Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur - Страница 76
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Working under the supervision of Gunther Raube, the young engineering officer from Blitcher, they were cutting out the narrow track, widening it for the passage of the bulky objects that followed.
Dwarfing the men that swarmed around them, these four objects rolled slowly along, rocking and swaying over patches of uneven ground.
Now and then halting as they came up against a tree stump or an outcrop of rock, before the animal exertions of two hundred black men could get them rolling again.
Three weeks previously they had beached the freighter Rheinlander in Dares Salaam harbour and dismantled eight slabs of her plating. Then from the metal frames of her hull, Raube had shaped eight enormous wheel rims, fourteen feet in diameter; into each of these he had welded a sheet of -inch plating ten foot square. Using the freighter's bollards as axles, he had linked these eight discs in four pairs. Thus each of these contraptions looked like the wheel and axle assembly of a gigantic Roman chariot.
Herman Fleischer had made a swift recruitment tour, and secured nine hundred able-bodied Volunteers from the town of Dares Salaam and its outlying villages. These nine hundred were now engaged in trundling the four sets of wheels southward towards the RLIfiji delta. While they worked, Herman's Askari stood by with loaded Mousers to discourage any of the volunteers from Succumbing to an attack of homesickness; a malady which was fast reaching epidemic proportions, aggravated as it was by shoulders rubbed raw by contact with harsh sun-heated metal, and by palms whose outer layers of skin had been smeared away on the rough hemp ropes. They had been two weeks at their labours and they were still thirty torturous miles from the river.
Herman Fleischer squirmed again in his maschille as the amoebic dysentery gnawed at his guts.
"Mother of a pig!" he moaned, and then shouted at the bearers, "Quickly, take me to those trees." He pointed to a clump of wild ebony that smothered one of the side draws of the valley.
With alacrity, the maschille bearers swung off the path and trotted up the draw. Within the screen of wild ebony they paused while the Commissioner alighted from the hammock and hurried into the deepest recess of the bush to be alone. Then they drew themselves down with a communal sigh and gave themselves up to a session of African callisthenics.
When the Commissioner came out of retreat he was hungry. It was cool and restful in the shade, an ideal place to take his midafternoon snack. Raube would have to fend for himself for an hour or so. Herman nodded to his personal servant to set up the camp table and open the food box. His mouth was fulll of sausage when the first rifle shot clapped dully in the dusty dry air.
"Where is he?" He must be here. The scouts said he was here. Can you see him?" Rosa Oldsmith spoke through lips that were chapped dry by sun and wind, white flakes of skin had -come loose from the raw red patches of sunburn on her nose, and her eyes were bloodshot from the dust and the glare.
She lay on her stomach behind a bank of shale and coarse grass with the Mauser probing out in front of her.
"Can you see him?" she demanded again impatiently, turning her head towards her father.
Flynn grunted noncommittally, holding the binoculars to his eyes, panning them slowly down the length of the valley then back again to the head of the strange caravan.
There is a white man there, he said.
"Is it Fleischer, is it?
"No," doubtfully Flynn gave the negative. "No, I don't think so." "Look for him. He must be there somewhere."
"I wonder what the hell those things are." Flynn concentrated on the four huge sets of wheels. The lens of the binoculars magnified the heat distortion through the still air, making them change shape and size so that one second they were insignificant and the next they were monstrous.
"Look for Fleischer. Damn those things, look for Fleischer!" Rosa snapped at him.
"He's not with them."
"He must be. He must be there." Rosa rolled on her side and reached out to snatch the binoculars from Flynn's hands. Eagerly she scanned the long column that moved slowly towards them up the valley.
"He must be there. Please God, he must be there," she whispered her hatred through cracked dry lips.
"We will have to attack soon. They are nearly in position now." "We must find Fleischer." Desperately Rosa searched, her knuckles showing white through sun-brown skin as she clutched the binoculars.
"We can't let it go much longer. Sebastian is in position, he will be expecting my signal."
"Wait! You must wait."
"No. We can't let them get closer." Flynn half lifted his body, and called softly.
"Mohammed! Are you ready?"
"We are ready." The reply came from farther down the slope where the line of riflemen lay.
"Remember my words, oh, thou chosen -of Allah. Kill the Askari first and the others will run."
"Your words ring in my ears with the brightness and the beauty of golden bells," Mohammed replied.
"Up yours!" said Flynn and unbuttoned the pocket flap of his tunic. He fumbled out the hand-mirror and held it slanted to catch the sun, deflecting a bright splinter of light towards the far slope of the valley. From the jumble of rock and bush there was an immediate answering flash as Sebastian acknowledged the signal.
"Ah!" Flynn breathed theatrical relief, "I was afraid our Bassie might have fallen asleep over there." And he picked up the Mauser from the rock in front of him.
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