When the shelter waddled wearily back to the laager at dusk, the men within it were exhausted. Their hands were bleeding and bristled with wood splinters, but they were also mightily pleased with themselves.
Sergeant Jacque, keep one of your searchlights trained on the bridge all night. We don’t want our friends to come out and set fire to it again.”
“There are only a few hours” life left in each of the batteries.” Jacque kept his voice low.
at a time then.” Bruce spoke without hesitation.
“We must have that bridge lit up all night.
“You think you could spare a beer for each of the boys that worked
on the bridge today?”
“A whole one each!” Ruffy was shocked. “I only got a Couple cases left.” Bruce fixed him with a stern eye and Ruffy grinned.
“Okay, boss. Guess they’ve earned it.” Bruce transferred his attention to Wally Hendry who sat on the running-board of one of the trucks cleaning his nails with the point of his bayonet.
“Everything under control here, Hendry?” he asked coolly.
“Sure, what’d you think would happen? We’d have a visit from the archbishop? The sky’d fall in? Your French thing’d have twins or something?” He looked up from his nails at Bruce. “When are you jokers going to get that bridge finished, instead of wandering around asking damn-fool questions?”
“You’ve got the Bruce was too tired to feel annoyed.
night watch, Hendry,” he said, “from now until dawn.”
“Is that right, hey? And you? What’re you going to do all night, or does that question make you blush?”
“I’m going to sleep, that’s what I’m going to do. I haven’t been lolling round camp all day.” Hendry pegged the bayonet into the earth between his feet and snorted.
“Well, give her a little bit of sleep for me too, Bucko.” Bruce left him and crossed to the Ford.
“Hello, Bruce. How did it go today? I missed you,” Shermaine greeted him, and her face lit up as she looked at him. It is a good feeling to be loved, and some of Bruce’s fatigue lifted.
“About half finished, another day’s work.” Then he smiled back at her. “I won’t lie and say I missed you - I’ve been too damn busy.” “Your hands!” she said with quick concern and lifted them to examine them. “They’re in a terrible state.”
“Not very pretty, are they?”
“Let me get a needle from my case. I’ll get the splinters out.” From across the laager Wally Hendry caught Bruce’s eye and with one hand made a
suggestive sign below his waist.
Then, at Bruce’s frown of anger, he threw back his head and laughed with huge delight.
ruce’s stomach grumbled with hunger as he stood with Ruffy and
Hendry beside the cooking fire. In the early morning light he could just make out the dark shape of the bridge at the end of the clearing.
That drum was still beating in the jungle, but they hardly noticed it now. It was taken for granted like the mosquitoes. “The batteries are finished,” grunted Ruffy. The feeble yellow beam of the searchlight reached out tiredly towards the bridge.
“Only just lasted the rught,” agreed Bruce.
“Christ, I’m hungry,” complained Hendry. “What could I do to a couple of fried eggs and a porterhouse steak.” At the mention of food
Bruce’s mouth flooded with saliva. He shut his mind against the picture that Wally’s words had evoked in his imagination.
“We won’t be able to finish the bridge and get the trucks across today,” he said, and Ruffy agreed.
“There’s a full day’s work left on her, boss.”
“This is what we’ll do then,” Bruce went on. “I’ll take the work party out to the bridge.
Hendry, you will stay here in the laager and cover us the same as yesterday. And Ruffy, you take one of the trucks and a dozen of your boys. Go back ten miles or so to where the forest is open and they won’t be able to creep up on you. Then cut us a mountain of firewood; thick logs that will burn all night. We will set a ring of watch fires round the camp tonight.”
“That makes sense, , Ruffy nodded. “But what
about the bridge?”
“We’ll have to put a guard on it,” said Bruce, and the -expressions on their faces changed as they thought about this.
“More pork chops for the boys in the bushes,” growled Hendry.
“You won’t catch me sitting out on the bridge anight.”
“No one’s asking you to,” snapped Bruce. “All right, Ruffy.
Go and fetch the wood, and plenty of it.” Bruce completed the repairs to the bridge in the late afternoon. The most anxious period was in the middle of the day when he and four men had to leave the shelter and clamber down on to the supports a few feet above the surface of the river to set the kingposts in place. Here they were exposed at random range to arrows from the undergrowth along the banks.
But no arrows came and they finished the job and climbed back to safety again with something of a sense of anticlimax.
They nailed the crossties over the trusses and then roped everything into a compact mass.
Bruce stood back and surveyed the fruit of two full days” labour.
“Functional,” he decided, speaking aloud. “But we certainly aren’t going to win any prizes for aesthetic beauty or engineering design.” He picked up his jacket and thrust his arms into the sleeves; his sweaty upper body was cold now that the sun was almost down.
Home, gentlemen,” he said, and his gendarmes scattered to their positions inside the shelter.
The metal shelter circled the laager, squatting every twenty or thirty paces like an old woman preparing to relieve herself. When it lifted and moved on it left a log fire behind it. The ring of fires was completed by dark and the shelter returned to the laager.
“Are you ready, Ruffy?” From inside the shelter Bruce called across to where Ruffy waited.
“All set, boss.” Followed by six heavily armed. gendarmes, Ruffy crossed quickly to join Bruce and they set off to begin their all night vigil on the bridge.
Before midnight it was cold in the corrugated iron shelter, for the wind blew down the river and they were completely exposed to it, and there was no cloud cover to hold the day’s warmth against the earth.
The men in the shelter huddled under their gas capes and waited.
Bruce and Ruffy leaned together against the corrugated iron wall, their shoulders almost touching, and there was sufficient light from the stars to light the interior of the shelter and allow them to make out the guard rails of the bridge through the open ends.
“Moon will be up in an hour,” murmured Ruffy.
“Only a quarter of it, but it will give us a little more light,” Bruce concurred, and peered down into the black hole between his feet where he had prised up one of the newly laid planks.
“How about taking a shine with the torch?” suggested Ruffy.
“No.” Bruce shook his head, and passed the flashlight into his other hand. “Not until I hear them.”
“You might not hear them.”
“If they swim downstream and climb up the piles, which is what I expect, then we’ll hear them all right. They’ll be dripping water all over the place,” said Bruce.
“Kanaki and his boys didn’t hear them,” Ruffy pointed out.
“Kanaki and his boys weren’t listening for it,” said Bruce.
They were silent then for a while. One of the gendarmes started to snore softly and Ruffy shot out a huge booted foot that landed in
the small of his back. The man cried out and scrambled to his knees, looking wildly about him.
“You have nice dreams?” Ruffy asked pleasantly.