by Wilbur Smith
Ruffy leaned from the cab of the leading truck and shouted.
‘Hello boss. Where shall we dump?’
‘Take it up to the bridge. Hang on a second and I’ll come with you.’
Bruce slipped out of the laager and crossed quickly to Ruffy’s truck. He could feel his back tingling while he was in the open and he slammed the door behind him with relief.
‘I don’t relish stopping an arrow,’ he said.
‘You have any trouble while we were gone?’
‘No,’ Bruce told him. ‘But they’re here. They were drumming in the jungle all night.’
‘Calling up their buddies,’ grunted Ruffy and let out the clutch. ‘We’ll have some fun before we finish this bridge. Most probably take them a day or two to get brave, but in the end they’ll have a go at us.’
‘Pull over to the side of the bridge, Ruffy,’ Bruce instructed and rolled down his window. ‘I’ll signal Hendry to pull in beside us. We’ll off-load into the space between the two trucks and start building the corrugated iron shield there.’
While Hendry manoeuvred his truck alongside, Bruce forced himself to look down on the carnage of the beach.
‘Crocodiles,’ he exclaimed with relief. The paunching racks still stood as he had last seen them, but the reeking pile of human remains was gone. The smell and the flies, however, still lingered.
‘During the night,’ agreed Ruffy as he surveyed the long slither marks in the sand of the beach.
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Yeah, it wouldn’t have made my boys too joyful having to clean up that lot.’
‘We’ll send someone down to tear out those racks. I don’t want to look at them while we work.’
‘No, they’re not very pretty.’ Ruffy ran his eyes over the two sets of gallows.
Bruce climbed down into the space between the trucks.
‘Hendry.’
‘That’s my name.’ Wally leaned out of the window.
‘Sorry to disappoint you, but the crocs have done the chore for you.’
‘I can see. I’m not blind.’
‘Very well then. On the assumption that you are neither blind nor paralysed, how about getting your trucks unloaded?’
‘Big deal,’ muttered Hendry, but he climbed down and began shouting at the men under the canvas canopy.
‘Get the lead out there, you lot. Start jumping about!’
‘What were the thickest timbers you could find?’ Bruce turned to Ruffy.
‘Nine by threes, but we got plenty of them.’
‘They’ll do,’ decided Bruce. ‘We can lash a dozen of them together for each of the main supports.’ Frowning with concentration, Bruce began the task of organizing the repairs.
‘Hendry, I want the timber stacked by sizes. Put the sheet-iron over there.’ He brushed the flies from his face. ‘Ruffy, how many hammers have we got?’
‘Ten, boss, and I found a couple of handsaws.’
‘Good. What about nails and rope?’
‘We got plenty. I got a barrel of six-inch and—’
Preoccupied, Bruce did not notice one of the coloured civilians leave the shelter of the trucks. He walked a dozen paces towards the bridge and stopped. Then unhurriedly he began to unbutton his trousers and Bruce looked up.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he shouted and the man started guiltily. He did not understand the English words, but Bruce’s tone was sufficiently clear.
‘Monsieur,’ he explained, ‘I wish to—’
‘Get back here!’ roared Bruce. The man hesitated in confusion and then he began closing his fly.
‘Hurry up – you bloody fool.’
Obediently the man hastened the closing of his trousers. Everyone had stopped work and they were all watching him. His face was dark with embarrassment and he fumbled clumsily.
‘Leave that.’ Bruce was frantic. ‘Get back here.’
The first arrow rose lazily out of the undergrowth along the river in a silent parabola. Gathering speed in its descent, hissing softly, it dropped into the ground at the man’s feet and stuck up jauntily. A thin reed, fletched with green leaves, it looked harmless as a child’s plaything.
‘Run,’ screamed Bruce. The man stood and stared with detached disbelief at the arrow.
Bruce started forward to fetch him, but Ruffy’s huge black hand closed on his arm and he was helpless in its grip. He struck out at Ruffy, struggling to free himself but he could not break that hold.
A swarm of them like locusts on the move, high arching, fluting softly, dropping all around the man as he started to run.
Bruce stopped struggling and watched. He heard the metal heads clanking on the bonnet of the truck, saw them falling wide of the man, some of the frail shafts snapping as they hit the ground.
Then between the shoulders, like a perfectly placed banderilla, one hit him. It flapped against his back as he ran and he twisted his arms behind him, vainly trying to reach it, his face twisted in horror and in pain.
‘Hold him down,’ shouted Bruce as the coloured man ran into the shelter. Two gendarmes jumped forward, took his arms and forced him face downwards on to the ground.
He was gabbling incoherently with horror as Bruce straddled his back and gripped the shaft. Only half the barbed head had buried itself – a penetration of less than an inch – but when Bruce pulled the shaft it snapped off in his hand leaving the steel twitching in the flesh.
‘Knife,’ shouted Bruce and someone thrust a bayonet into his hand.
‘Watch those barbs, boss. Don’t cut yourself on them.’
‘Ruffy, get your boys ready to repel them if they rush us,’ snapped Bruce and ripped away the shirt. For a moment he stared at the crudely hand-beaten iron arrowhead. The poison coated it thickly, packed in behind the barbs, looking like sticky black toffee.
‘He’s dead,’ said Ruffy from where he leaned over the bonnet of the truck. ‘He just ain’t stopped breathing yet.’
The man screamed and twisted under Bruce as he made the first incision, cutting in deep beside the arrowhead with the point of the bayonet.
‘Hendry, get those pliers out of the tool kit.’
‘Here they are.’
Bruce gripped the arrow-head with the steel jaws and pulled. The flesh clung to it stubbornly, lifting in a pyramid. Bruce hacked at it with the bayonet, feeling it tear. It was like trying to get the hook out of the rubbery mouth of a cat-fish.
‘You’re wasting your time, boss!’ grunted Ruffy with all the calm African acceptance of violent death. ‘This boy’s a goner. That’s no horse! That’s snake juice in him, fresh mixed. He’s finished.’
‘Are you sure, Ruffy?’ Bruce looked up, ‘Are you sure it’s snake venom?’
‘That’s what they use. They mix it with kassava meal.’
‘Hendry, where’s the snake bite outfit?’
‘It’s in the medicine box back at the camp.’
Bruce tugged once more at the arrowhead and it came away, leaving a deep black hole between the man’s shoulder blades.
‘Everybody into the trucks, we’ve got to get him back. Every second is vital.’
‘Look at his eyes,’ grunted Ruffy. ‘That injection stuff ain’t going to help him much.’
The pupils had contracted to the size of match heads and he was shaking uncontrollably as the poison spread through his body.
‘Get him into the truck.’
They lifted him into the cab and everybody scrambled aboard. Ruffy started the engine, slammed into reverse and the motor roared as he shot backwards over the intervening thirty yards to the laager.
‘Get him out,’ instructed Bruce. ‘Bring him into the shelter.’
The man was blubbering through slack lips and he had started to sweat. Little rivulets of it coursed down his face and naked upper body. There was hardly any blood from the wound, just a trickle of brownish fluid. The poison must be a coagulant, Bruce decided.
‘Bruce, are you all right?’ Shermaine r
an to meet him.
‘Nothing wrong with me.’ Bruce remembered to check his tongue this time. ‘But one of them has been hit.’
‘Can I help you?’
‘No, I don’t want you to watch.’ And he turned from her. ‘Hendry, where’s that bloody snake bite outfit?’ he shouted.
They had dragged the man into the laager and laid him on a blanket in the shade. Bruce went to him and knelt beside him. He took the scarlet tin that Hendry handed him and opened it.
‘Ruffy, get those two trucks worked into the circle and make sure your boys are on their toes. With this success they may get brave sooner than you expected.’
Bruce fitted the hypodermic needle on to the syringe as he spoke.
‘Hendry, get them to rig some sort of screen round us. You can use blankets.’
With his thumb he snapped the top off the ampoule and filled the syringe with the pale yellow serum.
‘Hold him,’ he said to the two gendarmes, lifted a pinch of skin close beside the wound and ran the needle under it. The man’s skin felt like that of a frog, damp and clammy.
As he expelled the serum Bruce was trying to calculate the time that had elapsed since the arrow had hit. Possibly seven or eight minutes; mamba venom kills in fourteen minutes.
‘Roll him over,’ he said.
The man’s head lolled sideways, his breathing was quick and shallow and the saliva poured from the corners of his mouth, running down his cheeks.
‘Get a load of that!’ breathed Wally Hendry, and Bruce glanced up at his face. His expression was a glow of deep sensual pleasure and his breathing was as quick and shallow as that of the dying man.
‘Go and help Ruffy,’ snapped Bruce as his stomach heaved with disgust.
‘Not on your Nelly. This I’m not going to miss.’
Bruce had no time to argue. He lifted the skin of the man’s stomach and ran the needle in again. There was an explosive spitting sound as the bowels started to vent involuntarily.
‘Jesus,’ whispered Hendry.
‘Get away,’ snarled Bruce. ‘Can’t you let him die without gloating over it?’
Hopelessly he injected again, under the skin of the chest above the heart. As he emptied the syringe the man’s body twisted violently in the first seizure and the needle snapped off under the skin.
‘There he goes,’ whispered Hendry, ‘there he goes. Just look at him, man. That’s really something.’
Bruce’s hands were trembling and slowly a curtain descended across his mind.
‘You filthy swine,’ he screamed and hit Hendry across the face with his open hand, knocking him back against the side of the gasoline tanker. Then he went for his throat and found it with both hands. The windpipe was ropey and elastic under his thumbs.
‘Is nothing sacred to you, you unclean animal?’ he yelled into Hendry’s face. ‘Can’t you let a man die without—’
Then Ruffy was there, effortlessly plucking Bruce’s hands from the throat, interposing the bulk of his body, holding them away from each other.
‘Let it stand, boss.’
‘For that—’ gasped Hendry as he massaged his throat. ‘For that I’m going to make you pay.’
Bruce turned away, sick and ashamed, to the man on the blanket.
‘Cover him up.’ His voice was shaky. ‘Put him in the back of one of the trucks. We’ll bury him tomorrow.’
– 23 –
Before nightfall they had completed the corrugated iron screen. It was a simple four-walled structure with no roof to it. One end of it was detachable and all four walls were pierced at regular intervals with small loopholes for defence.
Long enough to accommodate a dozen men in comfort, high enough to reach above the heads of the tallest, and exactly the width of the bridge, it was not a thing of beauty.
‘How you going to move it, boss?’ Ruffy eyed the screen dubiously.
‘I’ll show you. We’ll move it back to the camp now, so that in the morning we can commute to work in it.’
Bruce selected twelve men and they crowded through the open end into the shelter, and closed it behind them.
‘Okay, Ruffy. Take the trucks away.’
Hendry and Ruffy reversed the two trucks back to the laager, leaving the shelter standing at the head of the bridge like a small Nissen hut. Inside it Bruce stationed his men at intervals along the walls.
‘Use the bottom timber of the frame to lift on,’ he shouted. ‘Are you all ready? All right, lift!’
The shelter swayed and rose six inches above the ground. From the laager they could see only the boots of the men inside.
‘All together,’ ordered Bruce. ‘Walk!’
Rocking and creaking over the uneven ground the structure moved ponderously back towards the laager. Below it the feet moved like those of a caterpillar.
The men in the laager started to cheer, and from inside the shelter they answered with whoops of laughter. It was fun. They were enjoying themselves enormously, completely distracted from the horror of poison arrows and the lurking phantoms in the jungle around them.
They reached the camp and lowered the shelter. Then one at a time the gendarmes slipped across the few feet of open ground into the safety of the laager to be met with laughter, and back-slapping and mutual congratulation.
‘Well, it works, boss,’ Ruffy greeted Bruce in the uproar.
‘Yes.’ Then he lifted his voice. ‘That’s enough. Quiet down all of you. Get back to your posts.’
The laughter subsided and the confusion became order again. Bruce walked to the centre of the laager and looked about him. There was complete quiet now. They were all watching him. I have read about this so often, he grinned inwardly, the heroic speech to the men on the eve of battle. Let’s pray I don’t make a hash of it.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked loudly in French and received a chorus of hearty affirmatives.
‘There is bully beef for dinner.’ This time humorous groans.
‘And bully beef for breakfast tomorrow,’ he paused, ‘and then it’s finished.’
They were silent now.
‘So you are going to be truly hungry by the time we cross this river. The sooner we repair the bridge the sooner you’ll get your bellies filled again.’
I might as well rub it in, decided Bruce.
‘You all saw what happened to the person who went into the open today, so I don’t have to tell you to keep under cover. The sergeant major is making arrangements for sanitation – five-gallon drums. They won’t be very comfortable, so you won’t be tempted to sit too long.’
They laughed a little at that.
‘Remember this. As long as you stay in the laager or the shelter they can’t touch you. There is absolutely nothing to fear. They can beat their drums and wait as long as they like, but they can’t harm us.’
A murmur of agreement.
‘And the sooner we finish the bridge the sooner we will be on our way.’
Bruce looked round the circle of faces and was satisfied with what he saw. The completion of the shelter had given their morale a boost.
‘All right, Sergeant Jacque. You can start sweeping with the searchlights as soon as it’s dark.’
Bruce finished and went across to join Shermaine beside the Ford. He loosed the straps of his helmet and lifted it off his head. His hair was damp with perspiration and he ran his fingers through it.
‘You are tired,’ Shermaine said softly, examining the dark hollows under his eyes and the puckered marks of strain at the corners of his mouth.
‘No. I’m all right,’ he denied, but every muscle in his body ached with fatigue and nervous tension.
‘Tonight you must sleep all night,’ she ordered him. ‘I will make the bed in the back of the car.’
Bruce looked at her quickly. ‘With you?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You do not mind that everyone should know?’
‘I am not ashamed of us.’ There was a fierceness in her tone.
&
nbsp; ‘I know, but—’
‘You said once that nothing between you and I could ever be dirty.’
‘No, of course it couldn’t be dirty. I just thought—’
‘Well then, I love you and from now on we have only one bed between us.’ She spoke with finality.
Yesterday she was a virgin, he thought with amazement, and now – well, now it’s no holds barred. Once she is roused a woman is more reckless of consequences than any man. They are such wholesale creatures. But she’s right, of course. She’s my woman and she belongs in my bed. The hell with the rest of the world and what it thinks!
‘Make the bed, wench.’ He smiled at her tenderly.
Two hours after dark the drum started again. They lay together, holding close, and listened to it. It held no terror now, for they were warm and secure in the afterglow of passion. It was like lying and listening to the impotent fury of a rainstorm on the roof at night.
– 24 –
They went out to the bridge at sunrise, the shelter moving across the open ground like the carapace of a multi-legged metallic turtle. The men chattered and joked loudly inside, still elated by the novelty of it.
‘All right, everybody. That’s enough talking,’ Bruce shouted them down. ‘There’s work to do now.’
And they began.
Within an hour the sun had turned the metal box into an oven. They stripped to the waist and the sweat dripped from them as they worked. They worked in a frenzy, gripped by a new urgency, oblivious of everything but the rough-sawed timber that drove white splinters into their skin at the touch. They worked in the confined heat, amidst the racket of hammers and in the piney smell of sawdust. The labour fell into its own pattern with only an occasional grunted order from Bruce or Ruffy to direct it.
By midday the four main trusses that would span the gap in the bridge had been made up. Bruce tested their rigidity by propping one at both ends and standing all his men on the middle of it. It gave an inch under their combined weight.
‘What do you think, boss?’ Ruffy asked without conviction.
‘Four of them might just do it. We’ll put in king-posts underneath,’ Bruce answered.
‘Man, I don’t know. That tanker weights plenty.’