He sat back, massaging his shoulder where it ached. His arm jerked as though he were still paddling. Then he took up the paddle and pulled the boat into midstream again. A moment later he was bent over the paddle once more, silent, morose, obsessed.
When he collapsed, it came quite suddenly. At one moment he was working desperately like a labouring engine and, at the next, he was lying in the bottom of the boat, unconscious. The boat swung round for a moment and then ran itself backwards with a crash into the bank. Carmel could feel the hard knuckles of the tree roots as the hull ran over them.
She turned Dunnett over and began splashing water on to his face and chafing his hands. The palms of them were cracked and bleeding. When Carmel saw them she began crying again.
“We must go on,” he said faintly. “They’ll be catching up with us.”
But he was not strong enough. When he moved, his stomach turned on him. He lay back again, retching.
“I guess this is the end for both of us,” she said.
He shook his head. “I’ll soon be better,” he answered. “Then we’ll get on again.”
It was then that his eye caught the spot where the boat had touched the bank; the wood was stove in and a thin spurt of water was playing through. He put his heel against it and the leak gaped.
“That’s about the end of things,” he said quietly.
They rested where they were for an hour, two hours, three hours—they had lost count of ordinary time. They only knew that the sun shifted from one bank to the other, and that they felt fainter for want of food. Dangling above their heads, like the fists of giants, bunches of bananas grew; but it would have needed a monkey to get at them.
When a river hog came close to drink, going on to its knees to get at the water, Dunnett suddenly snatched at his revolver and fired at it. An elementary chain of thought came into his mind that it was food and that he should have it. But it was no use. The river hog only squealed. Then rising from its prayers it began running off into the thicknesses still squealing. It became a faint sound in a large space and Dunnett knew that, alive or dead, it had got away from him.
“Don’t waste those bullets, we shall need them,” Carmel said.
“What for?” he asked.
“For us,” she told him.
“Not yet,” he answered. “We’re not done for yet.”
There was a pause.
“Why don’t you go back?” she implored. “It’s with the current. We could drift there.”
“Not in this boat we can’t,” he said. “We’ve stove her in. She’d sink if we took her out there. Besides, they’d kill us if they found us.”
“Then what are we to do?” Carmel asked.
“Sit here,” Dunnett answered. “Sit here and wait.”
“How long?”
“Till something turns up.”
“I’d rather die.”
“You may do both.”
He laughed as he said it, but Carmel did not laugh. She was looking at his fixed, unsmiling eyes.
“Give me that revolver,” she said quietly. “I know what happens to people who’re lost in the jungle.”
But Dunnett shook his head. “You’re too young to die. Far too young.”
“Give it to me.”
“It stops where it is,” Dunnett answered. “In my holster.” She came to him and began striking at him with her fists. “You can’t stop me. You can’t stop me,” she screamed.
“If you don’t give it to me now, I’ll take it when you’re asleep. I’m going to kill myself, I tell you. I’m going to kill myself. It’s my life.”
Dunnett did not reply immediately. He looked first at her and unbuttoned his holster at his revolver. Then as she made to snatch it he threw it as far as he could into the stream. It made a plop like a large fish jumping.
“That’s that,” he said, as the ripples cleared away. “Now we’ve got to wait.”
That night they lay against each other. There was no passion now. Only fatigue. And there seemed somehow to be safety in nearness. It was as though two defenceless bodies had become invincible simply by being together.
Carmel stirred often in the night, waking up and calling for her father. He calmed her each time and put his arm around her. And in the morning they lay as they were without moving. Even the effort of raising the body on to an elbow had become too great to be endured. They just lay there, waiting.
Five hours later something roused them. It was a burst of what sounded like music. It was faint and died away almost as soon as it had been born. But what remained was a low, regular beat, a vibration almost like that of tom-toms. Dunnett sat up and listened. Carmel had heard it too. He saw her eyes questioning, and shook his head; it was nothing, he told her, only some trick of the jungle. Then the music grew louder. A long wail reached them and hung around; it was no illusion. The beat of the unseen drums grew louder. Carmel thrust out her hand and Dunnett took it in his.
“I guess this finishes us,” she said.
But as they listened the note of tom-toms changed and resoived itself into the exhaust throb of a motor-boat engine. Only the music remained inexplicable. It was something weird and erratic, this sequestered orchestra in the jungle. Perhaps their tired minds had conjured it all up out of nothing. As they wondered, the hidden boat turned a bend in the river and the music was close at hand. It was a tune they had both danced to. The launch, moreover, they realised, was coming from the Bolivian side. Underneath a long awning sat a group of officers. One was more magnifcent than the rest. He was a Peruvian military observer on a conducted tour from Canagua. His brilliant white ducks and green and gold epaulettes made him a man apart, a being aloof from the sordid traffic of war. At his feet stood a gramophone, on which a fox-trot record was dizzily revolving.
As soon as Dunnett saw the launch he pushed off and began paddling crazily towards it; he was no longer steady enough even to use the blade properly. Great scoops of water went off over his shoulder at every other stroke. But he went on paddling like a maniac, shouting as he came.
The apparition caused considerable consternation on the launch. The man in the bows raised his rifle and covered the curious-looking craft in front of him. Then everyone stood up and came crowding forward. The officer in charge was uncertain whether he was taking part in a rescue or an ambush.
He was not left long in doubt, however. Dunnett’s boat was filling rapidly by the bows. The water was coming in so fast that the gunwales were already nearly level with the surface. The first impression was that of a frenzied figure sitting up in the river and paddling without any kind of support. The officer in the launch told the look-out to put down his rifle and throw a length of rope in their direction. It came through the air uncoiling itself like a lasso.
The length of rope was the last thing that Dunnett remembered. At the next moment the boat filled and slid away from under them.
Chapter XII
The Launch had turned and was six miles up stream with the engine driving hard and the gramophone stopped, before Dunnett opened his eyes again. When he did so he found an army officer with the twin bands of the Bolivian medical corps on his sleeves sitting beside him. There was a hypodermic syringe in his hand and he was cleaning the needle on his pocket handkerchief.
He smiled when he saw that Dunnett was looking at him. “Near shave,” he said cheerfully. “You went under the boat. We couldn’t find you.”
Dunnett tried to raise himself on his elbow, but found that there was no strength left in him. “The girl,” he said. “Is she all right?”
The doctor smiled back again. “She’s all right,” he said. “We got her out first.”
When he was strong enough to move, Dunnett could see Carmel. She was lying on a pile of deck cushions under the awning. Everyone who wasn’t actually engaged in navigating the launch was doing something for her. The Peruvian military attaché was particularly engaged. He had a drink in his hand and was holding it to her lips. Dunnett looked for a moment a
t the little scene and then closed his eyes again. For no reason he began to cry. It all seemed so simple now that it was over; so unbelievably simple. He couldn’t even see where he could ever have gone wrong. He had rescued a girl from a beseiged city and carried her through fire and bloodshed into safety. He supposed he was something of a hero. They’d talk about him when he got back; Harold Dunnett, V.C.
And then he remembered Señor Muras’s cheque. It was in the inside breast pocket of his coat. But where was his coat? He recalled struggling out of something clammy when the boat had sunk and decided that must be it. At the realisation he forced himself up on to his knees and began clambering towards the side of the launch. “My coat,” he said. “I must get my coat.” But the Bolivian medical officer forced him down and put his knee on his chest until he was quiet again.
After that he lay there, quite still. He lived over again those two nights in the boat. It was there that things stopped being simple. No matter what happened he belonged to Carmel now; he realised that, in that moment when he had taken her in his arms, he had flung away the future.
He called her and she came over to him. She stroked the hair back from his forehead. “You’ve been swell,” she said.
He lay on his back staring up at her, and then beckoned for her to lean forward. “Carmel,” he said, “don’t you worry. I’ll soon be better. They’re not going to take you away from me. …” The rest of the speech remained unfinished. Whatever drug the good-humoured doctor had shot into him began to take effect. He tried to go on with what he was saying but the words faded out on his tongue. Then he slept.
It was in a state nearer sleeping than waking that he covered the two hundred and odd miles back to Canagua and so to Sandar. He never emerged from the close mist that surrounded him. Figures—Carmel, the Captain, the doctor and others whom he could not distinguish—came up to him suddenly out of nothing, remained there looming over him for a moment, and then drifted away again into space. He remembered talking to them, but could not recall what was said. It was as though after long periods of death he kept returning to life.
The first impression that was really clear was of being moved on to a stretcher when they reached Sandar. He saw all that quite clearly and was surprised to see how fat his leg looked: it was swathed in bandages right down to his foot. He laughed a little at its oddness—it looked so like a rolled up carpet in a dust sheet. Then Carmel came and spoke to him, and the fact comforted him. He said the word “carpet” to her several times so that she could share in his little joke, but he could not make her understand, and he saw the doctor shake his head and lead her away. The doctor thought him delirious, he realised. He told him very clearly that he wasn’t, speaking logically and distinctly to disillusion him; but when he looked up he saw the doctor wasn’t there, and the bearers were taking him down the main street as if he were a procession.
Another doctor came to look at his leg after they had got Dunnett into the room for the night. The two medicals conferred in hushed, respectful whispers. It was not every day that they saw a leg like that. They told him they were going to dress it as it had gone septic; but their supply of anaesthetics had run out. Their technique was of the simplest. They rested the leg across two chairs like a bridge and placed a tin pail beneath. When they got to work it was with an edgeless scalpel and some debatable cotton wool. They desisted when Dunnett slid clean off between the two chairs in a faint.
As the poisons spread through him and he grew worse he called more frequently for Carmel. But she was not there. She was resting in her room they said. He grew anxious, and asked how long he had been in Sandar. They told him six days, and he lay without talking, pondering the tricks that time can play upon a sick man. But was she all right? he asked. Had she come to no harm from her ordeal? They assured him that she was untouched; and for the moment he was satisfied. Then he enquired if they had told her that he was asking for her, asking for her all the time he was awake. But they didn’t seem to hear that: the question remained unanswered.
On the tenth day the doctor broke the news to him that they could do nothing more for him: the equipment at Sandar was too primitive; if they were going to save the leg, he said, they would have to operate down at Amricante. The news staggered Dunnett: he had no idea that he was as bad as that. But apparently it was true. Half his leg wasn’t living flesh any longer. It was corrupting before their eyes.
“But if I go,” he asked, “what’ll happen to the girl?”
“What girl?”
“Carmel Muras. The girl who was in the boat with me.”
They laughed. “She’ll be all right,” they said. “She can look after herself.”
The reply did not satisfy him. “She’s in my charge,” he said. “I’ve got to look after her.”
“You look after yourself,” the new doctor advised. “You’ve got plenty to do there without looking after other people.”
“But I’m going to take her back to Amricante. She must come with me.”
“Not in a hospital car,” the doctor explained. “She couldn’t travel in that. You go on first and she’ll follow.”
He was so tired that he agreed to what they said; he had no strength left to raise any more objections. But it seemed strange that she shouldn’t want to come with him— not after what had happened in the boat. He wondered if she were really all right, and a panic seized him.
“She isn’t dead, is she?” he asked.
“Oh no,” they told him. “She isn’t dead.”
They placed him on the hospital train at five-thirty next morning. Carmel was not there to see him off. He knew then that she was dead, that all he had done for her had been in vain, and he wept. It had all been so useless, so futile, this sudden, passionate love of theirs. He wondered what there could be in the bigger scheme of things that allows a thing like that to be created only to be killed.
The hospital wagon into which they were sliding him like a corpse into a hearse, as though he were dead already, was scarcely larger than a horse box. There were eleven other occupants. The orderly in charge was apologetic but comforting. Soon they would be only ten, he said. The occupant in bunk A2 had a shattered pelvis: the vibration of the train wouldn’t give him a chance.
The doctor from the launch came down to see him off just before the train started. Dunnett called again for Carmel, cried out that they were keeping her from him, and begged them to find her somehow. The doctor appeared uncomfortable for a moment and then ran his finger round his neck inside the band of his collar.
“Was she a special friend of yours?” he asked.
Dunnett nodded.
“Well, she’s left you,” the doctor said. “Gone off with one of the officers. The Peruvian one. They left three days back.”
“Why didn’t they tell me?” Dunnett asked.
“No use,” said the doctor. “You weren’t well enough.”
Dunnett was silent. “She must have thought,” he said at last, speaking aloud as though the other man were not there, “that I didn’t love her just because of the way I behaved. But I couldn’t help it. I had to get the boat along. If I’d been any different we’d both have been lost.”
“Sure,” said the doctor. “You’d both have been lost.”
The engine gave a sudden, frantic whistle and there was the erratic rattle of loose couplings taking up a strain. The doctor removed himself and Dunnett was left alone.
“We’d both of us have been lost,” he repeated as he felt the train get into motion. “What I was doing I was only doing for her, and she didn’t understand.” Now that he had lost her he knew desperately how much she meant to him. Even with Kay, life could never again be kindled as it had been that night in the boat.
He was still crying when the orderly and an assistant came along to remove what was left of the man who had had his pelvis shattered.
The medical orderly to whom Dunnett was entrusted by the doctor was a highly efficient young man; and he knew his job. He came over and b
egan smoothing Dunnett’s pillow.
“Have you got any money?” he asked.
There was some in his coat Dunnett told him; but when he reached out his hand for it he recalled that it had gone; his coat and Señor Muras’s cheque were somewhere at the bottom of the military river.
The medical orderly passed on and Dunnett could hear him asking the same question of the man in the bunk beneath. Evidently he had learnt that with men as ill as that it was well to extract his tips beforehand: the medical superintendent impounded all effects when he issued the death certificate.
The journey was not an easy one. There were too many of them in that narrow, blazing wagon: the sense of other bodies, beside one, over one, under one, was too oppressive. It was like lying down with a herd. And there were always the hospital sounds that sick men make—little whimpers, groans, gurglings in the throat like the death rattle itself, stray words whispered as though the person they were addressed to were at hand and bending over to catch them, shouts and commands. For hours on end Dunnett slept. He would emerge from one thick cloudy sleep to plunge into another, denser and more stifling than before. Nothing seemed any longer to matter. He turned over in his mind everything that had happened and saw it all dispassionately like the adventures of a stranger. “If only my leg would stop hurting,” he told himself. “Then I should be able to think. I’ve still got Kay. She’ll understand if I tell her. She won’t leave me just because I’m as ill as this.”
The journey to Amricante took eleven days. It was a landslide that held them up. Half a mile of mountain had detached itself from its native range and made its way majestically into the valley. In its course it had picked up the railway lines and carried them down with it: one of the rails could be seen a hundred yards below looped round a tree like a horseshoe. There was a gang of platelayers at work there: their problem was to unite the broken ends of metal that were separated by eight hundred yards of still-moving rock. On the fourth morning of the wait the engineers finished their task and the hospital train moved forward at a walking pace.
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