The Town By The Sea

A DANGEROUS POST

In front of me stands a line of posts with barbed wire stretched tight between them. Beyond the barbed wire are allotments—a big stretch of lumpy frozen ground, most of it hidden in darkness. Some distance away, near the road, there is another line of barbed wire, but you can't see it from here. All the time I keep thinking that distant barbed-wire fence has been cut and bandits are creeping towards me across the black, frozen earth. My ears are cold, very cold, but so as to hear better I purposely keep my collar down, and my fingers gripping the rifle are stiff and frozen.

So this is post No. 3 that I've heard so much about from chaps who have stood guard here before!

Behind me rises the cold brick wall of the shed that stands between me and the inner yard. The projecting edge of the roof sticks out just above my head. The narrow passage for the sentry with barbed wire on one side runs along the shed wall for about thirty paces. It comes to a dead-end at the high brick wall of the next house, which joins that of the shed at right angles.

"The chicken run"—that's what the Special Detachment men call post No. 3. A sentry on duty here feels cut off from his comrades, cut off from the whole world...

Ever since H had been on duty I had been unable to take my eyes off a black hump that was sticking up on the allotment about ten paces away. It was like the head of a man crouching on the ground. I was very sorry I hadn't asked the previous guard, a student from the farming institute, whether he had noticed that hump. Suddenly the hump seemed to move and creep nearer. Shivering, I poked the barrel of my rifle through the barbed wire and was just about to fire, when I stopped myself. Suppose it was not a man at all! It might be a ball of weed blown about by the wind? Or a heap of potato-tops? Or simply a pile of earth that someone had left after digging up their potatoes?

What then?... Then I should look a fool. The chaps would never let me forget it. My first dangerous post and I made a boob! They'd say I'd lost my nerve. . .

The wind blew and the iron roof above me made a harsh whistling sound. That wasn't someone walking over the roof, was it?... Craning my neck, I peered up under the eaves of the shed expecting to see the black head of a bandit pop out at any moment. He could easily have jumped from the roof of the house on to the barn.

Suspicious thumping noises sounded overhead. Surely they weren't footsteps?... I stood on tip-toe. Faint sounds reached my ears—a knocking in Kishinev Street, a rustling on the allotment, the creak of weathercock on the roof. My head swam from looking up at the mass of stars glittering above me in the cold frosty air.

The thumping noises on the roof grew louder. I took a firm grip on my rifle and pointed it in the direction of the noise. A distant star glinted at me from behind a tall chimney-pot.

"Ears like axes!" Polevoi had said as he marched us to our posts. "You are guarding the arms store for the Communists and Komsomol members of the whole district!

Special Detachment stores are a very tempting target for capitalist spies."

And even if he hadn't said that, we all knew what a responsible job it was to be guarding Special Detachment Headquarters. In the cellars there was a lot of dynamite, TNT, and ammunition. And we were guarding it all for the first time.

"Ears like axes! Ears like axes!" I repeated Polevoi's favourite saying to myself and my frozen ears began to feel as if they were growing longer and longer and getting as thin and sharp as axe-blades.

The roof was quiet again.

That noise must have been the wind romping with a loose sheet of iron. But wait! Where was that black hump?

I had forgotten about it... I searched for the black shape that had made me so uneasy. It was still there on the allotment and hadn't moved an inch.

... I paced slowly to and fro along the shed, trying to laugh at my fears. II reflected that dawn was near and soon I should have nothing to worry about. Why should anything special happen during my watch? Plenty of watches passed without anything happening at all. It would be the same with mine. But no one would be able to make fun of me for being the youngest in the group. And they didn't even know I had put an extra year on my age just to get accepted for the Special Detachment! Now I would come back off my watch a real fighting man, and for long afterwards I should be proud of having stood guard at post No. 3. They wouldn't have put a slacker here, however much he asked!

When he brought me to the post, Polevoi had said briefly and simply: "If you see anyone on the allotment, just let him have it! There's no chance of a passer-by or a drunk wandering in here..."

"Just let him have it!" There was something grim and terrible in that order.

...Again the wind began to howl in the bare, icy branches of the trees; last year's weeds and potato-tops rustled against the barbed wire; the iron rumbled on the roof; the weathercock creaked behind the wall of the house.

And suddenly, in a fresh gust of wind, I caught the sound of Sasha's voice:

"What do you want?... Halt!... Halt! ... Hands... Hey, this way, chaps!"

For a moment everything was quiet, then I heard a piercing whistle. Doors banged in the guard-room. On the other side of the shed, men were running about the yard... Then I heard Sasha shouting again:

"There!... Over there!... Catch him.. ."

"Get a ladder! Quick!" came Polevoi's voice.

How I longed to run and help the other chaps and see what was going on! But I could not leave my post. Even if the whole place was on fire, I had no right to move from here.

Still listening to what was happening in the yard, I stared hard into the surrounding darkness. And so that nobody could make a grab at me from behind, I stood with my back to the wall of the shed.

My heart thumped, the rifle trembled in my hands. I was expecting something terrific to happen...

A shot thundered just above me, in the attic of the shed. Then another. I heard a faint groan some distance away. Then everything was quiet again.

About five minutes passed. Quick footsteps crunched in the narrow passage that led from the yard to my post. I jumped back into the corner and prepared to shoot...

"Halt!" I shouted wildly as a shadow appeared round the corner of the wall.

"You all right, Mandzhura?" Polevoi asked with anxiety in his voice. "Everything all right here?"

"Everything's all right," I answered and at once realized that I had made a mistake in not asking

Polevoi for the password.

Polevoi walked up to me. He was out of breath and bare-headed.

"No one ran through here?"

"No one. Someone groaned on the other side of the shed, and there were shots in the attic..."

"I know that myself. But out here," Polevoi pointed with his revolver towards the allotment, "you haven't noticed anything?"

"No, nothing."

"Very strange! How did he get through?"

"Who was that shooting?" I asked.

"Keep a very sharp look-out, Mandzhura. Now particularly. If you see anyone, let him have it straightaway! Understand? It won't be long now before it gets light. I'll be round again soon." And Polevoi strode away quickly, back to the yard.

Two hours later, when I came off duty, I learnt from the chaps in the warm guard-room what had happened during that anxious night.

While the sentries at the outer posts were freezing in the icy wind, Sasha had been having a much nicer time. Shielded from the wind by the sheds and the main building, he swaggered about the yard in his shiny galoshes. The smooth dry paving stones were well lighted by electric lamps hanging at the corners of the main building.

But soon Sasha's feet began to ache. He climbed the wooden steps of the shed, that lay in the shadow of a little balcony above. Sasha swore to Polevoi that he did not sit there for more than five minutes. But no one believed him, of course. Sasha must have dozed off on the steps.

As he walked down into the yard again, Sasha heard la faint sound behind him. He turned round — and froze to the spot.

A stranger was climbing over the balcony rail, apparently with the intention of sliding down the post into the yard. How he came to be up -there was a mystery.

Sasha should have fired at once. He should have got the intruder while he was still on the balcony.

But Sasha lost his nerve.

"What do you want?. . . Halt!. . . Halt!. . ." he shouted in a quavering voice.

The stranger immediately darted back through the narrow door leading into the attic. He was still in range of a bullet. Sasha suddenly remembered his rifle. He hugged the butt to his shoulder and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. When he took up his post, Sasha had forgotten to release the safety catch. Hearing Sasha's shout, Petka who was guarding the ammunition cellar thumped on the guard-room door with his rifle, and Nikita standing guard in Kishinev Street blew his whistle.

"There... there... There's a bandit up there!" Sasha burbled at Polevoi as he rushed out into the yard.

In a second the guards had a ladder against the wall. Polevoi was the first to climb on to the roof. Anxious to catch the bandit but wary of being ambushed, Polevoi darted across the roof and climbed in the last attic window.

When he got inside the attic, Polevoi noticed a faint gleam of light far away in the darkness. It was a gap in the wall and a man was struggling to get through it. Polevoi fired twice. The unknown man groaned, but struggled through the gap and crashed over the roof of the next-door house.

Polevoi ordered the two guards who had followed him to chase the stranger over the roofs. He himselfjumped down into the yard, checked my post and sent another three guards to inspect all the yards round headquarters, and the side-road that ran into Kishinev Street. But the bandit managed to slip away before our patrol reached the side-road. After squeezing through the gap on to the roof of the house next door, which was a hostel for chemistry students, the stranger leapt unhesitatingly into a big heap of dung in the hostel garden and slipped out through a hole in the fence into the side-road. Here the trail broke off.

He must have cut across the side-road and made his way through the yards to the Market Square. It was a difficult route, specially for a wounded man; he would have had to climb several fences and get through the barbed wire between the yards, and, after all that, run out on to the well-lighted Market Square. There was a watchman on the square. He sat by the co-operative grocer's wrapped in a sheepskin, with a shot-gun in his hands. Perhaps the watchman had been asleep? Not very likely. At any rate he swore he hadn't slept a wink. Only ten minutes before the incident his wife had brought him a bowl of meat and buckwheat porridge for supper. The meal was still warm when the guards ran up and asked him if he had seen anything. It was hard to imagine how the wounded man could have slipped across the Market Square without the watchman—an old, experienced soldier—noticing him. Nevertheless the trail did lead to Market Square. The barbed wire round the red-brick house on the other side of the street had been pulled apart. On one of its spikes there was a scrap of cloth that must have been torn from the clothing of a man crawling through in a hurry. Apart from the scrap of cloth on the barbed wire there were no other traces of the stranger.

Farther away, on the steps of the large building where the staff of the district education department lived, a drop of dried blood was discovered.

One of the few lucky ones who were allowed to leave the guard-room and take part in the pursuit of the bandit was Furman, once a juvenile delinquent and now a pupil at the factory-training school. At the sight of the blood on the steps Furman was overjoyed. He thought it was the bandit's blood. But the wife of the director of district education who lived in the house said it came from a chicken she had killed the previous Friday. Bitterly disappointed, the unlucky sleuth wandered away.

It could only be supposed that the bandit had got out on to the lighted square, slipped past under the very nose of the sleepy watchman and crossed the bridge into the old part of the town. From there he could make either for the Polish or the Rumanian frontier.

In the attic of the shed at headquarters, the bandit had dropped a bundle of fuse wire and a detonator. Apparently he had intended first to do away with the sentry, then make his way to the ammunition cellar and blow it up, headquarters and all. When he came out on the balcony and saw no one in the yard, he must have concluded that the sentry was asleep. Sasha would have had a bad time if he hadn't come out of his nook and looked round. As it turned out, Sasha had been quite unarmed while he was on guard.