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.
"I wasn't sleeping," the man protested. "I was thinking."
"Well, don't think so loudly," Ruffy advised him. "Sounds though you
sawing through the bridge with a cross cut." Another half hour dragged
itself by like a cripple.
"Fires are burning well," commented Ruffy, and Bruce turned his head and
glanced through the loophole in the corrugated iron behind him at the
little garden of orange flame-flowers in the darkness.
"Yes, they should last till morning." Silence again, with only the
singing of the mosquitoes and the rustle of the river as it flowed by
the piles of the bridge. Shermaine has my pistol, Bruce remembered with
a small trip in his pulse, I should have taken it back from her.
He unclipped the bayonet from the muzzle of his rifle, tested the edge
of the blade with his thumb, and slid it into the scabbard on his
web-belt. Could easily lose the rifle if we start mixing it in the dark,
he decided.
"Christ, I'm hungry," grunted Ruffy beside him.
"You're too fat," said Bruce. "The diet will do you good." And they
waited.
Bruce stared down into the hole in the floorboards. His eyes began
weaving fantasies out of the darkness, he could see vague shapes that
moved, like things seen below the sud ce of the sea. His stomach
tightened and he fought the impulse to shine his flashlight into the
hole. He closed his eyes to rest them. I will count slowly to ten, he
decided, and then look again.
Ruffy's hand closed on his upper arm; the pressure of his fingers
transmitted alarm like a current of electricity. Bruce's eyelids flew
open.
Listen," breathed Ruffy.
Bruce heard it. The stealthy drip of water on water below them.
Then something bumped the bridge, but so softly that he felt rather than
heard the jar.
"Yes," Bruce whispered back. He reached out and tapped the shoulder of
the gendarme beside him and the man's body stiffened at his
touch.
With his breath scratching his dry throat, Bruce waited until he was
sure the warning had been passed to all his men. Then he shifted the
weight of his rifle from across his knees and aimed down into the hole.
He drew in a deep breath and switched on the flashlight.
The beam shot down and he looked along it over his rifle barrel.
The square aperture in the floorboards formed a frame for the picture
that flashed into his eyes. Black bodies, naked, glossy with wetness,
weird patterns of tattoo marks, a face staring up at him, broad sloped
forehead above startlingly white eyes and flat nose. The
long gleaming blade of a panga. Clusters of humanity clinging to the
wooden piles like ticks on the legs of a beast. Legs and arms and shiny
trunks merged into a single organism, horrible as some slimy
sea-creature.
Bruce fired into it. His rifle shuddered against his shoulder and the
long orange spurts from its muzzle gave the picture a new flickering
horror. The mass of bodies heaved, and struggled like a pack of rats
trapped in a dry well. They dropped splashing into the river, swarmed up
the timber piles, twisting and writhing as the bullets hit them,
screaming, babbling over the sound of the rifle.
Bruce's weapon clicked empty and he groped for a new magazine.
Ruffy and his gendarmes were hanging over the guard rails of the bridge,
firing downwards, sweeping the piles below them with long bursts, the
flashes lighting their faces and outlining their bodies against the sky.
"They're still coming!" roared Ruffy. "Don't let them get over the
side." Out of the hole at Bruce's feet thrust the head and naked upper
body of a man. There was a panga in his hand; he slashed at
Bruce's legs, his eyes glazed in the beam of the flashlight.
Bruce jumped back and the knife missed his knees by inches. The man
wormed his way out of the hole towards Bruce. He was screaming
shrilly, a high meaningless sound. Bruce lunged with the barrel
of his empty rifle at the contorted black face. All his weight was
behind that thrust and the muzzle went into the Baluba's eye. "The
foresight and four inches of the barrel disappeared into his head,
stopping only when it hit bone. Colourless fluid from the burst eyeball
gushed from round the protruding steel.
Tugging and twisting, Bruce tried to free the rifle, but the foresight
had buried itself like the barb of a fish hook.
The Baluba had dropped his panga and was clinging to the rifle barrel
with both hands. He was wailing and rolling on his back upon the
floorboards, his head jerking every time Bruce tried to pull the muzzle
out of his head.
Beyond him the head and shoulders of another Baluba appeared through the
aperture.
Bruce dropped his rifle and gathered up the fallen panga; he jumped over
the writhing body of the first Baluba and lifted the heavy knife above
his head with both hands.
The man was jammed in the hole, powerless to protect himself. He
looked up at Bruce and his mouth fell open.
Two-handed, as though he were chopping wood, Bruce swung his whole body
into the stroke. The shock jarred his shoulders and he felt blood