“Well,” he said, “we should all have healthy appetites by the time we get home. You’ll have to try and spread it out.
Half rations from now on.” He was so engrossed in the study of this new complication that he did not notice the faint hum from outside the laager.
“Captain,” called Jacques. “Can you hear it?” Bruce inclined his head and listened.
“The trucks!” His voice was loud with relief, and instantly there was an excited murmur round the laager.
The waiting was over.
They came growling out of the bush into the clear, Heavily loaded, timber and sheet-iron protruding backwards from under the canopies, sitting low on their suspensions.
Ruffy leaned from the cab of the leading truck and shouted.
“Hello boss. Where shall we dump?”
“Take it up to the bridge.
Hang on a second and I’ll come with you.” Bruce slipped out of the laager and crossed quickly to Ruffy’s truck. He could feel his back tingling while he was in the open and he slammed the door behind him with relief.
“I don’t relish stopping an arrow,” he said.
“You have any trouble while we were gone?”
“No,” Bruce told him.
“But they’re here. They were drumming in the jungle all night.”
“Calling up their buddies,” grunted Ruffy and let out the clutch.
“We’ll have some fun before we finish this bridge.
Most probably take them a day or two to get brave, but in the end they’ll have a go at us.”
“Pull over to the side of the bridge, Ruffy,” Bruce instructed and rolled down his window. “I’ll signal Hendry to pull in beside us. We’ll off-load into the space between the two trucks and start building the corrugated iron shield there.” While
Hendry manoeuvred his truck alongside, Bruce forced himself to look down on the carnage of the beach.
“Crocodiles,” he exclaimed with relief. The paunching racks still stood as he had last seen them, but the reeking pile of human remains was gone. The smell and the flies, however, still lingered.
“During the night,” agreed Ruffy as he surveyed the long slither marks in the sand of the beach.
“Thank God for that.”
“Yeah, it wouldn’t have made my boys too joyful having to clean up that lot.”
“We’ll send someone down to tear out those racks. I don’t want to look at them while we work.”
“No, they’re not very pretty.” Ruffy ran his eyes over the two sets of gallows.
Bruce climbed down into the space between the trucks.
“Hendry.”
“That’s my name.” Wally leaned out of the window.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but the crocs have done the chore for you.”
“I can see. I’m not blind.”
“Very well then. On the assumption
that you are neither blind nor paralysed, how about getting your trucks unloaded?”
“Big deal,” muttered Hendry, but he climbed down and began shouting at the men under the canvas canopy.
“Get the lead out there, you lot. Start jumping about!”
“What were the thickest timbers you could find?” Bruce turned to Ruffy.
“Nine by threes, but we got plenty of them.”
“They’ll do,” decided
Bruce. “We can lash a dozen of them together for each of the main supports.” Frowning with concentration, Bruce began the task of organizing the repairs.
“Hendry, I want the timber stacked by sizes. Put the sheet-iron over there.” He brushed the flies from his face.
“Ruffy, how many hammers have we got?”
“Ten, boss, and I found a couple of handsaws.”
“Good. What about nails and rope?”
“We got
plenty. I got a barrel of six4inch and,-” Preoccupied, Bruce did not notice one of the coloured civilians leave the shelter of the trucks.
He walked a dozen paces towards the bridge and stopped. Then unhurriedly he began to unbutton his trousers and Bruce looked up.
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted and the man started guiltily. He did not understand the English words, but Bruce’s tone was sufficiently clear.
“Monsieur,” he explained, “I wish to-“
“Get back here!” roared
Bruce. The man hesitated in confusion and then he began closing his fly.
“Hurry up - you bloody fool.” Obediently the man hastened the closing of his trousers.
Everyone had stopped work and they were all watching him. His face was dark with embarrassment and he fumbled clumsily.
“Leave that.” Bruce was frantic. “Get back here.” The first arrow rose lazily out of the undergrowth along the river in a silent parabola. Gathering speed in its descent, hissing softly, it dropped into the ground at the man’s feet and stuck up jauntily. A thin reed, fletched with green leaves, it looked harmless as a child’s plaything.
“Run,” screamed Bruce. The man stood and stared with detached disbelief at the arrow.
Bruce started forward to fetch him, but Ruffy’s huge black hand closed on his arm and he was helpless in its grip.
He struck out at Ruffy, struggling to free himself but he could not break that hold.
A swarm of them like locusts on the move, high arching, fluting softly, dropping all around the man as he started to run.
Bruce stopped struggling and watched. He heard the metal heads clanking on the bonnet of the truck, saw them falling wide of the man, some of the frail shafts snapping as they hit the ground.
Then between the shoulders, like a perfectly placed banderilla, one hit him. It flapped against his back as he ran and he twisted his arms behind him, vainly trying to reach it, his face twisted in horror and in pain.
“Hold him down,” shouted Bruce as the coloured man ran into the shelter. Two gendarmes jumped forward, took his arms and forced him face downwards on to the ground.
He was gabbling incoherently with horror as Bruce straddled his back and gripped the shaft. Only half the barbed head had buried itself - a penetration of less than an inch - but when Bruce pulled the shaft it snapped off in his hand leaving the steel twitching in the flesh.
“Knife,” shouted Bruce and someone thrust a bayonet into his hand.
“Watch those barbs, boss. Don’t cut yourself on them.”
“Ruffy, get your boys ready to repel them if they rush us,” snapped Bruce and ripped away the shirt. For a moment he stared at the crudely hand-beaten iron arrowhead. The poison coated it thickly, packed in behind the barbs, looking like sticky black toffee.
He’s dead,” said Ruffy from where he leaned over the “bonnet of the truck. “He just ain’t stopped breathing Yet.” The man screamed and twisted under Bruce as he made the first incision, cutting in deep beside the arrowhead with the point of the bayonet.
“Hendry, get those pliers out of the tool kit.”
“Here they are.”
Bruce gripped the arrowhead with the steel jaws and pulled. The flesh clung to it stubbornly, lifting in a pyramid.
with the bayonet, feeling it tear. Bruce imagined It was like trying to get the hook out of the rubbery mouth of a cat-fish.
“You’re wasting your time, boss!” grunted Ruffy with all eptance of violent death, “the calm African in him, fresh This boy’s a goner. That’s no horse! That’s snake juice mixed. He’s finished.”
“Are You sure, Ruffy!” Bruce looked up, “Are you sure it’s snake venom?”
“That’s what they use. They mix it with kassava meal.”
“Hendry, where’s the snake bite outfit!”
“It’s in the medicine box back at the camp.” Bruce tugged once more at the arrowhead and it came away, leaving a deep black hole between the man’s shoulder blades.
“Everybody into the trucks, we’ve got to get him back.
Every second is vital.”