Cautiously, he raised his head. From this position he had a better view of the town. He saw a large stone building with steep tiled roofs and the words ‘Deutscher Kaiser Hotel’ written on it. As he watched, the German flag which was flying from the flagpole was lowered.
“We’re in the town, I think,” he called to Gleeson. “What time do you make it?” Somehow, somewhere, he’d lost his watch.
“Almost four, I think,” Gleeson said. “I can’t see my watch face. It’s covered in mud.”
Gabriel scraped it off. Gleeson’s watch had stopped at ten past three. “I’m afraid your watch has stopped,” he said.
Gabriel looked to his left. He saw white troops moving beyond the railway cutting, dashing from house to house. “The North Lancs are across the cutting,” he reported. Gleeson elbowed himself up to join him.
“What should we do?” Gleeson said. He held his enormous hands before his face, like some grotesque surgeon waiting for his rubber gloves.
“Let’s go on in,” Gabriel said. He couldn’t think of anything else.
“Right.”
They scurried across the patch of ground to the railway cutting and slithered down one side, then stepped across the rails and toiled up the opposite thirty-foot incline, Gabriel with an arm locked in Gleeson’s elbow. Once at the top they ran on through some vegetable plots and fell to the ground heavily in the shelter of a mud-brick house.
“Hoi!” they heard someone shout. “You!” They looked up.
Crouched behind a stone wall up ahead were half a dozen men of the North Lancs.
“You speak Indian?” a corporal was shouting in a thick Lancashire accent. Gabriel and Gleeson crawled over to join them.
“Oh. Sorry, sir. It’s, er, them fooking niggers in t’ Kashmir Rifles. Just down road there. Every time we shows our faces they bloody shoot at us.”
“I speak Hindi,” Gleeson offered. He looked most odd, Gabriel thought, with half his face covered in mud. Gleeson crawled into a nearby house with the corporal and soon Gabriel heard him shouting instructions. Gabriel peered over the wall. He found he was looking up a pleasant street of single-storey, white mud and stone houses. Dead bodies, with their already familiar indecent splay-legged posture, lay in the middle of the road. He couldn’t tell if they were friend or foe.
“Quite a fight here,” he said.
“Yes, sir. We had the signal to fall back. They got jerries in every bloody house. But those daft monkeys keep shootin’ at us. They’re guarding the bridge back across the cutting. None of them speaks English,” he paused. “What happened to the lieutenant, sir? If you’ll excuse me asking.”
“He was stung by bees. My whole company was attacked and driven off.”
“By bees?”
“Yes, millions of them.”
The man shook his head in admiration. “Squareheads, eh? Amazing. They think of everything.”
Gabriel looked over the wall again. The afternoon sun was low in the sky and strong shadows were being cast across the road. Then he saw figures slipping in and out of the houses, moving down the street towards them: three Europeans and about thirty askaris with bayonets fixed to their rifles.
He saw one of the officers — who seemed unaware of their presence — stand for a moment in front of the gable end of a house. Without thinking further, Gabriel levelled his revolver and fired. He saw a big chunk of plaster fall off the wall behind the officer’s head before the man flung himself into a doorway. In immediate response there was a great fusillade of shots and Gabriel ducked down under cover. He cursed his feeble aim: he had had a splendid target. He found himself trembling with excitement, his heart seemed lodged somewhere in his throat. He heard the whup of bullets passing over his head and the charter of a machine gun. Ricochets hummed and pinged off the stonework.
“We want to get out of here, sir,” one of the North Lancs said. “Don’t want to get caught by them jerry niggers.” All the men kept their heads well down.
The corporal scuttled out of the house. “It’s clear now, sir. We can go.”
“Hold on,” Gabriel said. “Where’s Lieutenant Gleeson?”
“He’s been hit, sir. Got him with that last volley.”
“Wait here,” Gabriel ordered and darted into the house. He peered into a couple of rooms. He saw a brass bedstead, cheap wooden furniture. In an end room he found Gleeson lying face down beneath the window from where he’d been shouting to the Kashmir Rifles. The wall behind was pitted with bullet holes. Gabriel was suddenly appalled by the thought that he might have been responsible. If he hadn’t shot at that German…Keeping his head down Gabriel carefully turned Gleeson over and almost collapsed in a faint. One or several bullets had removed Gleeson’s lower jawbone in its entirety, but somehow his tongue had been untouched. It now lolled, uncontained, at his throat like a thick fleshy cravat, pink and purple. Gleeson’s upper lip was drawn back revealing his top row of yellow teeth, his fair moustache was spattered with dried mud and blood. What was most horrifying was the way his eyes boggled and rolled, and his tongue twitched feebly at his neck. With a little moan Gabriel realized Gleeson was still alive, blood welling and pumping gently from the back of his throat. It was extraordinary, Gabriel thought in a daze, how large the human tongue actually was, when its entire length was revealed. He crawled out of the room on his hands and knees and was sick in the passageway. Poor Gleeson, he thought, poor old Gleeson.
After a few moments, Gabriel got to his feet and went back to the side door. There was no sign of the North Lancs. They had all gone without waiting for him. He wondered where the Germans were. He went back inside to the end room, trying not to look at Gleeson. Gabriel lowered himself out of the window. He crossed the back yard and eased himself through the garden hedge. An immense noise of gunfire was coming from the direction of the wharves, but as far as he could see he was alone again. He ran across a dirt road and slid down into the railway cutting. Here and there lay the bodies of sepoys, not all of them dead, as he could hear moans and cries coming from some of them.
He scrabbled up the opposite side. He saw tree-dotted scrub between him and the safety of the forest and the coconut plantations. Head down, he ran across the two hundred yard stretch of clearer ground at full speed, leaping undulations and bushes and the large numbers of dead and dying scattered about. Almost idly he noted how a dead body seems part of the ground, as if the earth were in a hurry to claim it…He told himself he was in shock, poor Gleeson’s horrible injury had unsettled him. He would calm down in the forest, gather his strength and then go back and try to help him. Try to carry him to a casualty clearing station.
He fought his way through the first welcoming thickets, broke through into an open space, tripped and went sprawling. He found a depression in the ground and crawled into it. He lay back, an arm over his eyes, his chest heaving as he struggled to get his breath.
He sat up with a start. He couldn’t believe it, but he seemed to have fallen asleep for a few seconds. He had a pounding vicious headache. His mouth tasted foul with dried saliva. His throat was parched. Still the relentless popping of gunfire came from the direction of the town. He put his head in his hands, suddenly overcome with weariness and the emotions rampaging through his body. He pulled his knees towards him and rested his head on them. He rubbed his forehead on his kneecaps.
He unholstered his revolver. His hands looked like a stranger’s. Black with dirt, scratched, a badly bleeding knuckle (how had that happened?). They felt thick with blisters and callouses. He heard the booming reports of naval guns, and decided to try and make his way in that general direction. Most of the fighting seemed to be coming from the seaward edge of the town. He set off. After some time he came to one of the many rough tracks that lead east to west along the headland from Ras Kasone to Tanga. He debated for an instant whether to return to the beach or go back towards the town. With some reluctance he turned towards Tanga. He hadn’t gone more than twenty yards when he met Bilderbeck running down the path towards him.