“Only nine more to go,” Ringbolt said heartily. “She can’t,” said Sergeant Galla decisively.
“She won’t be able to walk, let alone march. Look, I’m taking charge of this little operation—such a silly fuss!”
The W.O. watched with interest. Trudy was past caring, but she spared a dubious glance as Galla took the rope from the tied ankles on the pole and bound one alone at the base. She took the other and dragged it to one side. “Go ahead, Mr. Ringbolt,” she said helpfully. “She’s all yours.”
“Damn practical.” The W.O. removed his brief trousers. “Hold on to that ankle.” He surveyed his field of operation, no doubt mapping his strategy. “Pity the little dear’s so obstinate. Damn beautiful little trick, actually.” He knelt between the taut tanned legs.
The mind of the half-tied girl about to be ravished was awhirl with confused emotions. Paramount was relief. No more pain! Instead, there would be an act which, under different circumstances, could bestow great joy. She had experienced that joy a number of times under varying illusions of love. She was no virgin. Choosing pain had not been to protect a maidenhead: only a girl’s roseate concept of the immaculate. She looked up at Galla’s concerned features and smiled. This way was best. A whip had the power to direct a girl’s steps. In maiden indecision it was a friend. Girls should not have to make up their own minds, it should be done for them by their elders or by a rampant cock. Gratitude welled. In an emotion she could not fathom, she held out a welcoming hand to the craggy male features now so close. With an unsuspected gallantry the Warrant Officer raised it to his lips and kissed it gently before he mounted.
The next incident of their march across Zindawba concerned the girl, Nikola. It began with a whispered confidence in the washroom.
“Trudy, love, I’m in trouble.”
Trudy checked an involuntary glance at a taut dusky tummy. “Your boyfriend?” she asked with feminine intuition.
Nikola giggled. “No, I ain’t pregnant. But he aims to make me. He’s following right along. He’s got an old car. He says that, bein’ in a tent, I got a chance to escape. He say I must.”
“That’s easy,” said Trudy practically. “Just tell Galla and ask her to chain your ankle every night.”
“I already done that. She say I big girl now and don’t need no chain. She say I should play with my clit, then I not get hot for him the way I do.”
“O.K. Then tell your boyfriend to play with himself and go home.”
“Oh, Trudy, don’ joke. He swear he come to tent and get me.” She giggled. “Yo’ knows how’s men are when they got a stiff cock.”
“Then have W.O. Ringbolt talk to him. Ringbolt will scare him off.”
“Then he get in trouble, maybe go to prison.”
“Nikola, you’re letting this bother you. What d’you want me to do?”
“You run away with me? I scared alone.”
“Absolutely no! We’d both be flogged. I’d have thought you’d have more sense after that time when you were tied to the tree.”
“Oh, I got more sense but he ain’t! He comes to the tent at night to get me, and we both get caught. I’ll get flogged anyway and he’ll go to prison.”
“The whole thing’s absurd,” Trudy vowed without conviction. “Just to be safe I’m going to ask to have my ankle chained at night. Then you can’t prey on my sympathy.” She gently patted a dusky arm. “Don’t do anything silly. Run to Galla or the W.O. instead.”
“But I love him!” Nikola wailed.
“It’s a disease,” Trudy admonished. “One day they’ll invent a pill.”
It happened that night. Galla had laughed but provided a padlock: Trudy’s ankle was safely chained to her bed. It was a nice feeling to be absolved from decision or collusion. She slept. But the end of her slumber was abrupt. Somewhere in the night her chained foot was wrenched from beneath the covers, there was a loud snap and her ankle was free. Beside her cot a dark male shape pridefully held up a pair of bolt cutters. Beside him was a naked Nikola.
With disaster knocking at her door, Trudy could think of nothing more than: “Go away. Leave us alone. You’re crazy.”
For answer, the male grabbed her wrist and muttered softly: “You come.”
Later she was to bitterly regret her failure to scream. That was the time for it. But Nikola’s imploring eyes and something about the boy’s voice kept her mute. Fearful of disturbing the sleeping girls, she allowed herself to be led, naked, from the tent. The grip on her wrist was firm and strong.
“This here is George,” Nikola said pathetically. “Get away from the tent where we can talk.”
Trudy demanded.
The male fingers round her wrist led them to the battered car, a dark shape across the dirt road beneath a tree. When she opened her mouth to expostulate, a rag was thrust within, she was tripped to the ground, and a minute later her hands were tied behind her back and her feet stoutly trussed.
“George, you crazy! She my friend.”
Nikola’s shocked exclamation was lost in another whirl of motion. George was a very strong young man. After the ropes were knotted round her wrists and ankles, his inamorata wailed softly:
“Why you tie us up, George?”
“So you do what I want,” said George with relish.
“But poor Trudy . . . ? We’s both helpless.”
“That’s right. She do what I want too.”
“Let us loose or I’ll scream.”
“No you won’t. You scream, I gag yo’.”
Nikola did not scream. A helpless Trudy had little hope she would. They were doomed, both of them. She moaned and fought her gag while George tied her elbows tight together with a single strand of rope. The pain was instant, it would keep her pliant to his will. There was more to George than she had expected. Nikola escaped this extra infliction just as she escaped a gag. George sat his impotent girlfriend in the front seat of his car and tossed the trussed helplessness of Trudy into the back. He was lithe and swift and strong in all he did.
The gag was implacable, so was the elbow cord. They reduced the white girl’s nudity to a few useless wigglings which she soon desisted. They hurt! The pitch and toss of the car on rutted roads was bad enough. The sagging shanty in the unnamed village was perfect for their disappearance, anonymous! The bound and naked girls were carried inside.
Nine men, all varying degrees of black. George proud and grinning. Nikola weeping softly. Two kerosene lamps defeating the shadows from which there rose a man, a man with the calm presence of authority. Trudy, from the chair on which she had been uncomfortably positioned, sensed him as ‘The Leader.’
“I am Nicholas Nykobe,” he said in cultured English. “I bid you welcome. Miss Ramsay. I hope you will join our cause.” Deftly, he whisked the wadding from her mouth.
“I don’t want to join anything,” Trudy said bluntly. “Please untie me.”
Nykobe cut the cord from her elbows, that was all. “You have heard of us?” he asked politely. “The People’s Party?” Trudy sniffed at the hackneyed platitude. “Could I have some clothes, please, or something to cover me? I’m naked.”
“So I noticed,” Nykobe acknowledged drily.
“But we too are naked. It is no dishonour in Zindawba.”
George interposed anxiously. “That girl, she be mine, sir, when yo’ finish with her? She not be passed around . . . ?” Nykobe waved an imperious arm in the direction of the distraught girlfriend. His voice was contemptuous: “Take that weeping wench away and plant your seed in her, it is what you both want.”