chocolate.
At last Ruffy turned to Bruce.
"No trouble here, boss. They come from a small village about an hour's
walk away. just five or six families, and no war party. These kids
sneaked across to have a look at the houses, pinch what they could
perhaps, but that's all." "How many men at this village?" asked Bruce,
and Ruffy turned back to the boy. In reply to the question he held up
the fingers of both hands, without interrupting the chewing.
"Does he know if the line is clear through to Port Reprieve? Have they
burnt the bridges or torn up the tracks?" Both children were dumb to
this question. The boy swallowed the last of his chocolate and looked
hungrily at Ruffy, who filled his mouth again.
"Jesus," muttered Hendry with deep disgust. "Is this a creche or
something. Let's all play ring around the roses."
"Shut up," snapped
Bruce, and then to Ruffy, "Have they seen any soldiers?" Two heads
shaken in solemn unison.
"Have they seen any war parties of their own people?" Again solemn
negative.
"All right, give them the rest of the chocolate," instructed
Bruce. That was all he could get out of them, and time was wasting. He
glanced back at the tower and saw that Haig and the engine driver had
finished watering. For a further second he studied the boy. His own son
would be about the same age now; it was twelve months since - Bruce
stopped himself hurriedly. That way lay madness.
Hendry, take them back to the edge of the bush and turn them loose.
Hurry up. We've wasted long enough."
"You're telling me!"
grunted Hendry and beckoned to the two children. With Hendry leading and
a gendarme on each side they trotted away obediently and disappeared
behind the station building.
"Driver, are your preparations complete?"
"Yes, monsieur, we are ready to depart."
"Shovel all the coal in, we've gotta keep her rolling." Bruce smiled at
him, he liked the little man and their stilted exchanges gave him
pleasure.
"Pardon, monsieur."
"It was an imbecility, a joke - forgive me."
"Ah, a joke!" The roly-poly stomach wobbled merrily.
"Okay, Mike," Bruce shouted, "get your men aboard. We are, -" A
burst of automatic gunfire cut his voice short. It came from behind the
station buildings, and it battered into the heat-muted morning with such
startling violence that for an instant Bruce stood paralysed.
"Haig," he yelled, "get up front and take over from de Surrier."
That was the weak point, and Mike's party ran down the train.
"You men." Bruce stopped the six gendarmes. "Come with me." They fell in
behind him, and with a quick glance Bruce assured himself that the train
was safe. All along its length rifle barrels were poking out
protectively, while on the roof Ruffy was dragging the Bren round to
cover the flank. A charge by even a thousand Baluba must fail before the
fire power that was ready now to receive it.
"Come on," said Bruce and ran, with the gendarmes behind him, to the
sheltering wall of the station building.
There had been no shot fired since that initial burst, which could mean
either that it was a false alarm or that Hendry's party had been
overwhelmed by the first rush.
The door of the station master's office was locked. Bruce kicked and it
crashed open with the weight of his booted foot behind it.
I've always wanted to do that, he thought happily in his excitement,
ever since I saw Gable do it in San Francisco.
"You four - inside! Cover us from the windows." They crowded into the
room with their rifles held ready. Through the open door Bruce saw the
telegraph equipment on the table by the far wall; it was clattering
metallically from traffic on the Elisabethville-Jadotville line. Why is
it that under the stimulus of excitement my mind always registers
irrelevances? Which thought is another irrelevancy, he decided.
"Come on, you two, stay with me." He led them down the outside
wall, keeping in close to its sheltering bulk, pausing at the corner to
check the load of his rifle and slip the selector on to rapid fire.
A further moment he hesitated. What will I find around this corner? A
hundred naked savages crowded round the mutilated bodies of
Hendry and his gendarmes, or ... ?
Crouching, ready to jump back behind the wall, rifle held at high port
across his chest, every muscle and nerve of his body cocked like a
hair-trigger, Bruce stepped sideways into the open.
Hendry and the two gendarmes stood in the dusty road beyond the first
cottage. They were relaxed, talking together, Hendry reloading his
rifle, cramming the magazine with big red hands on which the gingery
hair caught the sunlight. A cigarette dangled from his lower lip and he
laughed suddenly, throwing his head back as he did so and the cigarette
ash dropped down his jacket front. Bruce noticed the long dark sweat
stain across his shoulders.
The two children lay in the road fifty yards farther on.
Bruce was suddenly cold, it came from inside, a cramping coldness of the
guts and chest. Slowly he straightened up and began to walk towards the
children. His feet fell silently in the powder dust and the only sound
was his own breathing, hoarse, as though a wounded beast followed close
behind him. He walked past Hendry and the two gendarmes
without looking at them; but they stopped talking, watching him
uneasily.
He reached the girl first and went down on one knee beside her, laying
his rifle aside and turning her gently on to her back.
"This isn't true," he whispered. "This can't be true." The bullet had
taken half her chest out with it, a hole the size of a coffee cup, with
the blood still moving in it, but slowly, oozing, welling up into it
with the viscosity of new honey.
Bruce moved across to the boy; he felt an almost dreamlike sense of
unreality.
"No, this isn't true." He spoke louder, trying to undo it with words.
Three bullets had hit the boy; one had torn his arm loose at the
shoulder and the sharp white end of the bone pointed accusingly out of
the wound. The other bullets had severed his trunk almost in two.
It came from far away, like the rising roar of a train along a tunnel.
Bruce could feel his whole being shaken by the strength of it, he shut
his eyes and listened to the roaring in his head, and with his eyes
tight closed his vision was filled with the colour of blood.
"Hold on!" a tiny voice screamed in his roaring head.
"Don't let go, fight it. Fight it as you've fought before." And he clung
like a flood victim to the straw of his sanity while the great roaring
was all around him. Then the roar was muted, rumbling away, gone past, a
whisper, now nothing.
The coldness came back to him, a coldness more vast than the flood had
been.
He opened his eyes and breathed again, stood up and walked back to where
Hendry stood with the two gendarmes.
"Corporal," Bruce addressed one of the men beside Hendry; and with a
shock he heard that his own voice was calm, without any trace of the
fury that had so nearly carried him away on its flood.