"It will be cutting it fairly fine. We must get through to Port
Reprieve by tomorrow evening and pull out again at dawn the next day."
"Why not keep going tonight?" Hendry removed the bottle from his lips to
ask. "Better than sitting here being eaten by mosquitoes."
"We'll stay," Bruce answered. "It won't do anybody much good to derail
this lot in the dark." He turned back to
Ruffy.
"Three-hour watches tonight, Sergeant Major. Lieutenant Haig will
take the first, then Lieutenant Hendry, then Lieutenant de Surrier, and
I'll do the dawn spell."
"Okay, boss. I'd better make sure my boys aren't sleeping." He left the
compartment and the broken glass from the corridor windows crunched
under his boots.
"I'll be on my way also." Mike stood up and pulled the ground sheet over
his shoulders.
"Don't waste the batteries of the searchlights, Mike.
Sweep every ten minutes or so."
"Okay, Bruce." Mike looked across at Hendry. "I'll call you at nine
o'clock."
"Jolly good show, old fruit." Wally exaggerated Mike's accent. "Good
hunting, what!" and then as Mike left the compartment, "Silly old
bugger, why does he have to talk like that?" No one answered him, and he
pulled up his shirt behind.
"Andre what's this on my back?"
"It's a pimple."
"Well, squeeze it then." Bruce woke in the night, sweating, with the
mosquitoes whining about his face. Outside it was still raining and
occasionally the reflected light from the searchlight on the roof of the
coach lit the interior dimly.
On one of the bottom bunks Mike Haig lay on his back.
His face was shining with sweat and he lolled his head from side to side
on the pillow. He was grinding his teeth - a sound to which
Bruce had become accustomed, and he preferred it to Hendry's snores.
"You poor old bugger," whispered Bruce.
From the bunk opposite, Andre de Surrier whimpered.
In sleep he looked like a child with dark soft hair falling over his
forehead.
The sun was hot before it cleared the horizon. It lifted a warm mist
from the dripping forest. and the rain petered out in the dawn.
As they ran north the forest thickened, the trees grew closer together
and the undergrowth beneath them was coarser than it had been around
Elisabethville.
Through the warm misty dawn Bruce saw the water tower at Msapa
junction rising like a lighthouse above the forest, its silver paint
streaked with brown rust. Then they came round the last curve in the
tracks and the little settlement huddled before them.
It was small, half a dozen buildings in all, and there was about it the
desolate aspect of human habitation reverting to jungl. Beside the
tracks stood the water tower and the raised concrete coal bins.
Then the station buildings of wood and iron, with the large sign above
the verandah:
MSAPA JUNCTION. Elevation 963m.
There was an avenue of casia flora trees with very dark green foliage
and orange flowers; and beyond that, on the edge of the forest, a row of
cottages.
One of the cottages had been burned, its ruins were fire blackened
and tumbled; and the gardens had lost all sense of discipline with three
months'neglect.
"Driver, stop beside the water tower. You have fifteen minutes to fill
your boiler."
"Thank you, monsieur." With a heavy sigh of steam the loco pulled up
beside the tower.
"Haig, take four men and go back to give the driver a hand."
"Okay, Bruce." Bruce turned once more to the radio.
"Hendry."
"Hello there."
"Get a patrol together, six men, and search those cottages. Then take a
look at the edge of the bush, we don't want any unexpected visitors."
Wally Hendry waved an acknowledgement from the leading truck, and Bruce
went on: "Put de
Surrier on." He watched Hendry pass the set to Andre
"De Surner, you are in charge of the leading trucks in Hendry's absence.
Keep Hendry covered, but watch the bush behind you also. They could come
from there." Bruce switched off the set and turned to Ruffy. "Stay up
here
on the roof, Ruffy. I'm going to chase them up with the watering. If you
see anything, don't write me a postcard, start pooping off." Ruffy
nodded. "Have some breakfast to take with you." He proffered an open
bottle of beer.
"Better than bacon and eggs." Bruce accepted the bottle and climbed down
on to the platform. Sipping the beer he walked back along the train and
looked up at Mike and the engine driver in the tower.
"Is it empty?" he called up at them.
"Half full, enough for a bath if you want one," answered Mike.
"Don't tempt me." The idea was suddenly very attractive, for he could
smell his own stale body odour and his eyelids were itchy and swollen
from mosquito bites. "My kingdom for a bath." He ran his fingers over
his jowls and they rasped over stiff beard.
He watched them swing the canvas hose out over the loco. The chubby
little engine driver clambered up and sat astride the boiler as
he fitted the hose.
A shout behind him made Bruce turn quickly, and he saw Hendry's patrol
coming back from the cottages. They were dragging two small prisoners
with them.
"Hiding in the first cottage," shouted Hendry. "They tried to leg it
into the bush." He prodded one of them with his bayonet. The child cried
out and twisted in the hands of the gendarme who held her.
"Enough of that." Bruce stopped him from using the bayonet again and
went to meet them. He looked at the two children.
The girl was close to puberty with breasts like insect bites just
starting to show, thin-legged with enlarged kneecaps out of proportion
to her thighs and calves. She wore only a dirty piece of trade cloth
drawn up between her legs and secured around her waist by a length of
bark string, and the tribal tattoo marks across her chest and cheeks and
forehead stood proud in ridges of scar tissue.
"Ruffy." Bruce called him down from the coach. "Can you speak to them?"
Ruffy picked up the boy and held him on his hip. He was younger than the
girl - seven, perhaps eight years old. Very dark-skinned and completely
naked, as naked as the terror on his face.
Ruffy grunted sharply and the gendarme released the girl.
She stood trembling, making no attempt to escape.
Then in a soothing rumble Ruffy began talking to the boy on his hip; he
smiled as he spoke and stroked the child's head. Slowly a little of the
fear melted and the boy answered in a piping treble that
Bruce could not understand.
"What does he say?" urged Bruce.
"He thinks we're going to eat them," laughed Ruffy. "Not enough
here for a decent breakfast." He patted the skinny little arm, grey with
crushed filth, then he gave an order to one of the gendarmes. The man
disappeared into the coach and came back with a handful of chocolate
bars. Still talking, Ruffy peeled one of them and placed it in the boy's
mouth. The child's eyes widened appreciatively at the taste and he
chewed quickly, his eyes on Ruffy's face, his answers now muffled with
chocolate.
At last Ruffy turned to Bruce.
"No trouble here, boss. They come from a small village about an hour's
walk away. just five or six families, and no war party. These kids
sneaked across to have a look at the houses, pinch what they could
perhaps, but that's all." "How many men at this village?" asked Bruce,
and Ruffy turned back to the boy. In reply to the question he held up
the fingers of both hands, without interrupting the chewing.
"Does he know if the line is clear through to Port Reprieve? Have they
burnt the bridges or torn up the tracks?" Both children were dumb to
this question. The boy swallowed the last of his chocolate and looked
hungrily at Ruffy, who filled his mouth again.
"Jesus," muttered Hendry with deep disgust. "Is this a creche or
something. Let's all play ring around the roses."
"Shut up," snapped
Bruce, and then to Ruffy, "Have they seen any soldiers?" Two heads
shaken in solemn unison.
"Have they seen any war parties of their own people?" Again solemn
negative.
"All right, give them the rest of the chocolate," instructed
Bruce. That was all he could get out of them, and time was wasting. He
glanced back at the tower and saw that Haig and the engine driver had
finished watering. For a further second he studied the boy. His own son
would be about the same age now; it was twelve months since - Bruce
stopped himself hurriedly. That way lay madness.
Hendry, take them back to the edge of the bush and turn them loose.
Hurry up. We've wasted long enough."
"You're telling me!"
grunted Hendry and beckoned to the two children. With Hendry leading and
a gendarme on each side they trotted away obediently and disappeared
behind the station building.
"Driver, are your preparations complete?"
"Yes, monsieur, we are ready to depart."
"Shovel all the coal in, we've gotta keep her rolling." Bruce smiled at
him, he liked the little man and their stilted exchanges gave him
pleasure.
"Pardon, monsieur."
"It was an imbecility, a joke - forgive me."
"Ah, a joke!" The roly-poly stomach wobbled merrily.
"Okay, Mike," Bruce shouted, "get your men aboard. We are, -" A
burst of automatic gunfire cut his voice short. It came from behind the
station buildings, and it battered into the heat-muted morning with such
startling violence that for an instant Bruce stood paralysed.
"Haig," he yelled, "get up front and take over from de Surrier."
That was the weak point, and Mike's party ran down the train.
"You men." Bruce stopped the six gendarmes. "Come with me." They fell in
behind him, and with a quick glance Bruce assured himself that the train
was safe. All along its length rifle barrels were poking out
protectively, while on the roof Ruffy was dragging the Bren round to
cover the flank. A charge by even a thousand Baluba must fail before the
fire power that was ready now to receive it.
"Come on," said Bruce and ran, with the gendarmes behind him, to the
sheltering wall of the station building.
There had been no shot fired since that initial burst, which could mean
either that it was a false alarm or that Hendry's party had been
overwhelmed by the first rush.
The door of the station master's office was locked. Bruce kicked and it
crashed open with the weight of his booted foot behind it.
I've always wanted to do that, he thought happily in his excitement,
ever since I saw Gable do it in San Francisco.
"You four - inside! Cover us from the windows." They crowded into the
room with their rifles held ready. Through the open door Bruce saw the
telegraph equipment on the table by the far wall; it was clattering
metallically from traffic on the Elisabethville-Jadotville line. Why is
it that under the stimulus of excitement my mind always registers
irrelevances? Which thought is another irrelevancy, he decided.
"Come on, you two, stay with me." He led them down the outside
wall, keeping in close to its sheltering bulk, pausing at the corner to
check the load of his rifle and slip the selector on to rapid fire.
A further moment he hesitated. What will I find around this corner? A
hundred naked savages crowded round the mutilated bodies of
Hendry and his gendarmes, or ... ?
Crouching, ready to jump back behind the wall, rifle held at high port
across his chest, every muscle and nerve of his body cocked like a
hair-trigger, Bruce stepped sideways into the open.
Hendry and the two gendarmes stood in the dusty road beyond the first
cottage. They were relaxed, talking together, Hendry reloading his
rifle, cramming the magazine with big red hands on which the gingery
hair caught the sunlight. A cigarette dangled from his lower lip and he
laughed suddenly, throwing his head back as he did so and the cigarette
ash dropped down his jacket front. Bruce noticed the long dark sweat
stain across his shoulders.
The two children lay in the road fifty yards farther on.
Bruce was suddenly cold, it came from inside, a cramping coldness of the
guts and chest. Slowly he straightened up and began to walk towards the
children. His feet fell silently in the powder dust and the only sound
was his own breathing, hoarse, as though a wounded beast followed close
behind him. He walked past Hendry and the two gendarmes
without looking at them; but they stopped talking, watching him
uneasily.
He reached the girl first and went down on one knee beside her, laying
his rifle aside and turning her gently on to her back.
"This isn't true," he whispered. "This can't be true." The bullet had
taken half her chest out with it, a hole the size of a coffee cup, with
the blood still moving in it, but slowly, oozing, welling up into it
with the viscosity of new honey.
Bruce moved across to the boy; he felt an almost dreamlike sense of
unreality.
"No, this isn't true." He spoke louder, trying to undo it with words.
Three bullets had hit the boy; one had torn his arm loose at the
shoulder and the sharp white end of the bone pointed accusingly out of
the wound. The other bullets had severed his trunk almost in two.
It came from far away, like the rising roar of a train along a tunnel.
Bruce could feel his whole being shaken by the strength of it, he shut
his eyes and listened to the roaring in his head, and with his eyes
tight closed his vision was filled with the colour of blood.
"Hold on!" a tiny voice screamed in his roaring head.
"Don't let go, fight it. Fight it as you've fought before." And he clung
like a flood victim to the straw of his sanity while the great roaring
was all around him. Then the roar was muted, rumbling away, gone past, a
whisper, now nothing.
The coldness came back to him, a coldness more vast than the flood had
been.
He opened his eyes and breathed again, stood up and walked back to where
Hendry stood with the two gendarmes.
"Corporal," Bruce addressed one of the men beside Hendry; and with a
shock he heard that his own voice was calm, without any trace of the
fury that had so nearly carried him away on its flood.
"Corporal, go back to the train. Tell Lieutenant Haig and
Sergeant Major Ruffararc, that I want them here." Thankfully the man