through the afternoon. Twice they passed deserted Baluba villages beside the road, the grass huts disintegrating and the small cultivated lands about them thickly overgrown.

“My God, I’m hungry. I’ve got a headache from it and my belly feels as though it’s full of warm water,” complained Bruce.

“Don’t think you’re the only one. This is the strictest diet I’ve ever been on, must have lost two kilos! But I always lose in the wrong

place, never on my bottom.”

“Good,” Bruce said. “I like it just the way it is, never shed an ounce there.” He looked over his shoulder at the two gendarmes. “Are you hungry?” he asked in French.

“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed the fat one. “I will not be able to sleep tonight, if I must lie on an empty stomach.”

“Perhaps it will not be necessary.” Bruce let his eyes wander off the road into the surrounding bush. The character of the country had changed in the last hundred miles.

“This looks like game country. I’ve noticed plenty of spoor on the road. Keep your eyes open.” The trees were tall and widely spaced

with grass growing beneath them. Their branches did not interlock so that the sky showed through. At intervals there were open glades filled with green swamp grass and thickets of bamboo and ivory palms.

(We’ve got another half hour of daylight. We might run into something before then.” In the rear-view mirror he watched the lumbering column of transports for a moment. They must be almost out of gasoline by now, hardly enough for another half hour’s driving.

There were compensations however; at least they were in open country now and only eighty miles from Msapa junction.

He glanced at the petrol gauge - half the tank. The Ranchero still had sufficient to get through even if the trucks were almost dry.

Of course! That was the answer. Find a good camp, leave the convoy, and go on in the Ford to find help.

Without the trucks to slow him down he could get through to Msapa junction in two hours. There was a telegraph in the station office, even if the junction was still deserted.

“We’ll stop on the other side of this stream,” said Bruce and slowed the Ford, changed into second gear and let it idle down the steep bank.

The stream was shallow. The water hardly reached the hubcaps as they bumped across the rocky bottom. Bruce gunned the Ford up the far bank into the forest again.

“There!” shouted one of the gendarmes from the back seat and Bruce followed the direction of his arm.

Standing with humped shoulders, close beside the road, bunched together with mournfully drooping horns, heads held low beneath the massive bosses, bodies very big and black, were two old buffalo bulls.

Bruce hit the brakes, skidding the Ranchero to a stop, reaching for his rifle at the same instant. He twisted the door handle, hit the door with his shoulder and tumbled out on to his feet.

With a snort and a toss of their ungainly heads the buffalo started to run.

Bruce picked the leader and aimed for the neck in front of the plunging black shoulder. Leaning forward against the recoil of the rifle he fired and heard the bullet strike with a meaty thump. The bull slowed, breaking his run. The stubby forelegs settled and he slid

forward on his nose, rolling as he fell, dust and legs kicking.

Turning smoothly without taking the butt from his shoulder, swinging with the run of the second bull, Bruce fired again, and again the thump of bullet striking.

The buffalo stumbled, giving in the legs, then he steadied and galloped on like a grotesque rocking horse, patches of baldness grey on his flanks, big-bellied, running heavily.

Bruce shifted the bead of the foresight on to his shoulder and fired twice in quick succession, aiming low for the heart, hitting each time, the bull so close he could see the bullet wounds appear on the dark skin.

The gallop broke into a trot, with head swinging low, mouth open, legs beginning to fold. Aiming carefully for the head Bruce fired again. The bull bellowed - a sad lonely sound - and collapsed into the grass.

The lorries had stopped in a line behind the Ford, and now from each of them swarmed black men. jabbering happily, racing each other, they streamed past Bruce to where the buffalo had fallen in the grass beside the road.

“Nice shooting, boss,” said Ruffy. “I’m going to have me a piece of tripe the size of a blanket.”

“Let’s make camp first.”

Bruce’s ears were still singing with gunfire. “Get the lorries into a ring.” IT see to it.” Bruce walked up to the nearest buffalo and watched for a while as a dozen men strained to roll it on to its back and begin butchering it. There were clusters of grape-blue ticks in the folds of skin between the legs and body.

A good head, he noted mechanically, forty inches at least.

“Plenty of meat, Captain. Tonight we eat thick!” grinned one of his gendarmes as he bent over the huge body to begin flensing.

“Plenty,” agreed Bruce and turned back to the Ranchero.

In the heat of the kill it was a good feeling: the rifle’s kick and your stomach screwed up with excitement. But afterwards you felt a little bit dirtied; sad and guilty as you do after lying with a woman you do not love.

He climbed into the car and Shermaine sat away from him, withdrawn.

“They were so big and ugly - beautiful,” she said softly.

“We needed the meat. I didn’t kill them for fun.” But he thought with a little shame, I have killed many others for fun.

“Yes,” she agreed. “We needed the meat.” He turned the car off the road and signalled to the truck drivers to pull in behind him.

Later it was all right again. The meat-rich smoke from a dozen cooking fires drifted across the camp. The dark tree tops silhouetted against a sky full of stars, the friendly glow of the fires, and laughter, men’s voices raised, someone singing, the night noises of the bush insects and frogs in the nearby stream - a plate piled high with grilled fillets and slabs of liver, a bottle of beer from Rutty’s hoard, the air at last cooler, a small breeze to keep the mosquitoes

away, and Shermaine sitting beside him on the blankets.

Ruffy drifted across to them in one hand a stick loaded with meat from which the juice dripped and in the other hand a bottle held by the throat.

“How’s it for another beer, boss?”

“Enough.” Bruce held up his hand. “I’m full to the back teeth.”

“You’re getting old, that’s for sure. Me and the boys going to finish them buffalo or die trying.”

He squatted on his great. haunches and his tone changed. “The trucks are flat, boss. Reckon there’s not a bucketful of gas in the lot of them.”

“I want you to drain all the tanks, Ruffy, and pour it into the

Ford.” Ruffy nodded and bit a hunk of meat off the end of the stick.

“Then first thing tomorrow morning you and i will go on to Msapa in the Ranchero and leave everyone else here.

Lieutenant Hendry will be in charge.”

“You talking about me?”

wally came from one of the fires.

“Yes, I’m going to leave you in charge here while Ruffy and I go on to Msapa Junction to fetch help.” Bruce did not look at Hendry and he had difficulty keeping the loathing out of his voice. “Ruffy, fetch the map will you?” They spread it on the earth and huddled round it. Ruffy held the flashlight.

“I’d say we are about here.” Bruce touched the tiny black vein of the road. “About seventy, eighty miles to Msapa.” He ran his finger along it. “It will take us about five hours there and back. However, if the telegraph isn’t working we might have to go on until we meet a

patrol or find some other way of getting a message back to Elisabethville.” Almost parallel to the road and only two inches from it on the large-scale map ran the thick red line that marked r. Wally Hendry’s slitty eyes the Northern Rhodesian horde narrowed even further as he looked at it.

“Why not leave Ruffy here, and I’ll go with you.” Hendry looked up at Bruce.

I want Ruffy with me if we meet any ” Africans along the way.” Also, thought Bruce, I don’t want to be left on the side of

the road with a bullet in my head while you drive on to Elisabethville.

“Suits me,” grunted Hendry. He dropped his eyes to the map.

About forty miles to the border. A hard day’s walk.

ruce changed to French and spoke swiftly. “Ruffy, hide the

diamonds behind the dashboard of your truck. That way we are certain they will send a rescue party, even if we have to go to Elisabethville.”

“Talk English, Bucko,” growled Hendry, but Ruffy nodded and answered, also in French.

“I will leave Sergeant Jacque to guard them.” “NO!” said Bruce.

“Tell no one.”

“Cut it oud” rasped Hendry. “Anything you say I want to

hear.”

“We’ll leave at dawn tomorrow,” Bruce reverted to English.

“May I go with you?” Shermaine spoke for the first time.

“I don’t see why not.” Bruce smiled quickly at her, but Ruffy coughed awkwardly, “Reckon that’s not such a good idea, boss.”

“Why?”

Bruce turned on him with his temper starting to rise.

“Well, boss,” Ruffy hesitated, and then went on, “You, me and the lady all shoving off towards Elisabethville might not look so good to the boys. They might get ideas, think we’re not coming back or something.” Bruce was silent, considering it.

“That’s right,” Hendry cut in. “You might just take it into your head to keep going. Let her stay, sort of guarantee for the rest of us.”

“I don’t mind, Bruce. I didn’t think about it that way. I’ll stay.”

“She’ll have forty good boys looking after her, she’ll he all right,” Ruffy assured Bruce.

“All right then, that’s settled. It won’t be for long, Shermaine.”

“I’ll go and see about draining the trucks.” Ruffy stood up.

“See you in the morning, boss.”

“I’m going to get some more of that meat.” Wally picked up the map carelessly. “Try and get some sleep tonight, Curry. Not too much grumble and grunt.” In his exasperation, Bruce did not notice that Hendry had taken the map.

It rained in the early hours before the dawn and Bruce lay in the back of the Ranchero and listened to it drum on the metal roof. It was a lulling sound and a good feeling to lie warmly listening to the rain

with the woman you love in your arms.

He felt her waking against him, the change in her breathing and the first slow movements of her body.

There were buffalo steaks for breakfast, but no coffee.

They ate swiftly and then Bruce called across to Ruffy.

“Okay, Ruffy?”

“Let’s go, boss.” They climbed into the Ford and

Ruffy filled most of the seat beside Bruce. His helmet perched on the back of his head, rifle sticking Out through the space where the windscreen should have been, and two large feet planted securely on top of the case of beer on the floor.

Bruce twisted the key and the engine fired. He warmed it at a fast idle and turned to Hendry who leaned against the roof of the Ford and peered through the window.

“We’ll be back this afternoon. Don’t let anybody wander away from

camp.”

“Okay.” Hendry breathed his morning breath full into Bruce’s face.

“Keep them busy, otherwise they’ll get bored and start fighting.”

Before he answered Hendry let his eyes search the interior of the Ford carefully and then he stood back.

“Ok, he said again. “On your way!” Bruce looked beyond him to where Shermaine sat on the tailboard of a truck and smiled at her.

“Bon voyage!” she called and Bruce let out the clutch.

They bumped out on to the road amid a chorus of cheerfal farewells from the gendarmes round the cooking fires and Bruce settled down to drive. In the rear-view mirror he watched the camp disappear round the curve in the road. There were puddles of rainwater in the road, but above them the clouds had broken up and scattered across the sky.

“How’s it for a beer, boss?” “Instead of coffee?” asked Bruce.

“Nothing like it for the bowels,” grunted Ruffy and reached down to open the case.

Wally Hendry lifted his helmet and scratched his scalp. His short red hair felt stiff and wiry with dried sweat and there was a spot above his right ear that itched. He fingered it tenderly.

The Ranchero disappeared round a bend in the road, the trees screening it abruptly, and the hum of its motor faded.

Okay, so they haven’t taken the diamonds with them. I had a bloody good look around. I guessed they’d leave them.

The girl knows where they are like as not. Perhaps - no, she’d squeal like a stuck pig if I asked.

Hendry looked sideways at Shermame; she was staring after the

Ranchero.

Silly bitch! Getting all broody now that Curry’s giving her the rod. Funny how these educated Johnnies like their women to have small tits - nice piece of arse though.

Wouldn’t mind a bit of that myself. Jesus, that would really get to Mr. High Class Bloody Curry, me giving his pretty the business. Not a chance though. These niggers think he’s a god or something. They’d

tear me to pieces if I touched her. Forget about it! Let’s get the diamonds and take off for the border.

Hendry settled his helmet back on to his head and strolled casually across to the truck that Ruffy had been driving the day before.

Got a map, compass, coupla spare clips of ammo - now all we need

is the glass.

He climbed into the cab and opened the cubby hole.

Bet a pound to a pinch of dung that they’ve hidden them somewhere in this truck. They’re not worried - think they’ve got me tied up here. Never occurred to them that old Uncle Wally might up and walk away. Thought I’d just sit here and wait for them to come back and fetch me take me in and hand me over to a bunch of nigger police aching to get their hands on a white man.

Well, I got news for you, Mr. Fancy-talking Curry!

He rummaged in the cubbyhole and then slammed it shut.

Okay, they’re not there. Let’s try under the seats. The border

is not guarded, might take me three or four days to get through to Fort

Rosebery, but when I do I’ll have me a pocket full of diamonds and there’s a direct air service out to Ndola and the rest of the world.

Then we start living!

There was nothing under the seats except a greasy dustcoated jack and wheel spanner. Hendry turned his attention to the floorboards.

Pity I’ll have to leave that bastard C’brry. I had plans for him.

There’s a guy who really gets to me. So goddam cock-sure of himself.

One of them. Makes you feel you’re shit - fancy talk, pretty face, soft hands. Christ, I hate him.

Viciously he tore the rubber mats off the floor and the dust made him cough.

Been to university, makes him think he’s something special. The bastard. I should have fixed him long ago that night at the road bridge I nearly gave it to him in the dark. Nobody would have known, just a mistake. I shoulda done it then. I shoulda done it at Port

Reprieve when he ran out across the road to the office block. Big bloody hero.

Big lover. Bet he had everything he ever wanted, bet his Daddy gave him all the money he could use. And he looks at you like that, like you crawled out of rotting meat.

Hendry straightened up and gripped the steering wheel, his jaws chewing with the strength of his hatred. He stared out of the windscreen.

Shermaine Cartier walked past the front of the truck.

She had a towel and a pink plastic toilet bag in her hand; the pistol swung against her leg as she moved.

Sergeant Jacque stood up from the cooking fire and moved to intercept her. They talked, arguing, then Shermaine touched the pistol at her side and laughed. A worried frown creased Jacque’s black face and he shook his head dubiously. Shermaine laughed again, turned from him and set off down the road towards the stream. Her hair, caught carelessly at her neck with a ribbon, hung down her back on to the rose-coloured shirt she wore and the heavy canvas holster emphasized the unconsciously provocative swing of her hips. She went out of sight down the steep bank of the stream.

Wally Hendry chuckled and then licked his lips with the quick-darting tip of his tongue.

“This is going to make it perfect,” he whispered. “They couldn’t have done things to Suit me better if they’d spent a week working it out.” Eagerly he turned back to his search for the diamonds.

Leaning forward he thrust his hand up behind the dashboard of the truck and it brushed against the bunch of canvas bags that hung from the mass of concealed wires.

“Come to Uncle Wally.” He jerked them loose and, holding them in his lap, began checking their contents.

The third bag he opened contained the gem stones.

“Lovely, lovely grub,” he whispered at the dull glint and sparkle in the depths of the bag. Then he closed the drawstring, stuffed the bag into the pocket of his battle-jacket and buttoned the flap. He dropped the bags of industrial diamonds on to the floor and kicked them under the seat, picked up his rifle and stepped down out of the truck.

Three or four gendarmes looked up curiously at him as he passed the cooking fires. Hendry rubbed his stomach and pulled a face.

“Too much meat last night!” The gendarme who understood English laughed and translated into French. They all laughed and one of them called something in a dialect that Hendry did not understand. They watched him walk away among the trees.

As soon as he was out of sight of the camp Hendry started to run, circling back towards the stream.

“This is going to be a pleasure!” He laughed aloud.

Fifty yards below the drift where the road crossed the stream

Shermaine found a shallow pool. There were reeds with fluffy heads

around it and a small beach of white river sand, black boulders, polished round and glossy smooth, the water almost blood warm and so clear that she could see a shoal of fingerlings nibbling at the green algae that coated the boulders beneath the surface.

She stood barefooted in the sand and looked around carefully, but the reeds screened her, and she had asked Jacque not to let any of his men come down to the river while she was there.

She undressed, dropped her clothes across one of the black boulders and with a cake of soap in her hand waded out into the pool and lowered herself until she sat with the water up to her neck and the sand pleasantly rough under her naked behind.

She washed her hair first and then lay stretched out with the water moving gently over her, soft as the caress of silk.

Growing bold the tiny fish darted in and nibbled at her skin, tickling, so that she gasped and splashed at them.

At last she ducked her head under the surface and, with the water streaming out of her hair into her eyes, she groped her way back to the bank.

As she stooped, still half blinded, for her towel Wally Hendry’s hand closed over her mouth and his other arm circled her waist from behind.

“One squeak out of you and I’ll wring your bloody neck.” He spoke hoarsely into her ear. She could smell his breath, warm and sour in her face. “Just pretend I’m old Bruce then both of us will enjoy

it.” And he chuckled.

Sliding quickly over her hip his hand moved downwards and the shock of it galvanized her into frantic struggles.

Holding her easily Hendry kept on chuckling.

She opened her mouth suddenly and one of his fingers went in

between her teeth. She bit with all her strength and felt the skin break and tasted blood in her mouth.

“You bitch!” Hendry jerked his hand away and she opened her mouth to scream, but the hand swung back, clenched, into the side of her face, knocking her head across. The scream never reached her lips for

he hit her again and she felt herself falling.

Stunned by the blows, lying in the sand, she could not believe it was happening, until she felt his weight upon her and his knee forced

cruelly between hers.

Then she started to struggle again, trying to twist away from his mouth and the smell of his breath.

“No, no, no.” She repeated it over an dover, her eyes shut tightly so she did not have to see that face above her, and her head rolling from side to side in the sand. He was so strong, so immensely powerful.

“No,” she said, and then, “Ooah!” at the pain, the tearing stinging pain within, and the thrusting heaviness above.

And through the pounding, grunting, thrusting nightmare she could smell him and feel the sweat drip from him and splash into her upturned unprotected face.

It lasted forever, and then suddenly the weight was gone and she opened her eyes.

He stood over her, fumbling with his Clothing, and there was a dullness in his expression. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and she saw the fingers were trembling.

His voice when he spoke was tired and disinterested.

“I’ve had better.” Swiftly Shennaine rolled over and reached for the pistol that lay on top of her clothes. Hendry stepped forward with all his weight on her wrist and she felt the bones bend under his boot and she moaned. But through pain she whispered. “You pig, you filthy pig,” and he hit her again, flat-handed across the face, knocking her on to her back once more.

He picked up the pistol and opened it, spilling the cartridges into the sand, then he unclipped the lanyard and threw the pistol far out into the reed bed.

“Tell Curry I say he can have my share of you,” he said and walked quickly away among the reeds.

The white sand coated her damp body like icing sugar.

She sat up slowly holding her wrist, the side of her face inflamed and starting to swell where he had hit her.

She started to cry, shaking silently, and the tears squeezed out between her eyelids and matted her long dark lashes.

Ruffy held up the brown bottle and inspected it ruefully.

“Seems like one mouthful and it’s empty.” He threw the bottle out of the side window. It hit a tree and burst with a small pop.

“We can always find our way back by following the empties,” smiled

Bruce, once more marvelling at the man’s capacity. But there was plenty of storage space. He watched Ruffy’s stomach spread on to his lap as he reached down to the beer crate.

“How we doing, boss?” Bruce glanced at the milorrieter.

“We’ve come eighty-seven miles,” and Ruffy nodded.

“Not bad going. Be there pretty soon now.” They were silent. The wind blew in on to them through the open front. The grass that grew

between the tracks brushed the bottom of the chassis with a continuous rushing sound.

“Boss-” Ruffy spoke at last.

“Yes?”

“Lieutenant Hendry - those diamonds. You reckon we did a good thing leaving him there?”

“He’s stranded in the middle of the bush. Even if he did find them they wouldn’t do him much good.”

“Suppose that’s right.” Ruffy lifted the beer bottle to his lips and when he lowered it he went on. “Mind you, that’s one guy you can never be sure of.” He tapped his head with a finger as thick and as black as a blood-sausage. “Something wrong with him - he’s one of the maddest

Arabs I’ve found in a long time of looking.” Bruce grunted grimly.

“You want to be careful there, boss, observed Ruffy. “Any time now he’s going to try for you. I’ve seen it coming. He’s working

himself up to it. He’s a mad Arab.” “I’ll watch him,” said Bruce.

“Yeah, you do that.” Again they were silent in the steady swish of the wind and the drone of the motor.

“There’s a railway.” Ruffy pointed to the blue-grovelled embankment through the trees.

“Nearly there,” said Bruce.

They came out into another open glade and beyond it the water tank of Msapa junction stuck up above the forest.

“Here we are,” said Ruffy and drained the bottle in his hand.

“Just say a prayer that the telegraph lines are still up and that there’s an operator on the Elisabethville end.” Bruce slowed the Ford past the row of cottages. They were exactly as he remembered them, deserted and forlorn.

The corners of his mouth were compressed into a hard angle as he looked at the two small mounds of earth beneath the asia flora trees.

Ruffy looked at them also but neither of the spoke.

Bruce stopped the Ford outside the station building and they climbed out stiffly and walked together on to the verandah. The wooden flooring echoed dully under their boots as they made for the door of the office.

Bruce pushed the door open and looked in. The walls were painted a depressing utility green, loose paper scattered on the floor the drawers of the single desk hung open, and a thin grey skin of dust coated everything.

“There she is,” said Ruffy and pointed to the brass and varnished wood complexity of the telegraph on a table against the far wall.

“Looks all right,” said Bruce. “As long as the lines haven’t been cut.” As if to reassure him, the telegraph began to clatter like a typewriter.

“Thank God for that,” sighed Bruce.

They walked across to the table.

“You know how to work this thing?” asked Ruffy.

“Sort of,” Bruce answered and set his rifle against the wall. He

was relieved to see a Morse table stuck with adhesive tape to the wall above the apparatus. It was a long time since he had memorized it as a boy scout.

He laid his hand on the transmission key and studied the table.

The call sign for Elisabethville was

“EE’.

He tapped it out clumsily and then waited. Almost immediately the set clattered back at him, much too fast to be intelligible and the roll of paper in the repeater was exhausted. Bruce took off his helmet and laboriously spelled outl

“Transmit slower.” It was a long business with requests for repetition. “Not understood” was made nearly every

second signal, but finally Bruce got the operator to understand that he had an urgent message for Colonel Franklyn of President Tshornbe’s staff.

“Wait,” came back the laconic signal.

And they waited. They waited an hour, then two.

“That mad bastard’s forgotten about us,” grumbled Ruffy and went to the Ford to fetch the beer crate. Bruce fidgeted restlessly on the unpadded chair beside the telegraph table.

He reconsidered anxiously all his previous arguments for leaving

Wally Hendry in charge of the camp, but once again decided that it was

safe. He couldn’t do much harm.

Unless, unless, Shermaine! No, it was impossible. Not with forty loyal gendarmes to protect her.

He started to think about Shermaine and the future.

There was a year’s mercenary captain’s pay accumulated in the

Credit Banque Suisse at Zurich. He made the conversion from francs to pounds - about two and a half thousand.

Two years” operating capital, so they could have a holiday before he started working again. They could take a chalet up in the mountains, there should be good snow this time of the year.

Bruce grinned. Snow that crunched like sugar, and a twelve-inch-thick eiderdown on the bed at night.

Life had purpose and direction again.

“What you’re laughing at, boss?” asked Ruffy.

“I was thinking about a bed.”

“Yeah? That’s a good thing to think about. You start there, you’re born there, you spend most of your life in it, you have plenty of fun in it, and if you’re lucky you die there.

How’s it for a beer?” The telegraph came to life at Bruce’s elbow. He turned to it quickly.

“Curry - Franklyn,” it clattered. Bruce could imagine the wiry, red-faced little man at the other end. Ex-major in the third brigade of the Legion. A prime mover in the O. A.S with a sizeable price still on his head from the De Gaulle assassination attempt.

“Franklyn - Curry,” Bruce tapped back. “Train unserviceable.

Motorized transport stranded without fuel. Port Reprieve road. Map reference approx-” He read the numbers off the sheet on which he had noted them.

There was a long pause, then: “Is U. M.C. property in your hands?”

The question was delicately phrased.

“Affirmative,” Bruce assured him.

“Await air-drop at your position soonest. Out.”

“Message understood. Out.” Bruce straightened from the telegraph and sighed

with relief.

“That’s that, Ruffy. They’ll drop gas to us from one of the

Dakotas. Probably tomorrow morning.” He looked at his wristwatch.

“Twenty to one, let’s get back.” Bruce hummed softly, watching the double tracks ahead of him, guiding the Ford with a light touch on the wheel.

He was contented. It was all over. Tomorrow the fuel would drop from the Dakota under those yellow parachutes.

(He must lay out the smudge signals this evening.) And ten hours later they would be back in Elisabethville.

A few words with Carl Engelbrecht would fix seats for Shermaine and himself on one of the outward-bound Daks.

Then Switzerland, and the chalet with icicles hanging from the eaves. A long rest while he decided where to start again.

Louisiana was under Roman-Dutch Law, or was it Code Napoleon? He might even have to rewrite his bar examinations, but the prospect pleased rather than dismayed him. It was fun again.

“Never seen you so happy,” grunted Ruffy.

“Never had so much cause, Bruce agreed.

“She’s a swell lady. Young still - you can teach her.” Bruce felt his hackles rise, and then he thought better of it and laughed.

“You going to sign her up, boss?”

“I might.” Ruffy nodded wisely.

“Man should have plenty wives - I got three. Need a couple more.”

“One

I could only just handle.”

“One’s difficult. Two’s easier. Three, you can relax. Four, they’re so busy with each other they don’t give you no trouble at all.”

“I might try it.”

“Yeah, you do that.” And ahead of them through the trees they saw the ring of trucks.

“We’re home,” grunted Ruffy, then he stirred uncomfortably in his seat. “Something going on.” Men stood in small groups. There was something in their attitude: strain, apprehension.

Two men ran up the road to meet them. Bruce could see their mouths working, but could not hear the words.

Dread, heavy and cold, pushed down on the pit of Bruce’s gut.

Gabbled, incoherent, Sergeant Jacque was trying to tell him something as he ran beside the Ford.

“Tenente Hendry - the river - the madame - gone.” French words like driftwood in the torrent of dialect.

“Your girl,” translated Ruffy. “Hendry’s done her.”

“Dead?” The question dropped from Bruce’s mouth.

“No. He’s hurt her. He’s - you know!”

“Where’s she?”

“They’ve got her in the back of the truck.” Bruce climbed heavily out of the car. Now they were silent, grouped together, not looking at him, faces impassive, waiting.

Bruce walked slowly to the truck. He felt cold and numb. His legs moved automatically beneath him. He drew back the canvas and

pulled himself up into the interior. It was an effort to move forward, to focus his eyes in the gloom.

Wrapped in a blanket she lay small and still.

“Shermaine.” It stuck in his throat.

“Shermaine,” he said again and knelt beside her. A great livid swelling distorted the side of her face. She did not turner face to him, but lay staring up at the canvas roof.

He touched her face and the skin was cold, cold as the dread that gripped his stomach. The coldness of it shocked him so he jerked his hand away.

“Shermaine.” This time it was a sob. The eyes, her big haunted eyes, turned unseeing towards him and he felt the lift of escape from the certainty of her death.

“Oh, God, he cried and took her to him, holding the unresisting

frailty of her to his chest. He could feel the slow even thump of her heart beneath his liquid. He drew back the blanket and there was no blood.

“Darling, are you hurt? Tell me, are you hurt?” She did not answer. She lay quietly in his arms, not seeing him.

“Shock,” he whispered. “It’s only shock,” and he opened her clothing. With tenderness he examined the smoothly pale body; the skin was clammy and damp, but there was no damage.

He wrapped her again and laid her gently back on to the floor.

He stood and the thing within him changed shape. Cold still, but now burning cold as dry ice.

Ruffy and Jacque were waiting for him beside the tailboard.

“Where is he?” asked Bruce softly.

“He is gone.”

“Where?”

“That way.” Jacque pointed towards the southeast. “I followed the spoor a short distance.” Bruce walked to the Ford and picked up his rifle from the floor. He opened the cubby hole and took two spare clips of ammunition from it.

Ruffy followed him. “He’s got the diamonds, boss.”

“Yes,” said

Bruce and checked the load of his rifle. The diamonds were of no importance.

“Are you going after him, boss?” Bruce did not answer. Instead he

looked up at the sky.

The sun was half way towards the horizon and there were clouds thickly massed around it.

“Ruffy, stay with her,” he said softly. “Keep her warm.” Ruffy nodded.

“Who is the best tracker we’ve got?”

“Jacque. Worked for a safari outfit before the war as a tracker boy.” Bruce turned to Jacque. The thing was still icy cold inside him, with tentacles that spread out to every extremity of his body and his mind.

“When did this happen?”

“About an hour after you left,” answered

Jacque.

Eight hours start. It was a long lead.

“Take the spoor,” said Bruce softly.

The earth was soft from the night’s rain and the spoor deep trodden, the heels had bitten in under Hendry’s weight, so they followed fast.

Watching Sergeant Jacque work, Bruce felt his anxiety abating, for although the footprints were so easy to follow in these early stages that it was no test of his ability, yet from the way he moved swiftly along - half-crouched and wholly absorbed, occasionally glancing ahead to pick up the run of the spoor, stooping now and then to touch the earth and determine its texture - Bruce could tell that this man knew his business.

Through the open forest with tufted grass below, holding steadily south by east, Hendry led them straight towards the Rhodesian border.

And after the first two hours Bruce knew they had not gained upon him.

Hendry was still eight hours ahead, and at the pace he was setting eight hours” start was something like thirty miles in distance.

Bruce looked over his shoulder at the sun where it lay wedged between two vast piles of cumulonimbus. There in the sky were the two elements which could defeat him.

Time. There were perhaps two more hours of daylight.

With the onset of night they would be forced to halt.

Rain. The clouds were swollen and dark blue round the edges. As

Bruce watched, the lightning lit them internally, and at a count of ten the thunder grumbled suddenly. If it rained again before morning there would be no spoor to follow.

“We must move faster,” said Bruce.

Sergeant Jacque straightened up and looked at Bruce as though he were a stranger. He had forgotten his existence.

“The earth hardens.” Jacque pointed at the spoor and Bruce saw that in the last half hour the soil had become gritty and compacted.

Hendry’s heels no longer broke the crust. “It is unwise to run on such a lean trail.” Again Bruce looked back at the menace of gathering clouds.

“We must take the chance,” he decided.

“As you wish,” grunted Jacque, and transferred his rifle to his other shoulder, hitched up his belt and settled the steel helmet more firmly on his head.

“Allez!” They trotted on through the forest towards the southeast.

Within a mile Bruce’s body had settled into the automatic rhythm of his run, leaving his mind free.

He thought about Wally Hendry, saw again the little eyes and round them the puffy folded skin, and the mouth below, thin and merciless, the obscene ginger stubble of beard. He could almost smell him. His nostrils flared at the memory of the rank red-head’s body odour.

Unclean, he thought, unclean mind and unclean body.

His hatred of Wally Hendry was a tangible thing. He could feel it sitting heavily at the base of his throat, tingling in his fingertips and giving strength to his legs.

And yet there was something else. Suddenly Bruce grinned: a wolfish baring of his teeth. That tingling in his fingertips was not all hatred, a little of it was excitement.

What a complex thing is a man, he thought. He can never hold one emotion - always there are others to confuse it. Here I am hunting the

thing that I most loathe and hate, and I am enjoying it. Completely unrelated to the hatred is the thrill of hunting the most dangerous and cunning game of all, man.

I have always enjoyed the chase, he thought. It has been bred into me, for my blood is that of the men who hunted and fought with

Africa as the prize.

The hunting of this man will give me pleasure. If ever a man deserved to die, it is Wally Hendry. I am the plaintiff, the judge and the executioner.

Sergeant Jacque stopped so suddenly that Bruce ran into him and they nearly fell.

“What is it?” panted Bruce, coming back to reality.

“Look!” The earth ahead of them was churned and broken.

“Zebra,” groaned Bruce, recognizing the round uncloven hoof prints. “God damn it to hell - of all the filthy luck!”

“A big herd,” Jacque agreed. “Spread out. Feeding.” As far ahead as they

could see through the forest the herd had wiped out Hendry’s tracks.

“We’ll have to cast forward.” Bruce’s voice was agonized by his impatience. He turned to the nearest tree and hacked at it with his bayonet, blazing it to mark the end of the trail, swearing softly, venting his disappointment on the trunk.

“Only another hour to sunset,” he whispered. “Please let us pick him up again before dark.” Sergeant Jacque was already moving forward, following the approximate line of Hendry’s travel, trying vainly to recognize a single footprint through the havoc created there by the passage of thousands of hooves. Bruce hurried to join him and then moved out on his flank. They zigzagged slowly ahead, almost meeting on the inward leg of each tack and then separating again to a distance of a hundred yards.

There it was! Bruce dropped to his knees to make sure.

Just the outline of the toecap, showing from under the spoor of an old zebra stallion. Bruce whistled, a windy sound through his dry lips, and Jacque came quickly. One quick look then: “Yes, he is holding more to the right now.” He raised his eyes and squinted ahead, marking a tree which was directly in line with the run of the spoor.

They went forward.

“There’s the herd.” Bruce pointed at the flicker Of a grey body through the trees.

“They’ve got our wind.” A zebra snorted and then there was a rumbling, a low bluffed drumming of hooves as the herd ran. Through the trees Bruce caught glimpses of the animals on the near side of the herd. Too far off to show the stripes, looking like fat grey ponies as they galloped, ears up, blackmaned heads nodding. Then they were gone and the sound of their flight dwindled.

“At least they haven’t run along the spoor,” muttered Bruce, and then bitterly: “Damn them, the stupid little donkeys! They’ve cost us an hour. A whole priceless hour.” Desperately searching, wild with haste, they worked back and forth. The sun was below the trees; already the air was cooling in the short African dusk. Another fifteen

minutes and it would be dark.

Then abruptly the forest ended. they came out on the edge of a vlei. Open as Wheatland, pastured with green waist-high grass, hemmed in by the forest, it stretched ahead of them for nearly two miles.

Dotted along it were clumps of ivory palms with each graceful stem ending in an untidy cluster of leaves. Troops of guinea-fowls were scratching and chirruping along the edge of the clearing, and near the far end a herd of buffalo formed a dark mass as they grazed beneath a canopy of white egrets.

In the forest beyond the clearing, rising perhaps three hundred feet out of it, stood a kopje of tumbled granite.

The great slabs of rock with their sheer sides and square tops looked like a ruined castle. The low sun struck it and gave the rock an orange warmth.

But Bruce had no time to admire the scene; his eyes were on the earth, searching for the prints of Hendry’s jungle boots.

Out on his left Sergeant Jacque whistled sharply and Bruce felt the leap of excitement in his chest. He ran across to the crouching gendarme.

“It has come away.” Jacque pointed at the spoor that was strung ahead of them like beads on a string, skirting the edge of the vlei, each depression filled with shadow and standing out clearly on the sandy grey earth.

“Too late,” groaned Bruce. “Damn those bloody zebra.” The light

was fading so swiftly it seemed as though it were a stage effect.

“Follow it.” Bruce’s voice was sharp with helpless frustration.

“Follow it as long as you can.” It was not a quarter of a mile farther on that Jacque rose out of his crouch and only the white of his teeth showed in the darkness as he spoke.

“We will lose it again if we go on.”

“All right.” Bruce unslung his rifle with weary resignation.

He knew that Wally Hendry was at least forty miles ahead of them; more if he kept travelling after dark. The spoor was cold. If this had been an ordinary hunt he would long ago have broken off the chase.

He looked up at the sky. In the north the stars were fat and

yellow, but above them and to the south it was black with cloud.

“Don’t let it rain,” he whispered. “Please God, don’t let it rain.” The night was long. Bruce slept once for perhaps two hours and then the strength of his hatred woke him. He lay flat upon his back and stared up at the sky. It was all dark with clouds; only occasionally they opened and let the stars shine briefly through.

“It must not rain. It must not rain.” He repeated it like a prayer, staring up at the dark sky, concentrating upon it as though by the force of his mind he could control the elements.

There were lions hunting in the forest. He heard the male roaring, moving up from the south, and once his two lionesses answered him. They killed a little before dawn and Bruce lay on the hard earth and listened to their jubilation over the kill. Then there was silence as they began to feed.

That I might have success as well, he thought. I do not often ask for favours, Lord, but grant me this one. I ask it not only for myself but for Shermaine and the others.

In his mind he saw again the two children lying where Hendry had shot them. The smear of mingled blood and chocolate across the boy’s cheek.

He deserves to die, prayed Bruce, so please don’t let it rain.

As long as the night had been, that quickly came the dawn. A grey dawn, gloomy with low cloud.

“Will it go?” Bruce asked for the twentieth time, and this time

Jacque looked up from where he knelt beside the spoor.

“We can try now.” They moved off slowly with Jacque leading, doubled over to peer shortsightedly at the earth and Bruce close behind him, bedevilled by his impatience and anxiety, lifting his head every dozen paces to the dirty grey roof of cloud.

The light strengthened and the circle of their vision opened from

six feet to as many yards, to a hundred, so they could make out the tops of the ivory palms, shaggy against the grey cloud.

Jacque broke into a trot and ahead of them was the end of the clearing and the beginning of the forest. Two hundred yards beyond rose the massive pile of the kopie, in the early light looking more than ever like a castle, turreted and sheer. There was something formidable in its outline. It seemed to brood above them and Bruce looked away from it uneasily.

Cold and with enough weight behind it to sting, the first raindrop

splashed against Bruce’s cheek.

“Oh, no!” he protested, and stopped. Jacque straightened up from the spoor and he too looked at the sky.

“It is finished. In five minutes there will be nothing to follow.” Another drop hit Bruce’s upturned face and he blinked back the tears of anger and frustration that pricked the rims of his eyelids.

Faster now, tapping on his helmet, plopping on to his shoulders and face, the rain fell.

Quickly,” cried Bruce. “Follow as long as you can.” Jacque opened his mouth to speak, but before a word came out he was flung-backwards, punched over as though by an invisible fist, his helmet flying from his head as he fell and his rifle clattering on the earth.

Simultaneously Bruce felt the bullet pass him, disrupting the air, so the wind of it flattened his shirt against his chest, cracking viciously in his ears, leaving him dazedly looking down at Sergeant

Jacque’s body.

It lay with arms thrown wide, the jaw and the side of the head below the ear torn away; white bone and blood bubbling over it. The trunk twitched convulsively and the hands fluttered like trapped birds.

Then flat-sounding through the rain he heard the report of the rifle.

The kopje, screamed Bruce’s brain, he’s lying in the kopie!

And Bruce moved, twisting sideways, starting to run.

Wally Hendry lay on his stomach on the flat top of the turret. His body was stiff and chilled from the cold of the night and the rock was harsh under him, but the discomfort hardly penetrated the fringe of his mind. He had built a low parapet with loose flakes of granite, and he had screened the front of it with the thick bushy stems of broom bush.

His rifle was propped on the parapet in front of him and at his elbow were the spare ammunition clips.

He had lain in this ambush for a long time now - since early the preceding afternoon. Now it was dawn and the darkness was drawing back; in a few minutes he would be able to see the whole of the clearing below him.

I coulda been across the river already, he thought, coulda been fifty miles away. He did not attempt to analyse the impulse that had made him lie here unmoving for almost twenty hours.

Man, I knew old Curry would have to come. I knew he would only bring one nigger tracker with him. These educated Johnnies got their own rules - man to man stuff, and he chuckled as he remembered the two minute figures that he had seen come out of the forest in the fading light of the previous evening.

The bastard spent the night down there in the clearing. Saw him light a match and have hisself a smoke in the night - well, I hope he enjoyed it, his last.

Wally peered anxiously out into the gradually gathering dawn.

They’ll be moving now, coming up the clearing. Must get them before they reach the trees again. Below him the clearing showed as a paleness, a leprous blotch, on the dark forest.

The bastard! Without preliminaries Hendry’s hatred returned to him. This time he don’t get to make no fancy speeches - This time he don’t get no chance to be hoity-toity.

The light was stronger now. He could see the clumps of ivory palms against the pale brown grass of the clearing.

“Ha!” Hendry exclaimed.

There they were, like two little ants, dark specks moving up the middle of the clearing. The tip of Hendry’s tongue slipped out between his lips and he flattened down behind his rifle.

Man, I’ve waited for this. Six months now I’ve thought about this, and when it’s finished I’ll go down and take his ears. He slipped the safety catch; it made a satisfying mechanical click.

Nigger’s leading, that’s Curry behind him. Have to wait they turn, don’t want the nigger to get it first. Curry first, then the nigger.

He picked them up in his sights, breathing quicker now, the thrill of it so intense that he had to swallow and it caught in his throat like dry bread.

A raindrop hit the back of his neck. It startled him. He looked up quickly at the sky and saw it coming.

“Goddam it,” he groaned, and looked back at the clearing.

Curry and nigger were standing together, a single dark blob in the half-light. There was no chance of separating them.

The rain fell faster, and suddenly Hendry was overwhelmed by the old familiar feeling of inferiority; of knowing that everything, even the elements, conspired against him; the knowledge that he could never win, not even this once.

They, God and the rest of the world.

The ones who had given him a drunk for a father.

A squalid cottage for a home and a mother with cancer of the throat.

The ones who had sent him to reform school, had fired him from two dozen jobs, had pushed him, laughed at him, gaoled him twice - They, all of them (and Bruce Curry who was their figurehead), they were going

to win again. Not even this once, not even ever.

“Goddarn it,” he cursed in hopeless, wordless anger against them all.

“Goddam it, goddam it to hell,” and he fired at the dark blob in his sights.

As he ran Bruce looked across a hundred yards of open ground to the edge of the forest.

He felt the wind of the next bullet as it cracked past him.

If he uses rapid fire he’ll get me even at three hundred yards

And Bruce jinked his run like a jack-rabbit. The blood roaring in his ears, fear driving his feet.

Then all around him the air burst asunder, buffeting him so he staggered; the vicious whip-whip whip of bullets filled his head.

I can’t make it Seventy yards to the shelter of the trees.

Seventy yards of open meadowlands and above him the commanding mass of the kopje.

The next burst is for me - it must come, now!

And he flung himself to one side so violently that he nearly fell.

Again the air was ripping to tatters close beside him.

I can’t last! He must get me!

In his path was an ant-heap, a low pile of clay, a pimple on the open expanse of earth. Bruce dived for it, hitting the ground so hard that the wind was forced from his lungs out through his open mouth.

The next burst of gunfire kicked lumps of clay from the top of the ant-heap, showering Bruce’s back.

He lay with his face pressed into the earth, wheezing with the agony of empty lungs, flattening his body behind the tiny heap of clay.

Will it cover me? Is there enough of it?

And the next hail of bullets thumped into the ant-heap, throwing fountains of earth, but leaving Bruce untouched.

I’m safe. The realization came with a surge that washed away his

fear.

But I’m helpless, answered his hatred. Pinned to the earth for as long as Hendry wants to keep me here.

The rain fell on his back. Soaking through his jacket, coldly caressing the nape of his neck and dribbling down over his jaws.

He rolled his head sideways, not daring to lift it an inch, and

the rain beat on to the side of his face.

The rain! Falling faster. Thickening. Hanging from the clouds like the skirts of a woman’s dress.

Curtains of rain. Greying out the edge of the forest, leaving no solid shapes in the mist of falling liquid motherof-pearl.

Still gasping but with the pain slowly receding, Bruce lifted his head.

The kopje was a vague blue-green shape ahead of him, then it was gone, swallowed by the eddying columns of rain.

Bruce pushed himself up on to his knees and the pain in his chest made him dizzy.

Now! he thought. Now, before it thins, and he lumbered clumsily to his feet.

For a moment he stood clutching his chest, sucking for breath in the haze of water-filled air, and then he staggered towards the edge of the forest.

His feet steadied under him, his breathing eased, and he was into the trees.

They closed round him protectively. He leaned against the rough bark of one of them and wiped the rain from his face with the palm of his hand. The strength came back to him and with it his hatred and his excitement.

He unslung the rifle from his shoulder and stood away from the tree with his feet planted wide apart.

“Now, my friend,” he whispered, “we fight on equal terms.” He pumped a round into the chamber of the FN and moved towards the kopje, stepping daintily, the weight of the rifle in his hands, his mind suddenly sharp and clear, vision enhanced, feeling his strength and the absence of fear like a song within him, a battle hymn.

He made out the loom of the kopje through the dripping rain-heavy trees and he circled out to the right. There is plenty of time, he thought. I can afford to case the joint thoroughly. He completed circuit of the rock pile.

The kopje, he found, was the shape of a galleon sinking by the head. At one end the high double castles of the poop, from which the main deck canted steeply forward as though the prow were already under water. This slope was scattered with boulders and densely covered with dwarf scrub, an interwoven mass of shoulder-high branches and leaves.

Bruce squatted on his haunches with the rifle in his lap and looked up the ramp at the twin turrets of the kopje.

The rain had slackened to a drizzle.

Hendry was on top. Bruce knew he would go to the highest point.

Strange how height makes a man feel invulnerable, makes him think he is a god.

And since he had fired upon them he must be in the turret nearest the vlei, which was slightly the higher of the two, its summit crowned by a patch of stunted broom bush.

So now I know exactly where he is and i will wait half an hour.

He may become impatient and move; if he does I will get a shot at him from here.

Bruce narrowed his eyes, judging the distance.

“About two hundred yards.” He adjusted the rear-sight of the FN

and then checked the load, felt in the side pocket of his jacket to make sure the two extra clips of ammunition were handy, and settled back comfortably to wait.

“Curry, you sonofabitch, where are you?” Hendry’s shout floated down through the drizzling rain and Bruce stiffened.

I was right - he’s on top of the left-hand turret.

“Come on, Bucko. I’ve been waiting for you since yesterday afternoon.” Bruce lifted the rifle and sighted experimentally at a dark patch on the wall of the rock. It would be difficult shooting in the rain, the rifle slippery with wet, the fine drizzle clinging to his eyebrows and dewing the sights of the rifle with little beads of moisture.

“Hey, Curry, how’s your little French piece of pussy?

Man, she’s hot, that thing, isn’t she?” Bruce’s hands tightened on the rifle.

“Did she tell you how I gave her the old business? Did she tell

you how she loved it? You should have heard her panting like a steam engine. I’m telling you, Curry, she just couldn’t get enough!” Bruce felt himself start to tremble. He clenched his jaws, biting down until his teeth ached.

Steady, Bruce my boy, that’s what he wants you to do.

The trees dripped steadily in the silence and a gust of wind stirred the scrub on the slope of the kopje. Bruce waited, straining his eyes for the first hint of movement on the left-hand turret.

“You yellow or something, Curry ? You scared to come on up here?

Is that what it is? Bruce shifted his position slightly, ready for a snap shot.

“Okay, Bucko. I can wait, I’ve got all day. I’ll just sit here thinking about how I mucked your little bit of French. I’m telling you it was something to remember. Up and down, in and out, man it was something!” Bruce came carefully up on to his feet behind the trunk of the tree and once more studied the layout of the kopie.

If I can move up the slope, keeping well over to the side, until I

reach the right-hand turret, there’s a ledge there that will take me to the top. I’ll be twenty or thirty feet from him, and at that range it will all be over in a few seconds.

He drew a deep breath and left the shelter of the tree.

Wally Hendry spotted the movement in the forest below him; it was a flash of brown quickly gone, too fast to get a bead on it.

He wiped the rain off his face and wriggled a foot closer to the edge. “Come on, Curry. Let’s stop buggering about,” he shouted, and cuddled the butt of his rifle into his shoulder. The tip of his tongue kept darting out and touching his lips.

At the foot of the slope he saw a branch move slightly, stirring when there was no wind. He grinned and snuggled his hips down on to the rock. Here he comes, he gloated, he’s crawling up, under the scrub

“I know you’re sitting down there. Okay, Curry, I can wait also.”

Half-way up the slope the top leaves of another bush swayed gently, parting and closing.

“Yes!” whispered Wally, “Yes!” and he clicked off the safety catch of the rifle. His tongue came out and moved slowly from one corner of his mouth to the other.

I’ve got him, for sure, There - he’ll have to cross that piece of open ground. A couple a yards, that’s all. But it’ll be enough.

He moved again, wriggling a few inches to one side, to the gap between two large grey boulders; settling his aim in he pushed the rate-of-fire selector on to rapid and his forefinger rested lightly on the trigger.

“Hey, Curry, I’m getting bored. If you are not going to come up, how about singing to me or cracking a few jokes?” Bruce Curry crouched behind a large grey boulder. In front of him were three yards of open

ground and then the shelter of another rock. He was almost at the top of the slope and Hendry had not spotted him. Across the patch of open ground was good cover to the foot of the right-hand turret.

It would take him two seconds to cross and the chances were that

Hendry would be watching the forest at the foot of the slope.

He gathered himself like a sprinter on the starting blocks.

“Go!” he whispered and dived into the opening, and into a hell storm of bullets. One struck his rifle, tearing it out of his hand with such force that his arm was paralysed to the shoulder, another stung his chest, and then he was across.

He lay behind the far boulder, gasping with the shock, and listened to Hendry’s voice roaring triumphantly.

“Fooled you, you stupid bastard! Been watching you all the way up from the bottom.” Bruce held his left arm against his stomach; the use of it was returning as the numbness subsided, but with it came the ache. The top joint of his thumb had caught in the trigger guard and been torn off; now the blood welled out of the stump thickly and slowly, dark blood the colour of apple jelly. With his right hand he groped for his handkerchief.

“Hey, Curry, your rifle’s lying there in the open. You might need it in a few minutes. Why don’t you go out and fetch it?” Bruce bound the handkerchief tightly round the stump of his thumb and the bleeding slowed. Then he looked at the rifle where it lay ten feet away. The foresight had been knocked off, and the same bullet that had amputated his thumb had smashed into the breech, buckled the loading handle and

the slide. He knew that it was damaged beyond repair.

“Think I’ll have me a little target practice, shouted Hendry from above, and again there was a burst of automatic fire. Bruce’s rifle disappeared in a cloud of dust and flying rock fragments and when it cleared the woodwork of the rifle was splintered and torn and there was further damage to the action.

Well, that’s that, thought Bruce, the rifle is wrecked, Shermaine has the pistol, and I have only one good hand. This is going to be

interesting.

He unbuttoned the front of his jacket and examined the welt that the bullet had raised across his chest. It looked like a rope burn, painful and red, but not serious. He rebuttoned his jacket.

“Okay, Bruce Baby, the time for games is over. I’m coming down to get you.” Hendry’s voice was harsh and loud, filled with confidence.

Bruce rallied under the goading of it. He looked round quickly which way to go? Climb high so he must come up to get at you. Take the right-hand turret, work round the side of it and wait for him on the top.

In haste now, spurred by the dread of being the hunted, he

scrambled to his feet and dodged away up the slope, keeping his head down using the thick screen of rock and vegetation.

He reached the wall of the right-hand turret and followed it round, found the spiral ledge that he had seen from below and went on to it, up along it like a fly on a wall, completely exposed, keeping his back to the cliff of granite, shuffling sideways up the eighteen-inch ledge with the drop below him growing deeper with each step.

Now he was three hundred feet above the forest and could look out across the dark green land to another row of kopjes on the horizon.

The rain had ceased but the cloud was unbroken, covering the sky.

The ledge widened, became a platform and Bruce hurried across it round the far shoulder and came to a dead end.

The ledge had petered out and there was only the drop below. He had trapped himself on the side of the turret the summit was unattainable. If Hendry descended to the forest floor and circled the kopje he would find Bruce completely at his mercy, for there was no cover on the narrow ledge. Hendry could have a little more target practice.

Bruce leaned against the rock and struggled to control his breathing. His throat was clogged with the thick saliva of exhaustion and fear. He felt tired and helpless, his thumb throbbed painfully and he lifted it to examine it once more.

Despite the tourniquet it was bleeding slowly, a wine-red drop at a time.

Bleeding! Bruce swallowed the thick gluey stuff in his throat and looked back along the way he had come. On the grey rock the bright red splashes stood out clearly. He had laid a blood spoor for Hendry to follow.

All -right then, perhaps it is best this way. At least I’ll be able to come to grips with him. If I wait behind this shoulder until

he starts to cross the platform, there’s a three hundred foot drop on one side, I may be able to rush him and throw him off.

Bruce leaned against the shoulder of granite, hidden from the platform, and tuned his ears to catch the first sound of Hendry’s approach.

The clouds parted in the eastern sector of the sky and the sun shone through, slanting across the side of the kopje.

It will be better to die in the sun, thought Bruce, a sacrifice to the Sun god thrown from the roof of the temple, and he grinned without mirth, waiting with patience and with pain.

The minutes fell like drops into the pool of time, slowly measuring out the edition of life that had been allotted to him. The pulse in his ears counted also, in-id his breath that he drew and held and gently exhaled — how many more would there be?

I should pray, he thought, but after this morning when I prayed that it shouldnot rain, and the rains came and saved me, i will not presume again to tell the Old Man how to run things.

Perhaps he knows best after all.

Thy will be done, he thought instead, and. suddenly his nerves

jerked tight as a line hit by a marlin. The sound he had heard was that of cloth brushing against rough rock.

He held his breath and listened, but all he could discern was the pulse in his ears and the wind in the trees of the forest below. The

wind was a lonely sound.

Thy will be done, he repeated without breathing, and heard Hendry breathe close behind the shoulder of rock.

He stood away from the wall and waited. Then he saw Hendry’s shadow thrown by the early morning sun along the ledge. A great distorted shadow on the grey rock.

Thy will be done. And he went round the shoulder fast, his good hand held like a blade and the weight of his body behind it.

Hendry was three feet away, the rifle at high port across his chest, standing close in against the cliff, the cup-shaped steel helmet pulled low over the slitty eyes and little beads of sweat clinging in the red-gold stubble of his beard. He tried to drop the muzzle of the rifle but Bruce was too close.

Bruce lunged with stiff fingers at his throat and he felt the crackle and give of cartilage. Then his weight carried him on and

Hendry sprawled backwards on to the stone platform with Bruce on top of him.

The rifle slithered across the rock and dropped over the edge, and they lay chest to chest with legs locked together in a horrible parody of the love act. But in this act we do not procreate, we destroy!

Hendry’s face was purple and swollen above his damaged throat, his

Mouth open as he struggled for air, and his breath smelt old and sour in Bruce’s face.

With a twist towards the thumb Bruce freed his right wrist from

Hendry’s grip and, lifting it like an axe, brought it down across the bridge of Hendry’s nose. Twin jets of blood spouted from the nostrils and gushed into his open mouth.

With a wet strangling sound in his throat Hendry’s body arched violently upwards and Bruce was thrown back against the side of the cliff with such force that for a second he lay there.

Wally was on his knees, facing Bruce, his eyes glazed and

sightless, and the strangling rattling sound spraying from his throat in a pink cloud of blood. With both hands he was fumbling his pistol out of its canvas holster.

Bruce drew his knees up on to his chest, then straightened his legs in a mule kick. His feet landed together in the centre of

Hendry’s stomach, throwing him backwards off the platform. Hendry made

that strangled bellow all the way to the bottom, but at the end it was cut off abruptly, and afterwards there was only the sound of the wind in the forest below.

For a long time, drained of strength and the power to think, Bruce sat on the ledge with his back against the rock.

Above him the clouds had rolled aside and half the sky was blue.

He looked out across the land and the forest was lush and clean from the rain. And I am still alive. The realization warmed Bruce’s mind as comfortably as the early sun was warming his body. He wanted to shout it out across the forest. I am still alive!

At last he stood up, crossed to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the tiny crumpled figure on the rocks below.

Then he turned away and dragged his beaten body down the side of the turret.

It took him twenty minutes to find Wally Hendry in the chaos of broken rock and scrub below the turret. He lay on his side with his legs drawn up as though he slept. Bruce knelt beside him and drew his pistol from the olive-green canvas holster; then he unbuttoned the flap of Hendry’s bulging breast pocket and took out the white canvas bag.

He stood up, opened the mouth of the bag and stirred the diamonds with his forefinger. Satisfied, he jerked the drawstring closed and dropped them into his own pocket.

In death he is even more repulsive than he was alive, thought

Bruce without regret as he looked down at the corpse.

The flies were crawling into the bloody nostrils and clustering round the eyes.

Then he spoke aloud.

“So Mike Haig was right and I was wrong - you can destroy it.”

Without looking back he walked away. The tiredness left him.

Carl Engelbrecht came through the doorway from the cockpit into the main cabin of the Dakota.

“Are you two happy?” he asked above the deep drone of the engines, and then grinning with his big brown face, “I can see you are!” Bruce grinned back at him and tightened his arm around Shermaine’s shoulders.

“Go away! Can’t you see we’re busy?”

“You’ve got lots of cheek for a hitch-hiker - bloody good mind to make you get out and walk,” he grumbled as he sat down beside them on the bench that ran the full length of the fuselage. “I’ve brought you some coffee and sandwiches.”

“Good. Good. I’m starving.” Shermaine sat up and reached for the thermos flask and the greaseproof paper packet. The bruise on her cheek had faded to a shadow with yellow edges - it was almost ten days old. With his mouth full of chicken sandwich Bruce kicked one of the wooden cases that were roped securely to the floor of the aircraft.

“What have you got in these, Carl?” “Dunno,” said Carl and poured coffee into the three plastic mugs. “In this game you don’t ask questions. You fly out, take your money, and let it go.” He drained his mug and stood up. “Well, I’ll leave you two alone now. We’ll be in Nairobi in a couple of hours, so you can sleep or something!” He winked. “You’ll have to stay aboard while we refuel. But we’ll be airborne again in an hour or so, and the day after tomorrow, God and the weather permitting, we’ll set you down in Zurich.”

“Thanks, old cock.”

“Think nothing of it - all in the day’s work.” He went forward

and disappeared into the cockpit, closing the door behind him.

Shermaine turned back to Bruce, studied him for a moment and then laughed.

“You look so different - now you look like a lawyer!”

Self-consciously Bruce tightened the knot of his Old Michaelhouse tie.

“I must admit it feels strange to wear a suit and tie again.” He looked down at the well-cut blue suit - the only one he had left - and then up again at Shermaine.

“And in a dress I hardly recognize you either.” She was wearing a lime-green cotton frock, cool and crisp looking, white high-heel shoes and just a little make-up to cover the bruise. A damn fine woman, Bruce decided with pleasure.

“How does your thumb feel? she asked, and Bruce held up the stump with its neat little turban of adhesive tape.

“I had almost forgotten about it.” Suddenly Shermaine’s expression changed, and she pointed excitedly out of the perspex window behind Bruce’s shoulder.

“Look, there’s the sea!” It lay far below them, shaded from blue to pale green in the shallows, with a round of white beach and the wave formation moving across it like ripples on a pond.

“That’s Lake Tanganyika.” Bruce laughed. “We’ve left the Congo behind.”

“Forever?” she asked.

“Forever!” he assured her.

The aircraft banked slightly, throwing them closer together, as

Carl picked out his landmarks and altered cours towards the north-east.

Four thousand feet below them the dark insect that was their shadow flitted and hopped across the surface of the water.