The Dark of the Sun - Smith Wilbur - Страница 18

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edge. My

God! He really means it, thought Bruce; he'd go into that tangled stuff

for a pair of ears - he's not brave, he's just stupendously lacking in

imagination.

"Wait for me, Bruce, it won't take long." Hendry started back.

"You're not serious, Bruce?" Mike asked.

"No," agreed Bruce, "I'm not serious," and his voice was cold and hard

as he caught hold of Hendry's shoulder and stopped him.

"Listen to me! You have no more chances - that was it.

I'm waiting for you now, Hendry. just once more, that's all.

Just once more." Hendry's face turned sullen again.

"Don't push me, Bucko."

"Get back to the train and bring it across," said Bruce contemptuously

and turned to Haig.

"Now we'll have to leave a guard here. They know we've gone across and

they'll burn it for a certainty, especially after that little

fiasco."

"Who are you going to leave?"

"Ten men, say, under a sergeant.

We'll be back by nightfall or tomorrow morning at the latest. They

should be safe enough. I doubt there is a big war party here, a few

strays perhaps, but the main force will be closer to the town."

"I hope you're right." "So do I" said Bruce absently, his mind busy with

the problem of defending the bridge. "We'll strip all the sand" bags off

the coaches and build an emplacement here in the middle of the roadway,

leave two of the battery-operated searchlights and a case of flares with

them, one of the Brens and a couple of cases of grenades. Food and water

for a week. No, they'll be all right." The train was rolling down slowly

towards them - and a single arrow rose from the edge of the jungle.

Slowly it rose, curving in flight and falling towards the train,

dropping faster now, silently into the mass of men in the leading truck.

So Hendry had missed and the Baluba had come up stream through the thick

bush to launch his arrow in retaliation. Bruce sprang to the guard rail

and, using it as a rest for his rifle, opened up in short bursts,

searching the green mass and seeing it tremble with his bullets. Haig

was shooting also, hunting the area from which the arrow had come.

The train was up to them now and Bruce slung his rifle over his shoulder

and scrambled up the side of the truck.

He pushed his way to the radio set.

Driver, stop the covered coaches in the middle of the bridge," he

snapped, and then he switched it off and looked for Ruffy.

"Sergeant Major, get all those sandbags off the roof into the roadway."

While they worked, the gendarmes would be protected from further arrows

by the body of the train.

"Okay, boss." va

"Kanaki." Bruce picked his most reliable sergeant. "I am leaving you

here with ten men to hold the bridge for us.

Take one of the Brens, and two of the lights.--" Quickly Bruce issued

his orders and then he had time to ask Andre: "What happened to that

arrow? Was anyone hit?"

"No, missed by a few inches. Here it is."

"That was a bit of luck." Bruce took the arrow from Andre and inspected

it quickly. A light reed, crudely fletched with green leaves and with

the iron head bound into it with a strip of rawhide. It

looked fragile and ineffectual, but the barbs of the head were smeared

thickly with a dark paste that had dried like toffee.

"Pleasant," murmured Bruce, and then he shuddered slightly. He could

imagine it embedded in his body with the poison purple-staining the

flesh beneath the skin. He had heard that it was not a comfortable

death, and the irontipped reed was suddenly malignant and repulsive.

He snapped it in half and threw it out over the side of the bridge

before he jumped down from the truck to supervise the building of the

guard post.

"Not enough sandbags, boss."

"Take the mattresses off all the

bunks, Ruffy." Bruce solved that quickly. The leather-covered coir

pallets would stop an arrow with ease.

Fifteen minutes later the post was completed, a shoulder-high ring of

sandbags and mattresses large enough to accommodate ten men and

their equipment, with embrasures sited to command both ends of the

bridge.

"We'll be back early tomorrow, Kanaki. Let none of your men leave this

post for any purpose; the gaps between the timbers are sufficient for

purposes of sanitation."

"We shall enjoy enviable comfort, Captain.

But we will lack that which soothes." Kanaki grinned meaningly at

Bruce.

"Ruffy, leave them a case of beer."

"A whole case?" Ruffy made no attempt to hide his shocked disapproval of

such a prodigal order.

"Is my credit not good?"

"You credit is okay, boss," and then he changed to French to make his

protest formal. "My concern is the replacement of such a valuable

commodity."

"You're wasting time, Ruffy!

from the bridge it was thirty miles to Port Reprieve.

They met the road(] again six miles outside the town; it crossed under

them and disappeared into the forest again to circle out round the high

ground taking the easier route into Port Reprieve. But the railroad

climbed up the hills in a series of traverses and came out at the top

six hundred feet above the town. On the stony slopes the forest found

meagre purchase and the vegetation was sparser; it did not obscure the

view.

Standing on the roof Bruce looked out across the Lufira swamps to the

north, a vastness of poisonous green swamp grass and open water,

disappearing into the blue heat haze without any sign of ending. From

its southern extremity it was drained by the Lufira river. The river was

half a mile wide, deep olive-green, ruffled darker by eddies of

wind across its surface, fenced into the very edge of the water by a

solid barrier of dense river bush. In the angle formed by the swamp and

the river was a headland which protected the natural harbour of

Port Reprieve. The town was on a spit of land, the harbour on one side

and a smaller swamp on the other. The road came round the right-hand

side of the hills, crossed a causeway over the swamp and entered the

single street of the town from the far side.

There were three large buildings in the centre of the town opposite the

railway yard, their iron roofs bright beacons in the sunlight; and

clustered round them were perhaps fifty smaller thatched dwellings.

Down on the edge of the harbour was a long shed, obviously a workshop,

and two jetties ran into the water.

The diamond dredgers were moored alongside; three of them, ungainly

black hulks with high superstructures and blunt ends.

It was a place of heat and fever and swamp smells, an ugly little

village by a green reptile river.

"Nice place to retire," Mike Haig grunted.

"Or open a health resort," said Bruce.

Beyond the causeway, on the main headland, there was another cluster of

buildings, just the tops were showing above the forest.

Among them rose the copper-clad spire of a church.

"Mission station," guessed Bruce.

"St. Augustine's," agreed Ruffy. "My first wife's little brudder got

himself educated there. He's an attache to the ministry of something or

other in Elisabethville now, doing damn good for himself."

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