The Dark of the Sun - Smith Wilbur. Страница 63

his weight on her wrist and she felt the bones bend under his boot and

she moaned. But through pain she whispered. "You pig, you filthy pig,"

and he hit her again, flat-handed across the face, knocking her on to

her back once more.

He picked up the pistol and opened it, spilling the cartridges into the

sand, then he unclipped the lanyard and threw the pistol far out into

the reed bed.

"Tell Curry I say he can have my share of you," he said and walked

quickly away among the reeds.

The white sand coated her damp body like icing sugar.

She sat up slowly holding her wrist, the side of her face inflamed and

starting to swell where he had hit her.

She started to cry, shaking silently, and the tears squeezed out between

her eyelids and matted her long dark lashes.

Ruffy held up the brown bottle and inspected it ruefully.

"Seems like one mouthful and it's empty." He threw the bottle out of the

side window. It hit a tree and burst with a small pop.

"We can always find our way back by following the empties," smiled

Bruce, once more marvelling at the man's capacity. But there was plenty

of storage space. He watched Ruffy's stomach spread on to his lap as he

reached down to the beer crate.

"How we doing, boss?" Bruce glanced at the milorrieter.

"We've come eighty-seven miles," and Ruffy nodded.

"Not bad going. Be there pretty soon now." They were silent. The wind

blew in on to them through the open front. The grass that grew

between the tracks brushed the bottom of the chassis with a continuous

rushing sound.

"Boss-" Ruffy spoke at last.

"Yes?"

"Lieutenant Hendry - those diamonds. You reckon we did a good thing

leaving him there?"

"He's stranded in the middle of the bush. Even if he did find them they

wouldn't do him much good."

"Suppose that's right." Ruffy lifted the beer bottle to his lips and

when he lowered it he went on. "Mind you, that's one guy you can never

be sure of." He tapped his head with a finger as thick and as black as a

blood-sausage. "Something wrong with him - he's one of the maddest

Arabs I've found in a long time of looking." Bruce grunted grimly.

"You want to be careful there, boss, observed Ruffy. "Any time now he's

going to try for you. I've seen it coming. He's working

himself up to it. He's a mad Arab." "I'll watch him," said Bruce.

"Yeah, you do that." Again they were silent in the steady swish of the

wind and the drone of the motor.

"There's a railway." Ruffy pointed to the blue-grovelled embankment

through the trees.

"Nearly there," said Bruce.

They came out into another open glade and beyond it the water tank of

Msapa junction stuck up above the forest.

"Here we are," said Ruffy and drained the bottle in his hand.

"Just say a prayer that the telegraph lines are still up and that

there's an operator on the Elisabethville end." Bruce slowed the Ford

past the row of cottages. They were exactly as he remembered them,

deserted and forlorn.

The corners of his mouth were compressed into a hard angle as he looked

at the two small mounds of earth beneath the asia flora trees.

Ruffy looked at them also but neither of the spoke.

Bruce stopped the Ford outside the station building and they climbed out

stiffly and walked together on to the verandah. The wooden flooring

echoed dully under their boots as they made for the door of the office.

Bruce pushed the door open and looked in. The walls were painted a

depressing utility green, loose paper scattered on the floor the drawers

of the single desk hung open, and a thin grey skin of dust coated

everything.

"There she is," said Ruffy and pointed to the brass and varnished wood

complexity of the telegraph on a table against the far wall.

"Looks all right," said Bruce. "As long as the lines haven't been cut."

As if to reassure him, the telegraph began to clatter like a typewriter.

"Thank God for that," sighed Bruce.

They walked across to the table.

"You know how to work this thing?" asked Ruffy.

"Sort of," Bruce answered and set his rifle against the wall. He

was relieved to see a Morse table stuck with adhesive tape to the wall

above the apparatus. It was a long time since he had memorized it as a

boy scout.

He laid his hand on the transmission key and studied the table.

The call sign for Elisabethville was

"EE'.

He tapped it out clumsily and then waited. Almost immediately the set

clattered back at him, much too fast to be intelligible and the roll of

paper in the repeater was exhausted. Bruce took off his helmet and

laboriously spelled outl

"Transmit slower." It was a long business with requests for repetition.

"Not understood" was made nearly every

second signal, but finally Bruce got the operator to understand that he

had an urgent message for Colonel Franklyn of President Tshornbe's

staff.

"Wait," came back the laconic signal.

And they waited. They waited an hour, then two.

"That mad bastard's forgotten about us," grumbled Ruffy and went to the

Ford to fetch the beer crate. Bruce fidgeted restlessly on the unpadded

chair beside the telegraph table.

He reconsidered anxiously all his previous arguments for leaving

Wally Hendry in charge of the camp, but once again decided that it was

safe. He couldn't do much harm.

Unless, unless, Shermaine! No, it was impossible. Not with forty loyal

gendarmes to protect her.

He started to think about Shermaine and the future.

There was a year's mercenary captain's pay accumulated in the

Credit Banque Suisse at Zurich. He made the conversion from francs to

pounds - about two and a half thousand.

Two years" operating capital, so they could have a holiday before he

started working again. They could take a chalet up in the mountains,

there should be good snow this time of the year.

Bruce grinned. Snow that crunched like sugar, and a twelve-inch-thick

eiderdown on the bed at night.

Life had purpose and direction again.

"What you're laughing at, boss?" asked Ruffy.

"I was thinking about a bed."

"Yeah? That's a good thing to think about. You start there, you're born

there, you spend most of your life in it, you have plenty of fun in it,

and if you're lucky you die there.

How's it for a beer?" The telegraph came to life at Bruce's elbow. He

turned to it quickly.

"Curry - Franklyn," it clattered. Bruce could imagine the wiry,

red-faced little man at the other end. Ex-major in the third brigade of

the Legion. A prime mover in the O. A.S with a sizeable price still on

his head from the De Gaulle assassination attempt.

"Franklyn - Curry," Bruce tapped back. "Train unserviceable.

Motorized transport stranded without fuel. Port Reprieve road. Map

reference approx-" He read the numbers off the sheet on which he had

noted them.

There was a long pause, then: "Is U. M.C. property in your hands?"

The question was delicately phrased.

"Affirmative," Bruce assured him.

"Await air-drop at your position soonest. Out."

"Message understood. Out." Bruce straightened from the telegraph and