The Last Place God Made

NINE

I did not sleep particularly well and the fact that it was three a.m. before Hannah appeared didn't help. I slept only fitfully after that and finally got up at six and went outside.

It was warm and oppressive, unusually so considering the hour and the heavy grey clouds promised rain of the sort that would last for most of the day. Not my kind of morning at all and the prospect of what was to follow had little to commend it.

I wandered along the front of the open hangar and paused beside the Bristol which stood there with its usual air of expectancy as if waiting for something to happen. It came to me suddenly that other men must have stood beside her like this, coughing over the first cigarette of the day as they waited to go out on a dawn patrol, sizing up the weather, waiting to see what the day would bring. It gave me a curious feeling of kinship which didn't really make any sense.

I turned and found Hannah watching me. That first time we'd met after I'd crash-landed in the Vega, I'd been struck by the ageless quality in his face, but not now. Perhaps it was the morning or more probably, the drink from the previous night, but he looked about a hundred years old. As if he had experienced everything there ever was and no longer had much faith in what was to come.

The tension between us was almost tangible. He said harshly, ‘Do you intend to go through with this crazy business?’

‘I said so, didn't I?’

He exploded angrily. ‘God damn it, there's no knowing how the Huna might react. If they turn sour, you won't have a prayer.’

‘I can't say I ever had much faith in it anyway.’ I started to move past him.

He grabbed my arm and spun me round. ‘What in the hell are you trying to prove, Mallory?’

I see now, on reflection, that he saw the whole thing as some sort of personal challenge. If I went, then he would have to go or appear less than me and not only to Joanna Martin, for as I have said, he was a man to whom appearances were everything.

He was angry because I had put him in an impossible position which should have pleased me. Instead I felt as sombre as that grey morning itself.

‘Let's just say I'm tired of life and leave it at that.’ And for a moment, he believed me enough to slacken his grip so that I was able to pull free. As I walked back along the edge of the hangar, the first heavy drops of rain pattered against the roof.

The run to Santa Helena was uneventful enough in spite of the bad weather. We didn't get away until much later than had been anticipated because of poor visibility, but from nine o'clock on, there was a perceptible lightening in the sky although the rain still fell heavily and Hannah decided to chance it.

He asked me to take the controls which suited me in the circumstances for it not only kept me out of Joanna Martin's way, but also meant that I didn't have to struggle to find the right things to say to Sister Maria Teresa. I left all that to Hannah who seemed to do well enough although for most of the time the conversation behind was unintelligible to me, bound up as I was in my thoughts.

The situation at Santa Helena was no better. The same heavy rain drifting up from the forest again in grey mist because of the heat, but landing was safe enough and I put the Hayley down with hardly a bump.

I had radioed ahead on take-off and had given them an estimated time of arrival. In spite of this I was surprised to find Alberto himself waiting to greet us with the guard detail at the side of the strip.

He came forward to meet us as the Hayley rolled to a halt and personally handed the two women down from the cabin, greeting them courteously. His face beneath the peaked officer's cap was serious and he presented a melancholy figure, adrift in an alien landscape. The caped cavalry greatcoat he wore was obviously an echo of better days.

He led the way back to the small jetty where the motor launch waited. It presented a formidable appearance. There was a Lewis gun on the roof of the main saloon, another in the prow, each protected by sandbags, and a canvas screen along each side of the boat deck made it possible to move unobserved and also provided some sort of cover against arrows.

An awning had been rigged in the stern against the rain, there was a cane table and canvas chairs and as we approached, an orderly came out of the saloon carrying a tray. He wore white gloves and as the ladies seated themselves, served coffee from a silver pot in delicate china cups. The rain hammered down, a couple of alligators drifted by. A strange, mad dream standing there by the rail with only the stench of rotting vegetation rising from the river to give it reality.

Alberto approached and offered me a cigarette. ‘In regard to our conversation yesterday, Senhor Mallory. Have you come to any decision?’

‘A hell of a morning for a walk in the forest,’ I said, peering out under the awning. ‘On the other hand, it could be interesting.’

He smiled slightly, hesitated, as if about to say something, obviously thought better of it and turned away leaving me at the rail on my own. To say that I instantly regretted my words was certainly not so and yet I had voluntarily committed myself to a situation of grave danger which made no kind of sense at all. Now why was that?

A couple of soldiers were already casting-off and the launch eased away from the jetty. Alberto accepted a cup of coffee from the orderly and said, ‘There won't be time to drop you at Santa Helena at the moment. The Huna have changed our meeting-place to the site of an older rubber plantation, a ruined fazenda about five miles up-river from here and a mile inland. The appointed hour is still the same however, noon, so we shall barely make the rendezvous on time as it is. Under the circumstances, I'm afraid you'll all have to come along for the ride.’

‘May I ask what your plans are, Colonel?’ Sister Maria Teresa inquired.

‘Simplicity itself, Sister.’ He smiled wearily. ‘I go to talk peace with the Huna as my superiors, who are at present sitting on their backsides a good thousand miles from here behind their desks, insist.’

‘You don't approve?’

‘Let us say I am less than sanguine as to the result. A delegation, one chief and five elders, has agreed to meet me on their terms which means I go alone, except for my interpreter and very definitely unarmed. The one change in the arrangement so far is that Senhor Mallory, who knows more about Indians than any man I know, has agreed to accompany me.’

Joanna Martin went very still, her coffee cup raised halfway to her mouth. She turned and looked at me fixedly, a slight frown on her face.

Sister Maria Teresa said, ‘A long walk, Mr Mallory.’

Hannah was good and angry, glared at me, eyes wild, then at Joanna Martin. He didn't like what he was going to say but he got it out, I'll say that for him. ‘You can count me in too, Colonel.’

‘Don't be stupid,’ I cut in. ‘Who in the hell would be left to fly the women out in the Hayley if anything went wrong?’

There was no arguing with that and he knew it. He turned away angrily and Sister Maria Teresa said, ‘It has been my experience in the past, Colonel, that Indians do not look upon any group containing a woman as a threat to them. Wouldn't you agree, Mr Mallory?’

Alberta glanced quickly at me, aware instantly, as I was myself, of what was in her mind. I said, ‘Yes, that's true up to a point. They certainly don't take women to war themselves, but I wouldn't count on it.’

‘A risk I am prepared to take,’ she said simply.

There was a short silence. Alberto shook his head. ‘An impossibility, Sister. You must see that.’

There are times when the naivete of the truly good can be wholly infuriating. She said, with that disarming smile of hers, ‘I am as much for peace as you, Colonel, but I also have a special interest here, remember. The fate of Sister Anne Josepha and her friend.’

‘I would have thought the church had martyrs in plenty, Sister,’ he replied.

Joanna Martin stood up. ‘That sounds to me like another way of saying you don't really expect to come back. Am I right?’

‘Se Deusquiser, senhorita.’

If God wills. Joanna Martin turned to me, white faced. ‘You must be mad. What are you trying to prove?’

‘You want to know if your sister's alive, don't you?’ I asked.

She went into the saloon, banging the door behind her. Sister Maria Teresa said patiently, ‘Am I to take it that you refuse to allow me to accompany you, Colonel?’

‘Under no circumstances, Sister.’ He saluted her gravely. ‘A thousand regrets, but I am in command here and must do as I see fit.’

‘In spite of my authorisation?’

‘Sister, the Pope himself could not make me take you with us today.’

I think it was only then that she really and truly appreciated the danger of the entire undertaking. She sighed heavily. ‘I did not understand before. I think I do now. You are brave men, both of you.’

‘I do my duty only, Sister,’ he said, ‘but I thank you.’

She turned to me. ‘Duty in your case also, Mr Mallory?’

‘You know what they say, Sister.’ I shrugged. ‘I go because it's there.’

But there were darker reasons than that — I knew it and so did she for it showed in her eyes. I thought she might say something — a personal word, perhaps. Instead she turned and followed Joanna into the saloon.

Hannah threw his cigarette over the rail in a violent gesture. ‘You're dead men walking. A dozen arrows apiece waiting for each of you up there.’

‘Perhaps.’ Alberto turned to me. ‘The stipulation is that we go unarmed. What do you think?’

‘As good a way of committing suicide as any?’

‘You don't trust them?’

‘Can you trust the wind?’ I shook my head. ‘As I've said before, whatever they do will be entirely as the mood takes them. If they decide to kill us instead of talking, it won't be out of any conscious malice, but simply because it suddenly strikes them as a better idea than the last one they had.’

‘I see. Tell me, what was Karl Buber's attitude regarding guns?’

‘He was never without one prominently displayed, if that's what you mean. Forest Indians fear guns more than anything else I can think of. It doesn't mean they won't attack you if you're armed, but they'll think twice. They still think it's some sort of big magic.’

‘And yet they demand that we go unarmed.’ He sighed. ‘An unhealthy sign, I'm afraid.’

‘I agree. On the other hand, what the eye doesn't see…’

‘The same thought had occurred to me, I must confess. That oilskin coat of yours, for example, is certainly large enough to conceal a multitude of sins.’

He was suddenly considerably more cheerful at the prospect, I suppose, of finding himself with a fighting chance again.

‘I'll see to the necessary preparations,’ he said. ‘We'll go over things in detail closer to the time.’

He went along the deck to the wheelhouse leaving me alone with Hannah. His face was white, eyes glaring. For a moment I thought he might take a punch at me. He didn't get the chance because Joanna chose that precise moment to appear from the saloon.

I could have sworn from her eyes that she had been crying, although that didn't seem possible, but there was fresh powder on her face and the wide mouth had been smeared with vivid orange lipstick.

She spoke to Hannah without looking at him. ‘Would you kindly get to hell out of here, Sam? I'd like a private word with Galahad here.’

Hannah glanced first at her, then at me and went without argument, some indication of the measure of control she had over him by then, I suppose.

She moved in close enough to make her presence felt. ‘Are you doing this for me?’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I just like having a good time.’

She slapped me across the face hard enough to turn my head sideways. ‘Damn you, Mallory,’ she cried. ‘I don't owe you a thing.’

She did the last thing I would have expected. Flung her arm about my neck and fastened that wide mouth of hers on mine. Her body moved convulsively and for a moment it was difficult to consider other things. And then she pulled free of me, turned and ran into the saloon.

None of it made a great deal of sense, but then human actions seldom do. I moved along the starboard rail to the prow and paused to light a cigarette beside the Lewis gun which was for the moment unmanned in its sandbagged emplacement.

There was a stack of 47-round drum magazines ready for action at the side of the trim, deadly-looking gun and I sat down on the sandbags to examine it.

‘The first gun ever fired from an aeroplane.’ Hannah appeared from the other side of the wheelhouse. ‘That was June 7, 1912. Shows how long they've been around.’

‘Still a lot around back home,’ I said. ‘We used them in Wapitis.’

He nodded. ‘The Belgian Rattlesnake the Germans called it during the war. The best light aerial gun we had.’

There was silence. Rain hissed into the river, ran from the brim of my wide straw sombrero. I couldn't think of a thing to say, didn't even know what he wanted. And even then, he surprised me by saying exactly the opposite of what I had expected.

‘Look, kid, let's get it straight. She's my kind of woman. You saw her first, but I was there last and that's what counts, so hands off, understand?’

Which at least meant he expected me to survive the day's events and unaccountably cheered, I smiled in his face. Poor Sam. For a moment I thought again he might hit me. Instead he turned wildly and rushed away.

The place was marked on the large-scale map for the area as Matamoros and we found it with no trouble at all. There was an old wooden jetty rotting into the river and a landing stage almost overgrown, but the track to the house, originally built wide enough to take a cart, was still plain.

We moved into the landing stage, a couple of men ready at each Lewis gun, another ten behind the canvas screen on the starboard side, rifles ready, my old comrade-in-arms Sergeant Lima in charge.

We bumped against the landing stage not twenty yards away from that green wall and a couple of men went over the rail and held her in on hand-lines, the engine gently ticking over, ready to take us out of trouble with a burst of power if necessary.

But nothing happened. A couple of alligators slid off a mud-bank, a group of howler monkeys shouted angrily from the trees. The rest was silence.

Alberto said, ‘Good, now we make ready.’

We went into the saloon where Joanna, Sister Maria Teresa and Hannah sat at the table talking in low voices. They stopped as we entered, Alberto, Pedro the half-breed interpreter and myself, and stood up.

I took off my yellow oilsin coat and Alberto opened the arms cupboard and produced a Thompson sub-machine-gun with a drum magazine which we'd prepared earlier with a specially lengthened sling. I slipped it over my right shoulder, muzzle down and Hannah helped me on with my coat again.

Alberto took a gun which was, I understood, his personal property — probably one of the most deadly hand-guns ever made: the Model 1932 Mauser machine-pistol, and he gave Pedro a .45 automatic to stick in his waistband under the ragged poncho he wore.

The interpreter was something of a surprise for I had expected at least some sign of his white blood and found none. He looked all Huna to me in spite of his white man's clothing.

To finish, Alberto produced a couple of Mills grenades, slipped one in his pocket and handed the other to me. ‘Another little extra.’ He smiled lightly. ‘Just in case.’

There was some confused shouting outside. As we turned, the saloon door was flung open and Sergeant Lima stood there, mouth gaping.

‘What is it, man?’ Alberto demanded and Hannah produced the .45 automatic from his shoulder holster with a speed which could only indicate considerable practice.

‘The holy Sister, Colonel,’ Lima croaked. ‘She has gone into the jungle.’

There was dead silence and Joanna Martin slumped into a chair and started to whisper a Hail Mary, probably for the first time in years.

Alberto said savagely, ‘Good God, man, how could such a thing be? You were supposed to be guarding the deck. You were in command.’

‘As God is my witness, Colonel.’ Lima was obviously terrified. ‘One second she was standing there, the next, she was over the rail and into the jungle before we realised what was happening.’

Which was too much, even for the kind of rigidly correct professional soldier that Alberto was. He slapped him backhanded across the face, threw him into a chair and turned to Hannah.

‘Captain Hannah, you will oblige me by taking charge here. I suggest you keep the launch in midstream till our return. If this miserable specimen gives you even a hint of trouble, shoot him.’ He turned to me. ‘And now, my friend, I think we move very fast indeed.’

Pedro was first over the rail and Alberto and I were not far behind. The launch was already moving out into the current as we reached the edge of the forest. I glanced back over my shoulder, caught a glimpse of Hannah standing in the stern under the awning, a machine-gun in his hands, Joanna Martin at his shoulder. God knows why, but I waved, some sort of final gallant gesture, I suppose, then turned and plunged into that green darkness after Alberto.

As I have said, the track had been built wide enough to accommodate reasonably heavy traffic and I now discovered that it had exceptionally solid foundations, logs of ironwood, embedded into the soft earth for its entire length. The jungle had already moved in on it to a considerable extent, but it still gave a quick, clear passage through the kind of country that would have been about as penetrable as a thorn thicket to a white man.

The branches above were so thickly intertwined that virtually no rain got through and precious little light either. The gloom was quite extraordinary and rather eerie.

Pedro was well ahead, running very fast and soon disappeared from sight. I followed hard on Alberto's heels. After a while, we heard a cry and a few yards farther on found Pedro and Sister Maria Teresa standing together.

Alberto kept his temper remarkably under the circumstance. He simply said, ‘This is foolishness of the worst kind, Sister. I must insist that you return with us at once.’

‘And I, Colonel, am as equally determined to carry on,’ she said.

I was aware of the forest foxes calling to each other in the jungle on either side and knew that it was already too late to go back, perhaps for all of us. The thing I was most conscious of was my contempt for her stupidity, a feeling not so much of anger, but of frustration at her and so many like her who out of their own pig-headed insistence on doing good ended up causing more harm than a dozen Avilas.

There was some sort of thud in the shadows a yard or two behind. My hand went through the slit in my pocket and found the grip and trigger guard of the Thompson. There was a Huna lance embedded in the earth beside the track, a necklace of monkey skulls hanging from it.

‘What does it mean?’ Sister Maria Teresa asked.

‘That we are forbidden to go back,’ Alberto said. ‘The decision as to what to do with you is no longer mine to make, Sister. If it is of any consolation to you at all, you have probably killed us all.’

At the same moment, a drum started to boom hollowly in the middle distance.

We put a bold face on it, the only thing to do and moved on, Pedro in the lead, Sister Maria Teresa following. Alberto and I walked shoulder-to-shoulder at the rear.

We were not alone for the forest was alive with more than wild life. Birds coloured in every shade of the rainbow lifted out of the trees in alarm and not only at our passing. Parrots and macaws called angrily to each other.

‘What did you say?’ I murmured to Alberto. ‘A chief and five elders?’

‘Don't rub it in,’ he said. ‘I've a feeling this is going to get considerably worse before it gets better.’

The drum was louder now and somehow the fact that it echoed alone made it even more sinister. There was the scent of wood-smoke on the damp air and then the trees started to thin and suddenly it was lighter and then the gable of a house showed clear and then another.

Not that it surprised me for in the great days of the Brazilian rubber boom, so many millions were being made that some of the houses on the plantations up-country were small palaces, with owners so wealthy they could afford to pay private armies to defend them against the Indians. But not now. Those days were gone and Matamoros and places like it crumbled into the jungle a little bit more each year.

We emerged into a wide clearing, what was left of the house on the far side. The drumming stopped abruptly. Our hosts were waiting for us in the centre.

The cacique or chief was easily picked out and not only because he was seated on a log and had by far the most magnificent head-dress, a great spray of macaw feathers. He also sported a wooden disc in his lower lip which pushed it a good two inches out from his face, a sign of great honour amongst the Huna.

His friends were similarly dressed. Beautifully coloured feather head-dresses, a six-foot bow, a bark pouch of arrows, a spear in the right hand. Their only clothing, if that's what you could call it, was a bark penis sheath and various necklaces and similar ornaments of shells, stones or human bone.

The most alarming fact of all was that they were all painted for war, the entire skin surface being coated with an ochre-coloured mud peculiar to that section of the river. They were angry and showed it, hopping from one foot to the other, rattling on at each other like a bunch of old women in the curiously sibilant whispering that passed for speech amongst them and the anger on their flat, sullen faces was as the rage of children and as unpredictable in its consequences.

The chief let loose a broadside. Pedro said, ‘He wants to know why the holy lady and Senhor Mallory are here? He's very worried. I'm not sure why.’

‘Maybe he intended to have us killed out of hand,’ I said to Alberto, ‘and her presence has thrown him off balance.’

He nodded and said to Pedro, ‘Translate as I speak. Tell him the Huna have killed for long enough. It is time for peace.’

Which provoked another outburst, the general gist of which was that the white men had started it in the first place which entitled the Huna to finish. If all the white men went from the Huna lands, then things might be better.

Naturally Alberto couldn't make promises of that kind and in any case, he was committed to a pretty attacking form of argument. The Huna had raided the mission at Santa Helena, had murdered Father Conté and many nuns.

The chief tried to deny this although he didn't stand much of a chance of being believed with a nun's rosary and crucifix hanging around his neck. His elders shuffled from foot to foot again, scowling like schoolboys in front of the headmaster so Alberto piled on the pressure. They had already seen what the government could do. Did they wish the white man's great bird to drop more fire from the sky on their villages?

One by one, more Indians had been emerging from the forest into the clearing. I had been aware of this for some time and so had Alberto, but he made no reference to it. They pressed closer, hanging together in small groups, shouting angrily. I won't say working up their courage for fear didn't enter their thinking.

I glanced once at Sister Maria Teresa and found her — how can I explain it? — transfixed, hands clasped as if in prayer, eyes shining with compassion, presumably for these brands to be plucked from the flames.

It was round about then that Alberto raised the question of the two missing nuns. The response was almost ludicrous in its simplicity. From denying any part in the attack on Santa Helena in the first place, the chief now just as vehemently denied taking any female captives. All had been killed except for those who had got away.

Which was when Alberto told him he was lying because no one had got away. The chief jumped up for the first time and loosed off another broadside, stabbing his finger repeatedly at Pedro. I noticed the outsiders had crept in closer now in a wide ring which effectively cut off our retreat to the forest.

Alberto gave me a cigarette and lit one himself nonchalantly. ‘It gets worse by the minute. He called me here to kill me, I am certain of that now. How many do you make it out there?’

‘At least fifty.’

‘I may have to kill someone to encourage the others. Will you back me?’

Before I could reply, the chief shouted again. Pedro said, ‘He's getting at me now. He says I've betrayed my people.’

In the same moment an arrow hissed through the rain and buried itself in his right thigh. He dropped to one knee with a cry and two of the elders raised their spears to throw, howling in unison.

I had already unbuttoned the front of my oilskin coat in readiness for something like this, but I was too slow. Alberto drew and fired the Mauser very fast, shooting them both in the body two or three times, the heavy bullets lifting them off their feet.

The rest turned and ran and I loosed off a quick burst to send them on their way, deliberately aiming to one side, ripping up the earth in fountains of dirt and stone.

Within seconds there was not an Indian to be seen. Their voices rose angrily from the jungle all the way round the clearing. When I turned, Pedro was on his feet, Sister Maria Teresa crouched beside him tugging at the arrow. ‘You're wasting your time, Sister,’ I told her. ‘Those things are barbed. He'll need surgery to get the arrowhead out.’

‘He's right,’ Pedro said, and reached down and snapped off the shaft as close to his thigh as possible.

‘Right, let's get moving,’ Alberto said. ‘And be prepared to pick up your skirts and run if you want to live, Sister.’

‘A moment, please, Colonel.’

One of the two men he had shot was already dead, but the other was having a hard time of it, blood bubbling between his lips with each breath. To my astonishment she knelt beside him, folded her hands and began to recite the prayers for the dying.

‘Go Christian soul from this world, in the name of God the Father Almighty who created thee…’

Her voice moved on, Alberto shrugged helplessly and removed his cap. I followed suit with some reluctance, aware of the shrill cries of rage from the forest, thinking of that half-mile of green tunnel to the jetty. It suddenly came to me, with a sense of surprise, that I was very probably going to die.

Amazing what a difference that made. I was aware of the rain, warm and heavy, the blood on the dying man's mouth. No colour had ever seemed richer. The green of the trees, the heavy scent of wood-smoke from somewhere near at hand.

Was there much to regret? Not really. I had done what I wanted to do against all advice and every odds possible and it had been worth it. I could have been a junior partner in my father's law firm now and safe at home, but I had chosen to go to the margin of things. Well, so be it…

The Huna's final breath eased out in a dying fall, Sister Maria Teresa finished her prayers, stood up and turned her shining face towards us.

‘I am ready now, gentlemen.’

I was no longer angry. There was no point. I simply took her arm and pushed her after Alberto who had turned and started towards the beginning of the track, Pedro limping beside him.

As we approached the forest I half expected a hail of arrows, but nothing came. Pedro said, ‘They will wait for us on the track, Colonel. Play with us for a while. It is their way.’

Alberto paused and turned to me. ‘You agree with him?’

I nodded. ‘They like their fun. It's a game to them, remember. They'll probably try to frighten us to death for most of the way and actually strike when we think we are safe, close to the river.’

‘I see. So the main thing to remember is to walk for most of the way and run like hell over the last section?’

‘Exactly.’

He turned to Sister Maria Teresa. ‘You heard, Sister?’

‘We are in God's hands,’ she said with that saintly smile of hers.

‘And God helps those who help themselves,’ Alberto told her.

A group of Indians had filtered out of the forest perhaps fifty yards to the right. He took his Mills bomb from his pocket, pulled the pin and threw it towards them. They were hopelessly out of range, but the explosion had a more than salutary effect. They vanished into the forest and all voices were stilled.

‘By God, I may have stumbled on something,’ he said. ‘Let them sample yours also, my friend.’

I tossed it into the middle of the clearing, there was a satisfactorily loud explosion, birds lifted angrily out of the trees, but not one single human voice was to be heard.

‘You like to pray, Sister?’ Alberto said, taking her by the arm. ‘Well, pray that silence lasts us to the jetty.’

It was, of course, too much to expect. The Huna were certainly cowed by the two explosions, it was the only explanation for their lack of activity, but not for long. We made it to the halfway mark and beyond in silence and then the forest foxes started to call to each other.

There was more than that, of course. The rattle of spear shafts drummed against war clubs, shrill, bird-like cries in the distance, bodies crashing through the undergrowth.

But I could hear the rushing of the river, smell the dank rottenness of it and there was hope in that.

The sounds in the undergrowth on either side were closer now and parallel. We had a couple of hundred yards to go, no more, and there was the feeling that perhaps they were moving in for the kill.

Alberto said, ‘I'll take the left, you take the right, Mallory. When I give the word let them have a couple of bursts then we all run.’

Even then, I didn't think we stood much of a chance, but there wasn't really much else we could do. I didn't hear what he shouted because he seemed to be firing that machine-pistol of his in the same instant. I swung, crouching, the Thompson gun bucking in my hands as I sprayed the foliage on my side.

We certainly hit something to judge by the cries, but I didn't stop to find out and ran like hell after Pedro and Sister Maria Teresa. For a man with an arrowhead embedded in his thigh he was doing remarkably well although I presume the prospect of what would happen to him if he fell into their hands alive was having a salutary effect.

The cries were all around us again now. I fired sideways, still running and was aware of another sound, the steady rattle of a Lewis gun. A moment later we broke out on to the river-bank in time to see the launch moving in fast, Hannah himself working the gun in the prow.

I think it was about then that the arrows started to come, swishing through the trees one after the other, never in great numbers. One buried itself in the ground in front of me, another took Pedro full in the back, driving him forward. He spun round, took another in the chest and fell on his back.

I kept on running, ducking and weaving, for this was no place for heroes now, aware of the shooting from the launch, the hands helping Sister Maria Teresa over the rail. As Alberto followed her, an arrow pierced his left forearm. The force must have been considerable for he stumbled, dropping his Mauser into the river and I grabbed his other arm and shoved him over the rail. As I followed, I heard Hannah cry out, the engine note deepened and we started to pull away from the jetty.

Alberto staggered to his feet and in the same moment, one of his men cried out and pointed. I turned to see Pedro on his hands and knees like a dog back there on the landing stage, the stump of an arrow shaft protruding from his back. Behind him, the Huna broke from the forest howling like wolves.

Alberto snapped the shaft of the arrow in his arm with a convulsive movement, pulled it out and grabbed a rifle from the nearest man. Then he took careful aim and shot Pedro in the head.

The launch turned downstream. Alberto threw the rifle on the deck and grabbed Sister Maria Teresa by the front of her habit, shaking her in helpless rage. ‘Who killed him, Sister, you or me? Tell me that? Something else for you to pray about.’

She gazed up at him mutely, a kind of horror on her face. Perhaps for the first time in her saintly life she was realising that evil as the result of good intentions is just as undesirable, but I doubt it in view of subsequent events.

As for Alberto, it was as if something went out of him. He pushed her away and said in the tiredest voice I've ever heard, ‘Get away from me and stay away.’

He turned and lurched along the deck.