He waited.
Time ceased for him. Though his eyes had not closed throughout the night there came to him neither sleep nor the desire for sleep. It cannot be said that while he waited he thought, for to think is a conscious exercising of the brain. He did not consecutively think, then; but all the time his mind was filled with pictures and a something else which served for these pictures as a background… a sheet upon which this cinematograph performance which was going on inside his head… a performance continuous but having no relevance between one picture and the next… a sheet which served the double purpose of holding the pictures and giving to them all a brooding, ultimate purpose; weaving, as it were, their seeming irrelevances into a pattern of meaning.
This screen was his Ambition. The word flashed into his mind, upon the screen which was itself, and he seized upon it. It was, he found, not the right word. Yesterday it might have been, and on those days between yesterday and the theft of the horses, it certainly would. But not now. Ambition was too small, too puny, too indecisive a definition. Ambition meant a wish, a desire to attain some particular object; it did not cover such feelings, such… such possessions as that which now had hold of him. He remembered… how long ago was it? … he remembered saying something to Morelli about it: he’d said that there was an ambition in him, growing, an ambition like no other he had ever had, to get these swine of Arabs before he finally kicked the bucket… That was the first time he’d opened his mouth about this thing which had been burning inside him ever since that first day… The first and only time…
But it had been in him all the while, growing with a fierce and rapid and alarming growth. He could trace it, when he frowned and clenched his teeth and by effort of will stopped the pictures from coming and made real thought take their place… He could trace it: first a wish, half-ironic; then definite desire; then ambition; then a small flame, hot within him, of longing; now a consuming, raging, stifling Determination… He would. He would! He would do this thing to which he had set himself!
His body stiffened as he lay. He half-raised himself on an elbow. His fingers tightened themselves like rope wires about the barrel of the rifle beside him. He said aloud:
“I will. I will. I will!”
The sound of his own voice struck strangely upon his ears, so long strained to catch other sounds than this. He had not known that he was speaking. The voice was so odd that he tried it again. He bowed in the direction of the hut.
“Good-morning!” he said. And this sound was stranger than before. He shook his head savagely, like an animal in pain. He tried once more.
“It’s a damn funny thing how funny a man’s own voice sounds when he starts talkin’ to himself!”
He listened to this while he said it, carefully. It seemed more rational. He found that to hear himself speak was rather pleasant than otherwise. He began to chat. He said:
“Can’t be much longer now… An’ then the balloon goes up. Must’ve been just before dawn thought I saw those three ride out from that shadow. That means they’re goin’ to circle an’ come in from different ways… they know I can’t cover all points… but they don’t know I’m not even tryin’ to, blast ’em! Show the — pigs they’re not the only fly ones! Yes. That’s it. Yes! … My God, it’s bloody hot… man does nothing but sweat… I’m soakin’… Come on, you sods!
“… Wonder they never tried that ridin ’an’ circlin’ business before. Must’ve had their horses there! Didn’t want to lose them, I s’pose… But they’ve been a long time now… Part o’ the programme? Yes. That’s it. Yes! … One thing, though… wish to God I knew exactly how many visitors I’m goin’ to get… They’ll all come on this call… Soors! Now there’s only one left… they’ll all come, but is it three or four? Now more’n four, if that. Yes… I think there were three there an’ then four caught Jock an’ the Matlow an’ brought ’em back an’ then killed ’em… Then we pipped three… or was it four… say three… leaves four… Yes. That’s it. Four. Yes. Yes! I’ll be ready for ’em, I will. Yes.”
The voice was growing louder and louder, the words pouring out in a bubbling torrent.
“Bloody swine! Festering lot of poxed-up niggers! I will get ’em. I will, I will! Yes, by God! … Wonder which way they’ll come… If any come from the back here, the tree’ll hide me a bit. Yes… Ought to see two of ’em over that side ’fore they see me in my little hole. My little hole! My little hole! A bright little tight little trenchlet! Oh! what a nice little cess-pit! A dear little…”
Suddenly he heard himself. Became aware, too, that now he was kneeling; that his voice was a hoarse, raving shout; that, mad, he had thrown aside his topee and that the sun was beating full down upon his unprotected head.
“My Christ!” he whispered. “My Christ!” He snatched up one of the water-bottles, jerked out its cork and tipped its contents over his head and neck. He reached out and snatched his helmet and rammed it back upon his head.
He lay hidden again, trembling. He took a firm grip upon himself. He relaxed his tautened, quivering muscles and breathed slow and deep.
He vowed to himself that his lips should not speak again… until his visitors arrived.
He passed a damp hand along his cheek and jaw. The touch seemed to please him, for he smiled… He had, before dawn, at the end of those labours of the night, done a curious thing. He had washed himself and shaved; shaved as clean as if he were to be, an hour later, upon a ceremonial parade. And after shaving he had turned to his uniform. It was stained and greasy and torn; but with it he had done his best. Spurs, shining, were upon his boots. His puttees were neat and tight. His shirt was settled well about him, close and trim across breast and shoulders, tucked tightly down into his breeches; then the leather belt about his waist had been newly soaped; its buckles polished with sand and water. Across his shoulders, empty for the sake of comfort, was his bandolier, its leather clean, its little brass pouch-studs glistening… Beneath him, in his little pit, was even a folded blanket, so that sand should not mar his attempt at parade-ground order…
It had taken him, this poshing, nearly an hour. He had done it swiftly, silently; automatically almost. Ever and again, as he scoured or scraped or rubbed, his lips, free now from their long growth of itching stubble, had made the muttered words:
“Filthy lot o’ swine… Dung-heap savages! …”
He lay still now… still as death… There could not … could not… be much more of this waiting. He strove for calm and attained it. A curious calm: his body was relaxed and easy, though under the battering of the sun the sweat ran from him in streams now warm, now clammily cold. A curious inexplicable calm; for his ears were straining, straining, and his mind had taken once more to that business of picture-making…
Perhaps this strange peace was not despite but due to these pictures in his head; for though behind these there was still that screen of his obsession, his determination, the pictures themselves were not, as they had been before, of Morelli and Sanders; Cook and MacKay naked and vilely misused; the empty horse-line with little Pearson huddled before it; Bell dead across the threshold of the hut; scenes in which, by following other courses to those he had taken, he had brought those men of his safely and triumphantly out of this mess… No. Now the pictures were of matters belonging to that other life, that life before this war for which one had enlisted, fervently, to destroy Germans, only to be put to lingering deaths by syphilitic savages. They started, it is true, with a picture of his mare so recently stolen by these same savages… lovely, eager; coat shining in the sun glare; soft, tender nostrils blown comically, sweetly, out to greet him; one slender foreleg picking daintily at the baked sand… but quickly this picture had changed to that of another, more beloved mare: Kitty, her name was, and she had borne him over many, many miles of that many-miled continent of South America… If only Kitty now were here…
But Kitty had faded. Inconsequently had come pictures of that day, over twenty years ago, when the Great Row had come at home
… His father had been wrong … he still held to this… utterly wrong to kick out into the world, without a penny, a boy of sixteen… just because of that… But still, now for the first time, he thought he would like, perhaps, to see the old boy… after all, that kicking-out had led to things: times hard and hellish hard; but goodish times too, some very good… and things had been done…
But the Governor faded. A jumble came then. His first job, a second footman… not bad this for a lad just out of the Upper Fifth… His second job… that was a bad one. His third, second under-assistant-deputy steward on a fourth-rate B.A. boat. Then South America… Then… flicker-flick… the tea job in Assam… flicker… the girl Dolores in Rio, that shawl wrapped tight about her slim, swaying body. Flick! … that crash over the Sports Ground mortgage. A fortune missed there, by just the half of a split hair… flicker… the operator’s turning the damned handle too fast… Shooting the man Faire and beating it up-country quick… the amazingly funny business about Hardman and Sons in Denver… Restless, restless! … Some going almost too quick to know ’em except vaguely.
Then… oh! God! … Noël! Noël in that dark green dress, waving to him from the quay; he could see the soft sparkle of the tears that stood in her eyes and were not allowed to fall; see the sun, kindly and benevolent glinting on the red-gold hair beneath the fine sweep of the hat brim. And beside her was Michael. He, too, was waving… a grin on his face but curses of joy in his heart…
Noël… Noël… what wouldn’t he give to see…
The pictures ceased. His ears had caught a sound. The ghost of a sound. There was nothing definite to which he could ascribe that sound. But sound it was: a difference, just, from the aching silence which had seemed a part of him and the world.
The Sergeant’s heart leaped within him. Fingers shaking with excitement, he pressed up the safety-catch on his rifle. He burrowed deep and deeper into his pit. His ears strained now for sound as surely no ears had ever strained before. His eyes, just now dull and glazed and inward-gazing, jumped into life; they shone and glittered. His mouth smiled a twisted smile. There had suddenly flashed into his head a memory of Morelli, starting up in his sleep, shouting “Ten Little Nigger Boys.”…
There! The sound again… And again… The Sergeant waited, hardly breathing. Morelli came into his mind once more; he had a sudden urgent wish that they should not find Morelli’s body where he had hidden it… He hoped to God they wouldn’t! Hoped to God! …
He started. More sounds had come… He could have sworn… Yes… it was a voice. A thick, muttering voice…
He was suddenly icy calm. The excited trembling left him.
He raised, half-inch by half-inch, smoothly his head. He peered through his little screen of palm fronds. He saw; and a great wave of elation surged through him. He felt Power. He felt as God. He had willed them to lay themselves in his hands. They had obeyed.
He saw them plainly; three of them. Two were standing, tall, gaunt, vilely sombre in their dun-coloured robes, directly opposite to where he lay. They were back to back, darting glances this way and that. In their hands were long, queerly-shaped rifles. He saw that from where they stood the hut was invisible. The third lay flat, some ten yards to that side of the two farther from the hut.
Of the standing two he could see the faces. Swarthy, handsome, bestial; one was deeply pock-marked.
The Sergeant’s left hand crept towards the two strings, closed over one, over both, suddenly jerked…
His mechanics had been sound. There was rattling, deafening, rippling roar, as the four rifles fired from the hut, the bullets of the two from the side facing the clearing rattling high among the feathered palms.
As one, the standing Arabs leapt round to face the sound of the shots: the lying one, too, turned his body.
The Sergeant, exultation flooding him, came to his feet, for as he lay he could not fire with certainty. The rifle at his shoulder spat. The taller of the standing Arabs crumpled, twisted; fell and did not move. The Sergeant… it was all as quick as light… fired again. The second Arab tottered, dropped his long rifle and came to his knees…
The rifle at his shoulder spat.
The Sergeant, turning, fired again, now at the Arab who lay and even now was firing at him. As his finger pressed the trigger he felt something like a great blow, struck with a padded hammer, take him in the left thigh…
He fell, gripping his rifle… Groaning, he raised himself to a knee to see that he had won the duel; his shot must have got home between the eyes; there was no man lying there now, but a huddled lifeless heap.
But there was yet the second Arab, who, kneeling, strained, enfeebled by the anguish of his wound, to reach his fallen rifle… strained and succeeded.
The Sergeant, pain sweeping in great waves over him, slowly turned… He looked, across the clearing, straight into a rifle muzzle which wavered, then was steady… Again two shots sounded as one… Again a blow from a padded Miölnir flung the Sergeant down… This time it was his left shoulder and breast… He fumbled with a wavering, unsteady hand, to find a gaping breach of a wound. His lips, close to the dust, whispered:
“Dum-dum!”
He knew before consciousness left him, that again the winning shot had been his; the Arab who had knelt was now another shapeless heap…
The Sergeant lay huddled at the lip of his little pit. His eyes were closed, his mouth open with down-dropped lower jaw. His left thigh was broken, and his left shoulder, beneath which, spreading down to the ribs, was that gaping, dreadful wound. His rifle lay beside him…
He knew nothing… and blood poured from him. He was utterly still… still as the three who shared the clearing with him…
From among the trees behind him came a sound. Such a ghost of a sound as, five minutes before, he had heard with such delight. But now he could not hear…
The sound came again, stealthily. A figure rose from the ground among the trees. A tall figure clad in dun-coloured robes; out from its kaftan looked a fierce brown face, handsome and bestial. It carried a long, oddly-shaped rifle…
A tremor ran through the body of the Sergeant. At the closed doors of his consciousness there was a knocking… a knocking… it thundered in his head…
Wearily, with agony and reluctance, those doors swung open. In his head, all through him now, a word went pulsing:
“Three! Three! Three!”
He fought for the strength to open his eyes. Slowly the lids rose. He screamed, but with no voice, as the sun struck flaming spears into his head. But his eyes stayed open.
“Three! Three! Three!” thundered through his head, his body, his tortured wounds.
And then understanding came back. He knew, now, what this “Three” had meant.
“Oughta been four… least!” His dust-caked mouth formed the words without sound… Without volition, his right arm moved, its hand seeking a pocket… The fingers closed over that little automatic. Its butt felt cold and heavy…
“Three…” said his lips. “P’r’aps… only… aft’rall…”
And then… a shadow. A shadow which came between him and the sun…
“Four. Four. Four-four-four!” hammered his pulses.
He waited… He bit with feeble teeth at his befouled lower lip. Bit hard for strength; bit hard to keep back the groan that the agony of his wounds, now that life was with him again, was forcing up from his lungs…
He waited, eyes spying from under lids three-quarters closed… He held his breath.
The shadow lengthened; grew less…
Over him stood a figure, a hand fumbling for knife among the folds of its burnous…
The Sergeant made strength… or borrowed from source unknown. He rolled suddenly over, on to his left side, upon his wounds… In a sweep, his right hand came from his breeches’ pocket… The automatic spoke its stuttered speech… to the full.
The Arab swayed, collapsed… fell with lurching crash; dead before his shoulders hit the ground.
The Sergeant�
��s voice came back to him.
“Four!” he cried in a high, thin voice. “Knew it!”
He climbed, with a frightful effort of will, to one knee. His face was contorted, unrecognizable… He got, somehow, to his feet…
He stood, swaying, borne up by some power within or without himself, upon his leg that was not injured. He looked down upon this fourth.
“Dog!” he said, “swine!” A cough shook him, tore at him. A rattling cough… Blood welled faster from that yawning hole where his left breast should have been.
He swayed, wildly, almost falling.
“T-t-ten… l-little… nig’ boys!” he said.
“An’… then… then there… were none!”
He fell, face downwards, across the body of the Arab.
GLOSSARY
Asti: steady! Go easy (from Hindustani)
Bandolier: a belt worn across the shoulder with loops or pockets for cartridges
Bibi: woman; girl (from Hindustani)
Boos: sole, only (from Hindustani)
Buckle: Jew (rhyming slang, buckle-my-shoe)
Buddoo: Arab
Budgi: time; lit. hour (from Hindustani)
Burnous: a long, loose hooded cloak worn by Arabs
Carl (carrl sic): man, fellow (Scottish)
Chee-chee: half-caste
Chubbarow: be quiet! Shut up! (from Hindustani)
Coggage: paper or litter; mess
Dekko: look! Watch (from Hindustani)
Doolally: sunstroke (from Hindustani, Deolali, a place in India famous for cases of sunstroke)
Gink: foolish man (North American slang)
Gora: horse (from Hindustani)
Grant Road: the prostitute’s quarters in Bombay
Grampi: grandfathers
Hussif: sewing-kit
Jildi: quick! hurry up! (from Hindustani)
Kelly’s Eye: first class, Number One
Lariat: a rope used as a lasso, or for tethering
Mallam: do you understand? (from Hindustani)
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