They carried burning torches but made no sound, except that of heavy boots threading and treading their way uneasily over lianas and twisted boles, night creatures scuttled in every direction unaccustomed to the smell of humans. Furtive and frightened, the two young men didn’t dare make their presence known to the man who dominated everything and every person with whom he came in contact. Fear harassed them. Each could sense the pumping of the other’s heart. It wasn’t the quickening throb that a beautiful woman can induce; it was the same organ but a different song. Trembling with fear, the two untried youths walked towards their mentor.
The shrill and despairing yell of Dog sounded through the forest as far as the revelling soldiers, surfeited on suckling pig, who lay grossly, coarsely, lecherously around the dying fire and made its way into their scarcely alive subconscious. Then, having heard it, they relapsed into drunken inertia, and left to the chosen young all decisions as to how to find the yelps and cries for help.
At last they heard the voice of command and, because of their own lack of confidence, they ran, tripping, falling, swearing, once more towards authority.
‘Quick – my men – shine your flares, we are reaching the unknown.’ Dog’s throat, hoarse with its demand, almost made its last appeal – smaller and more pitiful as though buried under the debris of an earthquake, a voice that had almost given up hope, tiny and defeated.
The flare picked up unknown silhouettes, and the sounds coming from the moving hulk were diminishing in as eerie a way as footsteps, lone footsteps, in the silence of the night disappear and make themselves heard to new ears, passing into new silence and out again.
‘Quick – one of you hold both flares and the other one come to my aid.’
The command rang out and one of the young men hastened towards the voice, giving the flare to his companion.
‘Here, here, hold fast to this hulk.’ The sound of the water in the silence was mysterious and the man in command tripped over a liana, and as he fell he caught hold of one of the vines and almost fell into the river.
‘Come here, you fool – you idiot,’ and a string of obscenities followed, tracking its way into the dithering jelly of a youth who had no idea what to do.
‘Hold my legs – tell that jackass to give us light.’
Suddenly the flares picked out a body lying spread-eagled, arms outstretched and holding with all its strength to the sides of the bank. In the gory light of the flare, the face appeared ashen, with the lips moving – a somnambulist upside down, lost and sleep-talking, and as the goldness moved over the body, leaving it in darkness, it tracked its way to the poor whimpering dog – tongue hanging out, but still poised to protect to his last whimper the living being he was guarding.
‘Come on, you fools!’ shouted the commander, and as he shouted and pulled at the boat, one of the young men in his nervousness dropped one of the flares into the water and the sound of the sizzling awakened the sleeper who called out in an unknown language, but Dog understood and made his way precariously towards his master to assuage his fear.
The commander wrenched Titus ashore. ‘Go back, you fools, and bring a plank covered with your capes, and two more men and more flares. Take the only flare there is left now and leave us in darkness, but return using my instructions for warmth, and soup and shelter for whatever, or whoever we have here. And hurry, you fools!’
16
Still Among the Soldiers
THE FOOLISH YOUNG men wended their way quickly. Out of their commander’s earshot, they tripped and swore. The slightly stronger of the two repeated the commands they had heard issued so recently, but his word didn’t carry authority. They both knew that speed and the return with their undoubtedly inebriated seniors was crucial.
Poor young men, with so little experience, except perhaps of rather innocent debauchery, they stumbled and they sang, and they swore, and they gavotted towards the dying embers of a fire, around which they knew they would have to bring the immigrants or intruders to their camp.
In disarray, with no presiding genius to instruct them on how to assemble a stretcher from the rough materials at their command, they swayed and swirled towards long lengths of poles, which could form the handles on which to bear the body towards sanctuary.
A roughly made stretcher grew precariously and amateurishly, and with capes stretched across and lashed together with lianas it appeared to be strong enough to take a human body. The silliness and facetiousness of the young soldiers increased as they performed their task, and the one who had taken command with so little effect issued a giggling order to advance, which so infuriated the one to whom it had been addressed that he raised the cape stretcher and brought it down on the head of his non-commanding officer, who appeared to go through it, as a dog through a covered hoop in a circus. No applause accompanied the spectacle.
While this pathetic charade was being enacted, Titus still lay sprawled, neither knowing nor caring whether he lived or died, but Dog lay on the bank knowing and caring. The commander, frustrated by having no one to direct, save an unknown male of no known place of origin, paced the uneven ground with energy and petulance more suitable to a frustrated schoolmistress than a leader of men.
A light appeared to the south – only a tiny halo as glimpsed on the head of an Italian Baby Jesus, it couldn’t throw any light on the surroundings, but it was sign enough for the hungry man of action awaiting the return of his men to the river bank.
As the halo hovered and made its way, lingeringly as a lover’s kiss, towards the darkness, the sounds that accompanied it also made themselves heard. There was not the same religious calm about the sounds as the sight. Indeed, there was a degree of instability in the sound. When two young men given authority for the first time come to use it, they must be forgiven for a certain amount of misuse. They had managed between them to seduce four more inebriated young huskies, who had been lolling in the firelight with nothing to do, to act as stretcher-bearers by the promise of illicit traffic in women, drugs and gold.
It was the sound of these six voices that the man among men heard and he cried out at the thought of action. But it was too soon, for the only sound the bearers could hear was the cracking dry undergrowth and an expletive of rage when an overhanging branch snapped back into an eye or an arm or a chest of a fellow soldier.
But as men digging a tunnel for years from opposing directions know that at some time they will meet, so with the same intensity of feeling did the seven men concerned in this rescue operation know that the light would glimmer in the darkness on the unknown wanderer and their own commanding officer.
As the time of fusion came there was no excitement, no sense of achievement, just ennui that there was only a vagrant and his dog as reward. Nevertheless, the stern voice of command acted upon the four stretcher-bearers and their two puerile leaders with the intensity of a rainstorm after a month of drought. Any inebriation they might have felt was quickly dispelled, and at the sound of ‘Well, come on then, look to it, you curs’ they ran to attention, as though being chased by an infuriated cockerel.
The two young officers held the flares which lit up Titus’s body, and the stretcher-bearers laid the roughly made haven on the ground by the exhausted man. Dog whined but seemed to sense that there was no harm intended at that moment. Orders were issued to deal gently but expediently with the body of the exhausted man and he was lifted with rigid care on to the roughly made bed by the four young recruits who had no knowledge of the gentle arts and displayed very little consideration for the wellbeing of the stricken and foreign wanderer.