“Get those women into the train, the shufta are right behind us, we’re leaving immediately.” Without question or argument old Boussier gathered them together and hurried them up the steel ladder into the truck. Bruce drove down the station platform shouting as he went.
“Get in! For Chrissake, hurry up! They’re coming!” He braked to
a standstill next to the cab of the locomotive and shouted up at the bald head of the driver.
“Get going. Don’t waste a second. Give her everything she’s got.
There’s a bunch of shufta not five minutes behind US.” The driver’s head disappeared into the cab without even the usual polite,” Oui monsieur.”
“Come on, Shermaine.” Bruce grabbed her hand and dragged her
from the car. Together they ran to one of the covered coaches and
Bruce pushed her half way up the steel steps.
At that moment the train erked forward so violently that she lost her grip on the handrails and tumbled backwards on top of Bruce. He
was caught off balance and they fell together in a heap on the dusty platform. Above them the train gathered speed, pulling away. He remembered this nightmare from his childhood, running after a train and never catching it. He had to fight down his panic as he and Shermaine scrambled up, both of them panting, clinging to each other, the coaches clackety-clacking past them, the rhythm of their wheels mounting.
“Run!” he gasped, “Run!” and with the panic weakening their legs he just managed to catch the handrail of the second coach. He clung to
it, stumbling along beside the train, one arm round Shermaine’s waist.
Sergeant Major Ruffararo leaned out, took Shermaine by the scruff of her neck and lifted her in like a lost kitten. Then he reached down for Bruce.
“Boss, some day we going to lose you if you go on playing around like that.”
“I’m sorry, Bruce,” she panted, leaning against him.
“No damage done.” He could grin at her. “Now I want you to get into that compartment and stay there until I tell you to come out. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Bruce.”
“Off you go.” He turned from her to
Ruffy. “Up on to the roof, Sergeant Major! We’re going to have fireworks. Those shufta have got a field gun with them and we’ll be in full view of the town right up to the top of the hills. By the time they reached the roof of the train it had pulled out of Port Reprieve and was making its first angling turn up the slope of the hills. The sun was up now, well clear of the horizon, and the mist from the swamp had lifted so that they could see the whole village spread out beneath
them.
General Moses’s column had crossed the causeway and was into the main street. As Bruce watched, the leading truck swung sharply across the road and stopped. Men boiled out from under the canopy and swarmed over the field gun, unhitching it, manhandling it into position.
“I hope those Arabs haven’t had any drill on that piece,” grunted
Ruffy.
“We’ll soon find out,” Bruce assured him grimly and looked back along the train. In the last truck Boussier stood protectively over the small group of four women and their children, like an old white-haired collie with its sheep.
Crouched against the steel side of the truck, Andre de Surrier and half a dozen gendarmes were swinging and sighting the two Bren guns.
In the second truck also the gendarmes were preparing to open fire.
“What are you waiting for?” roared Ruffy. “Get me that field gun - start shooting.” They fired a ragged volley, then the Bren guns
joined in.
With every burst Andre’s helmet slipped forward over his eyes and he had to stop and push it back. Lying on the roof of the leading coach, Wally Hendry was firing short businesslike bursts.
The shufta round the field gun scattered, leaving one of their number lying in the road, but there were men behind the armour shield -
Bruce could see the tops of their helmets.
Suddenly there was a long gush of white smoke from the barrel, and the shell rushed over the top of the train, with a noise like the wings of a giant pheasant.
“Over!” said Ruffy.
“Under!” to the next shot as it ploughed into the trees below them.
“And the third one right up the throat,” said Bruce. But it hit the rear of the train. They were using armour-piercing projectiles, not high explosive, for there was not the burst of yellow cordite fumes but only the crash and jolt as it struck.
Anxiously Bruce tried to assess the damage. The men and women in the rear trucks looked shaken but unharmed and he started a sigh of relief, which changed quickly to a gasp of horror as he realized what had happened.
“They’ve hit the coupling,” he said. “They’ve sheared the coupling on the last truck.” Already the gap was widening, as the rear truck started to roll back down the hill, cut off like the tail of a lizard.
“Jump,” screamed Bruce, cupping his hands round his mouth. “Jump before you gather speed.” Perhaps they did not hear him, perhaps they were too stunned to obey, but no one moved. The truck rolled back, faster and faster as gravity took it, down the hill towards the village and the waiting army of General Moses.
“What can we do, boss?” “Nothing,” said Bruce.
The firing round Bruce had petered out into silence as every man, even Wally Hendry, stared down the slope at the receding truck. With a constriction of his throat Bruce saw old Boussier stoop and lift his wife to her feet, hold her close to his side and the two of them looking back at Bruce on the roof of the departing train. Boussier raised his right hand in a gesture of farewell and then he dropped it again and stood very still. Behind him, Andre de Surrier had left the
Bren gun and removed his helmet. He also was looking back at Bruce, but he did not wave.
At intervals the field gun in the village punctuated the stillness with its deep boom and gush of smoke, but Bruce hardly heard it. He was watching the shufta running down towards the station yard to welcome the truck. Losing speed it ran into the platform and halted abruptly as it hit the buffers at the end of the line. The shufta swarmed over it like little black ants over the body of a beetle and faintly Bruce heard the pop, pop, pop of their rifles, saw the low sun glint on their bayonets. He turned away.
They had almost reached the crest of the hills; he could feel the
train increasing speed under him. But he felt no relief, only the prickling at the corners of his eyes and the ache of it trapped in his throat.
“The poor bastards,” growled Ruffy beside him. “The poor bastards.” And then there was another crashing jolt against the train, another hit from the field gun. This time up forward, on the locomotive. Shriek of escaping steam, the train checking its pace, losing power. But they were over the crest of the hills, the village was out of sight and gradually the train speeded up again as they started down the back slope. But steam spouted out of it, hissing white jets of it, and Bruce knew they had received a mortal wound. He switched on the radio.
“Driver, can you hear me? How bad is it?”
Aw
“I cannot see, Captain. There is too much steam. But the pressure on the gauge is dropping swiftly.”
“Use all you can to take us down the hill. It is imperative that we pass the level crossing before we halt. it is absolutely imperative - if we stop this side of the level crossing they will be able to reach us with their lorries.”.
“I will try, Captain.” They rocketed down the hills but as soon as they reached the level ground their speed began to fall off. Peering through the dwindling clouds of steam Bruce saw the pale brown ribbon
of road ahead of them, and they were still travelling at a healthy thirty miles an hour as they passed it. When finally the train trickled to a standstill Bruce estimated that they were three or four miles beyond the level crossing, safely walled in by the forest and hidden from the road by three bends.