But now Morelli, infected, was shouting back:
“… all very well. All very ruddy well. But why’re them soors waitin’? Why? I’ll tell you. Just come to me, an’ if we wasn’t goin’ bughouse lying here we’d ’a’ seen it long ago. They’re waitin’ for some pals. Get me? Bleeding reinforcements. That’s what! We pipped three the other night, didn’t we! That leaves three more: p’r’aps four. They’re not going to chance it. Why? ’Cos they knows their little brown brothers ’re comin’. Then they’ll mop us up. Easy too. Jam from the bloody baby, it’ll be. Your ambition’s goin’ t’ hell. Ain’t it now? Eh?”
“All right. All right. You needn’t shout!” The Sergeant had regained composure; his voice was low again, and even and incisive. “You may be right. You’re logical anyhow. But I think you’re wrong, in spite o’ the probabilities. I tell you: I think they’re waiting… just because they’re waiting. Part of their programme. Follow me? They’re not just straight out to kill us. They’re enjoyin’ ’emselves. Look at the way they brought Jock back, an’ the Matlow. See what I’m gettin’ at? This waitin’s just another bit o’ fun an’ games.”
“Dunno… maybe you’re right…” Morelli, too, had sobered now. “Hell’s bells! What’s it matter which way it is? — ’em all! An’ us too!” He began to whistle, dolorously: “They’re hangin’ men and women now for wearin’ o’ the Green.”
The Sergeant took it up. The plaintive tune floated up into the palms; died away.
“Nothin’ like music,” said the Sergeant. He grinned suddenly and began to sing:
“Oh! Landlord have you some good red wine?
Parley-voo!
Oh! Landlord have you some good red wine?
Parley-voo!
Oh! Landlord have you some good red wine
Fit for the Cavalry of the Line?
What-ho, ye bleeders!
What-ho, ye bleeders!
What-ho!”
Morelli stared at him, listening, at first vacuously, then with interest, finally with a great grin which split in two his stubble-covered face. He yelled suddenly, with a shrieking yodel which might well have been heard, in that silence, two miles away:
“Let ’er rip, then. Atta-bohoyee!”
He burst into the second verse, his rather strident tenor mingling, not without harmony, with the Sergeant’s deep baritone.
“Oh! Landlord, have you a daughter fine?
Parley-voo!
Oh! Landlord, have you a daughter fine?
Parley-voo!
Oh! Landlord, have you a daughter fine
Fit for the Cavalry of the Line?
What-ho, ye bleeders!
What-ho, ye bleeders!
What-ho!”
The palms rang with the swinging, martial tune. The words and cadences soared up and out across the desert, now red with the crimson blood of the dying sun. They looked at each other, smiling, and sang the harder. They got from their bellies to their knees, from their knees to their feet. They faced each other, heads flung back, roaring out verse after verse, each verse louder than its predecessor. The blood mounted to their heads and darkened their dark and bearded faces. The sweat ran from their foreheads, their cheeks; down their chests and backs.
The song came to its end. The Sergeant panted: “Stuff to give ’em. Nothin’ like music…”
And Morelli: “Yeah… give ’em… “Fred Karno’s Army”… Right:
“We are Fred Karno’s A-armee,
No bleedin’ good are we-ee!
We cannot fight; we cannot shoot;
What God-damn’ use are we-ee?
An’ w’en we get to Ber-lin,
Ther Kayser, he will sa-ay,
‘Och! Och! Mein Gott!
What a — — lot
Are the n-teenth Cavalree!”
That gave them more breathing space, for this song is sung to the tune of a famous hymn, and is slow and solemn and swelling. They began, being thus still in breath, upon a song which Hale had been used to sing. It was called “True Love” and its first line ran:
“I-ee want Justice! was all ther Young Sylor said!”
They broke down half-way through that, in an argument concerning words and tune. They still stood. They grew heated and began to shout.
“Chubbarow!” roared the Sergeant. “What’s it matter? Give ’em ’Leapfrog’!”
Once more they flung back their heads and roared out tune and words. This time the noise surpassed even that of “Fred Karno’s Army.” The very trees seemed to shake to their voices. And, as if abashed by this vigour, the sun’s gory blaze paled gradually.
“They were only playin’ LEAP-frog,
They were only playin’ LEAP-frog,
They were only playin’ LEAP-frog,
As one grasshopper jumped right over the other grasshopper’s back!”
They sang till their necks swelled and the veins upon them stood out like cords. They sang up into the trees and then out, hands trumpeting their mouths, across the desert, blood-red no longer but tinted now as if by fading light stealing through a stained glass window. They turned and sang it at each other. Morelli danced now, fantastic heel and toe, as he sang; the Sergeant beat with his arms in furious travesty of conducting…
They sang themselves out. They dropped and lay, panting and sweating. Morelli began, between gasps, to laugh. This laughter grew. It bubbled and choked and bubbled again. It infected the Sergeant so that presently he too was laughing. They rolled from stomach to back, from back to side, laughing…
The Sergeant sat up and rubbed with his knuckles at his streaming eyes. He stayed a while staring out at the desert, where nothing moved nor was save sand and those three huddled bundles. Gettin’ highish by now, he thought… and began to laugh again.
Morelli said, suddenly sobered: “His nibs… whose turn?” He jerked a thumb vaguely in the hut’s direction.
“Mine,” the Sergeant said, and stopped laughing. “Yes … I’ll get along… in a minute.”
“Thank God it’s not me!” Morelli’s voice was barely louder than a whisper now. “It’s all this looking after him that gets me!”
“Ah; it’s none too pleasant.” The Sergeant too had lowered his tone. “Better ’n if it’d been one o’ the others, though…”
Morelli looked at him. “You’re right there!” he said slowly. “Never thought of that… That’s right… Suppose it’d been ole Topper! … He was a good guy, that!”
The Sergeant nodded. “He was… So were the others … all of ’em in their own ways… Man couldn’t wish for a better lot… ’cept him…”
“You’re right, Sarge… an’ I can’t help this Jonah business…”
“Bloody fool!” the Sergeant growled.
“Yes.” Morelli’s voice went on, “’s good a bunch o’ guys as you’d find. Better. Even ole Abey had guts. Yessir; a double ration o’ guts, Abey had… Yes; been a helluva sight more gaga ’f any o’ them ’d gone moost… He always was half anyways…” He broke off, to say, seconds later: “Good Gorralmighty!”
“What’s that?” The Sergeant turned quickly.
Morelli, his face only half-visible by reason of the shadow and the dusk that was now beginning to enwrap the world, seemed to gape, open-eyed, wide-mouthed. He said:
“It’s just… thinkin’ about Topper natcherly made me think of climbing them trees… An’ I’ve remembered! There wasn’t no need for all that chucking lines an’ all that… You just loop a rope round the tree and tie it under y’r seat and hitch yourself up… Easy…”
“But what about it?” the Sergeant said. “I remembered that… after. But it wouldn’t ’ve made any difference.”
“No. Reckon not… Why it struck me like… I was thinking maybe ’f we’d thoughta that we could a had a look-out, permanent…”
“Chuck that, for Mike’s sake!” The Sergeant’s voice cut savagely through the dusk. “What’s the good o’ chewin’ the rag about what we could have done? No use at all! I
f we’d had a look-out, what’d ’ave happened? We’d all ’ve been pipped a damn’ sight quicker; that’s all…”
Morelli said hurriedly: “Right y’are, Sarge. Right…”
But the Sergeant’s voice went on. “P’r’aps we’ve… me, if you like! … p’r’aps I’ve done everything right; or everything wrong; or some right an’ some wrong… But I’ve done what I’ve done. And that’s bloody well all there bloody well is to it! Get me? P’r’aps we’d ’ve done better not to let Jock and Cook go! P’r’aps we’d ’ve done better not to ’ve used the roof as a day look-out! P’r’aps we ought never, though there are only two of us, have stopped usin’ it! P’r’aps we ought to ’ve tried, right at the start, to rush that invisible nullah those Arabs ’re in! P’r’aps we ought to ’ve chanced attractin’ more Buddoos an’ had a flag up, or a bloody great smoke-fire goin’ all the time ’case any o’ the rest of the British bloody Army ’d seen us! P’r’aps this! P’r’aps that! An’ p’r’aps the — other! But what I’ve done I’ve done, an’ what I haven’t I haven’t! And that, my lad, is that! An’ f’r the love of the Holy Ghost let it be that!”
He cut off this speech as suddenly as he had begun it. He lay, peering out before him, eyes battling with the dimness, breath coming hard and fast.
Silence held them. The dusk gave way to darkness; the darkness almost immediately to the first gleaming rays of the dying moon.
The Sergeant said, his voice low:
“Sorry, Morelli! Shouldn’t ’ve let fly like that…”
“That’s all right, Sarge!” Morelli said. “Forget it. My fault.”
“No. Mine. But it’s… I went off the deep end like that because… well, because I’ve had to do the thinkin’ in this business, an’ I’ve had to meet all these things as they came came along. An’ it seems somehow as if everything I had to do had five or six alternatives. An’ I’ve twisted my head silly, thinkin’…”
“Good job for us you were with us,” said Morelli quickly.
The Sergeant grinned with a sudden flash of white teeth against the wellnigh invisible darkness of his face. “Thanks. Cut it out… Look here! Tell you what gets me most … It’s bein’ done in by a lousy set of Arabs. That’s what! What’s this war to them? Why, they might just as easily ’ve been friendly. Some are; some aren’t. An’ they don’t make up their black bloody minds till they see how many men they’ve got to deal with. — ’em!”
“Me too,” Morelli said. “Wouldn’t get me so mad ’f they was Turks… But Buddo! I joined up to get a whack in at Jerry. ’Cos why? One: because I’m English in spite o’my Wop monaker. Two: because I always have hated the lousy Germans. An’ hero I am, about to be dessicayted by a lot o’ stinkin’ poxy Arabs… I’m a Jonah to meself, too, that’s one comfort.” He stopped; then burst out on a note which was a sort of whispered wail:
“An’ what’s going to come to Moree?”
It was as if the words had been torn from his mouth by some ruthless, invisible hand. Almost whispered though they were, they seemed to tear their way through the darkness and strike the Sergeant’s ears like flame-tipped arrows.
“That your partner?” He said the words for the sake of speech.
“Ah; Joey,” came the whisper. “Thank God we’d put enough money by… But she’ll want me! Me! … Lyin’ there… on her back for always, always…” His voice changed; grew loud and over-gruff. “Aw, hell!” he said. “What’s the good… But I guess you’ll maybe know how I’m feeling, Sarge.”
“I do!” the Sergeant said.
Morelli turned his head. “Got someone who’ll be needing you?”
“No.” The tone was curt. “Not a soul. There’s one who’ll p’r’aps think so… for a bit… But she… they’ll be better off.” He got quickly to his feet. “Yes. Better off by a damn long chalk.” He stooped and picked his rifle from where it had lain beside him. “Go an’ see to him now,” he said. “Give us the bottles. I’ll fill ’em.”
He walked slowly away, rifle under one arm; water-bottles slung from the other shoulder. Morelli watched until the tall trees and their latticed shadows had swallowed him.
XX
Half-way to the hut, the Sergeant changed his mind and his direction. He would, after all, go first to the spring and fill the two bottles which he carried. Sanders could wait for that further three minutes.
He strode across the clearing, a wry smile twisting his mouth: he sneered at himself for childish postponement of unpleasing duties.
He came to the spring and laved his face and neck and cupped water in his palms and drank. He took the first bottle and began to fill it.
The moon-washed silence which clothed the world like a mantle was rent, with that appalling yet inevitable suddenness with which all silence must be broken, by the jarring rattle of four shots from Morelli’s rifle.
The bottle fell from the Sergeant’s hands. He snatched up his own rifle and raced back to the clearing and across it. He heard, faintly, other shots, the ghosts of their reports. He ran on, his ears aching expectant.
But no sound came to them.
He burst through the trees, his lungs labouring, his heart thudding in his ears. He came to the place… he could have found it blindfold by this… where Morelli should have been.
But no Morelli was there.
He threw himself down in what had become his form. His gaze went out, seeking, over that silver waste. His lungs fought for ease. The sweat ran down from his forehead; salt and stinging it blurred his vision. He rubbed savagely at his eyes so that at last they saw.
Away out before him, a hundred yards or more, was Morelli. He was running in short, erratic curves. He pursued another figure… a figure whose nakedness shone in the dusk light like a leper’s skin.
The Sergeant came to his feet in a single movement. He shouted, with all the force of his lungs.
“Morelli! Come back, Morelli! … Leave him! … Back, you bloody fool! Back!”
If Morelli had heard him, he gave no sign. By a cunning swerve he came at last up to Sanders and clutched at him and held him.
“Back!” roared the Sergeant. “Come back! Leave him!”
But still, out there in the moonlight, the figures wrestled.
Now those faint reports began once more, and little spurts of sand shot up round and about the figures.
The Sergeant, helpless, watched; saw the naked, shining figure suddenly relax and sink, shutting up like a jack-knife, to the ground; saw Morelli, after one glance, turn and come racing back.
“Come on!” the Sergeant shouted. He began himself to fire, rapidly, towards that shadow from which the bullets that played about the little running figure seemed to come.
Morelli came near and nearer. The Sergeant, holding his breath, went on firing.
Near… nearer… So near that now the Sergeant could see his face, the mouth open, contorted with effort; the eyes wide and staring.
“Come on! You’ve done it. Come on!” he yelled at the runner.
But, half-way up the slope, Morelli stopped; turned slowly and languidly about, and fell upon his face. The action, by its slow mockery of grace, was appalling.
The Sergeant flung down his rifle, crawled upon his belly down the slope, seized those heels so foolishly cocked and dragged, inch by inch, the body back into the trees. Three bullets cut up the earth beside him on this journey; and then, back in the shadow, he was safe.
He knew, even before he stooped to examine, that Morelli was dead… And out there, shining, was the crumpled, naked body of the madman, who, by his escape, had left one man alone.
XXI
The night passed. The shafts of the sun, coming laterally through the trees, flooded the clearing with a hard, bright light.
The clearing was empty of life. Or would have seemed so. A man standing in its centre and casting his glance around him would have had his eye arrested by the mutti hut, nestling among the earlier ranks of trees upon the south-western side; would have noticed immed
iately, by the glinting of the sun upon them, the two rifle barrels which protruded from the little irregular window-hole; would have seen, with the inner eye, the two men who knelt within the hut, invisible, and held their rifles to their shoulders.
But there was no man in that little house. The Sergeant, indeed, was within the clearing. Just within it. He lay in a shallow pit on that side by the spring, facing the hut’s eastern end. He had worked hard to make this pit. It lay at the foot of a palm and was cunningly disguised, being sometimes more, sometimes less covered by shadows and having disposed before it most ingeniously palm fronds which lay as if fallen.
He lay upon his belly within this pit. Under his right hand was his rifle. Under his left two strands of unravelled rope. Three strands ran out of the pit, along the ground behind tree trunks and so into the hut through its doorway. There they joined other lines in such manner that, providing his hasty mechanics were sound, the jerking of one would cause the two rifles within his sight to fire and that of the other those two rifles which were thrust from the other window.
With him in the pit, beside these things, were an entrenching tool; a little stack of ammunition, the clips neatly piled; three water-bottles, full; a haversack holding a pile of dates; a jack-knife, open; and a sword without its scabbard.
All through the night, since Morelli’s death, he had laboured. First at the pit, then at the arrangement of those four rifles in the hut. This latter work he had thought would never be needed. There was the pack-saddle rope to be unravelled, the rifles arranged with props made from saddlery and swords, the lines to be calculated and tied and tested and hidden on their journey to his lair… this he had taken hours which seemed to him twice three times their length.
But all his preparations now were done. There was nothing before him but waiting. He lay there and became, it seemed to him, an Ear. The sun mounted in the brazen sky; it topped the palm trees at his back and beat down upon the world and him.
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