Текст книги "The Dark of the Sun"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Shermaine was no longer trembling; he squeezed her waist and felt her

body cling to him.

Now we need light, thought Bruce. A night lamp for my children who fear

the darkness and the drum.

With Shermaine beside him he crossed the laager.

"Sergeant Jacque."

"Captain?"

"You can start sweeping with the searchlights."

"Oui, Captain." The answer was less subdued. There were two spare

batteries for each light, Bruce knew. Eight hours" life in each, so they

would last tonight and tomorrow night.

From each side of the laager the beams leapt out, solid white shafts

through the darkness; they played along the edge of the jungle and

reflected back, lighting the interior of the laager sufficiently to make

out the features of each man. Bruce looked at their faces.

They're all right now, he decided, the ghosts have gone away.

"Bravo, Bonaparte," said Shermaine, and Bruce became aware of the grins

on the faces of his men as they saw him embracing her. He was about to

drop his arm, then stopped himself. The hell with it, he

decided, give them something else to think about. He led her back to the

Ford.

"Tired?" he asked.

"A little," she nodded.

"I'll fold down the seat for you. A blanket over the windows will give

you privacy." "You'll stay closep she asked quickly.

"I'll be right outside." He unbuckled the webbing belt that carried his

pistol. "You'd better wear this from now on." Even at its minimum

adjustment the belt was too large for her and the pistol hung down

almost to her knee.

"The Maid of Orleans." Bruce revenged himself. She pulled a face at him

and crawled into the back of the station wagon.

A long while later she called softly above the singing and the throb of

the drum.

"Bruce."

"Yes?"

"I wanted to make sure you were there. Good night."

"Good night, Shermaine." Bruce lay on a single blanket and sweated. The

singing had long ago ceased but the drum went on and on, never

faltering, throb-throb-throbbing out of the jungle. The searchlights

swept regularly back and forth, at times lighting the laager clearly and

at others leaving it in shadow. Bruce could hear around him the soft

sounds of sleep, the sawing of breath, a muted cough, a gabbled

sentence, the stirring of dreamers.

But Bruce could not sleep. He lay on his back with one hand under his

head, smoking, staring up at the canvas.

The events of the preceding four days ran through his mind:

snatches of conversation, Andre dying. Boussier standing with his wife,

the bursting of grenades, blood sticky on his hands, the smell of death,

the violence and the horror.

He moved restlessly, flicked away his cigarette and covered his eyes

with his hands as though to shut out the memories. But they went on

flickering through his mind like the images of a gigantic movie

projector, confused now, losing all meaning but retaining the horror.

He remembered the fly upon his arm, grinning at him, rubbing its legs

together, gloating, repulsive. He rolled his head from side to

side on the blanket.

I'm going mad, he thought, I must stop this.

He sat up quickly hugging his knees to his chest and the memories faded.

But now he was sad, and alone. So terribly alone, so lost, so without

purpose.

He sat alone on the blanket and he felt himself shrinking, becoming

small and frightened.

I'm going to cry, he thought, I can feel it there heavy in my throat.

And like a hurt child crawling into its mother's lap, Bruce

Curry groped his way over the tailboard of the station wagon to

Shermaine.

"Shermaine! he whispered, blindly, searching for her.

"Bruce, what is it?" She sat up quickly. She had not been sleeping

either.

"Where are you?" There was panic in Bruce's voice.

"Here I am – what's the matter?" And he found her; clumsily he caught

her to him.

"Hold me, Shermaine, please hold me."

"Darling." She was anxious.

"What is it? Tell me, my darling."

"Just hold me, Shermaine. Don't talk." He clung to her, pressing his

face into her neck. "I need you so much – oh, God! How I need you!"

"Bruce." She understood, and her fingers were at the nape of his neck,

stroking, soothing.

"My Bruce," she said and held him. Instinctively her body began to rock,

gentling him as though he were her child.

Slowly his body relaxed, and he sighed against her – a gusty broken

sound.

"My Bruce, my Bruce." She lifted the thin cotton vest that was all she

wore and, instinctively in the ageless ritual of comfort, she gave him

her breasts. Holding his mouth to them with both her arms clasped around

his neck, her head bowed protectively over his, her hair falling forward

and covering them both.

With the hard length of his body against hers, with the soft tugging at

her bosom, and in the knowledge that she was giving strength to the man

she loved, she realized she had never known happiness before

this moment. Then his body was no longer quiescent; she felt her own

mood change, a new urgency.

"Oh yes, Bruce, yes!" Speaking up into his mouth, his hungry hunting

mouth and he above her, no longer child, but full man again.

"So beautiful, so warm." His voice was strangely husky, she shuddered

with the intensity of her own need.

"Quickly, Bruce, oh, Bruce." His cruel loving hands, seeking, finding.

"Oh, Bruce – quickly," and she reached up for him with her hips.

"I'll hurt you."

"No, – yes, I want the pain." She felt the resistance to him within her

and cried out impatiently against it.

"Go through!" and then, "Ah! It burns."

"I'll stop."

"No, No!"

"Darling. It's too much."

"Yes – I can't – oh, Bruce. My heart -

you've touched my heart." Her clenched fists drumming on his back. And

in to press against the taut, reluctantly yielding springiness, away,

then back, away, and back to touch the core of all existence, leave it,

and come long gliding back to it, nuzzle it, feel it tilt, then come

away, then back once more. Welling slowly upwards scalding, no longer to

be contained, with pain almost – and gone, and gone, and gone.

"I'm falling. Oh, Bruce! Bruce! Bruce!" Into the gulf together – gone,

all gone. Nothing left, no time, no space, no bottom to the gulf.

Nothing and everything. Complete.

Out in the jungle the drum kept beating.

Afterwards, long afterwards, she slept with her head on his arm and her

face against his chest. And he unsleeping listened to her sleep. The

sound of it was soft, so gentle breathing soft that you could not hear

it unless you listened very carefully – or unless you loved her, he

thought.

Yes. I think I love this woman – but I must be certain.

In fairness to her and to myself I must be entirely certain, for I

cannot live through another time like the last, and because I love her

I don't want her to take the terrible wounding of a bad marriage.

Better, much better to leave it now, unless it has the strength to

endure.

Bruce rolled his head slowly until his face was in her hair, and the

girl nuzzled his chest in her sleep.

But it is so hard to tell, he thought. It is so hard to tell at the

beginning. It is so easy to confuse pity or loneliness with love, but I

cannot afford to do that now. So I must try to think clearly about my

marriage to Joan. It will be difficult, but I must try.

Was it like this with Joan in the beginning? It was so long ago, seven

years, that I do not know, he answered truthfully. All I have left from

those days are the pictures of places and the small heaps of

words that have struck where the wind and the pain could not blow them

away.

A beach with the sea mist coming in across it, a whole tree of driftwood

half buried in the sand and bleached white with the salt, a basket of

strawberries bought along the road, so that when I kissed her

I could taste the sweet tartness of the fruit on her lips.

I remember a tune that we sang together, "The mission bells told me that

I mustn't stay, South of the border, down Mexico way." I have forgotten

most of the words.

And I remember vaguely how her body was, and the shape of her breasts

before the children were born.

But that is all I have left from the good times.

The other memories are clear, stinging, whiplash clear.

Each ugly word, and the tone in which it was said. The sound of sobbing

in the night, the way it dragged itself on for three long grey years

after it was mortally wounded, and both of us using all our strength to

keep it moving because of the children.

The children! Oh, God, I mustn't think about them now. It hurts too

much. Without the children to complicate it, I must think about her for

the last time; I must end this woman Joan. So now finally and for all to

end this woman who made me cry. I do not hate her for the man with whom

she went away. She deserved another try for happiness.

But I hate her for my children and for making shabby the love that I

could have given Shermaine as a new thing. Also, I pity her for her

inability to find the happiness for which she hunts so fiercely. I

pity her for her coldness of body and of mind, I pity her for her

prettiness that is now almost gone (it goes round her eyes first,

cracking like oil paint) and I pity her for her consuming selfishness

which will lose her the love of her children.

My children – not hers! My children!

That is all, that is an end to Joan, and now I have Shermaine who is

none of the things that Joan was. I also deserve another try.

"Shermaine," he whispered and turned her head slightly to kiss her.

"Shermaine, wake up." She stirred and murmured against him.

"Wake up." He took the lobe of her ear between his teeth and bit it

gently. Her eyes opened.

"Bon matin, madame." He smiled at her.

"Bonjour, monsieur," she answered and closed her eyes to press her face

once more against his chest.

"Wake up. I have something to tell you."

"I am awake, but tell me first if I am still dreaming. I have a

certainty that this cannot be reality." "You are not dreaming." She

sighed softly, and held him closer.

"Now tell me the other thing."

"I love you," he said.

"No. Now I am dreaming."

"In truth," he said.

"No, do not wake me. I could not bear to wake now."

"And you?" he asked.

"You know it-" she answered. "I do not have to tell you." "It is almost

morning," he said. "There is only a little time."

"Then I will fill that little time with saying it-" He held her and

listened to her whispering it to him.

No, he thought, now I am certain. I could not be that wrong.

This is my woman.

The drum stopped with the dawn. And after it the silence was very heavy,

and it was no relief They had grown accustomed to that broken rhythm and

now in some strange way they missed it.

As Bruce moved around the laager he could sense the uneasiness in his

men. There was a feeling of dread anticipation on them all.

They moved with restraint, as though they did not want to draw attention

to themselves.

The laughter with which they acknowledged his jokes was nervous, quickly

cut off, as though they had laughed in a cathedral. And their

eyes kept darting back towards the ring of jungle.

Bruce found himself wishing for an attack. His own nerves were rubbed

sensitive by contact with the fear all around him.

If only they would come, he told himself. If only they would show

themselves and we could see men not phantoms.

But the jungle was silent. It seemed to wait, it watched them.

They could feel the gaze of hidden eyes. Its malignant presence pressed

closer as the heat built up.

Bruce walked across the laager to the south side, trying to move

casually. He smiled at Sergeant Jacque, squatted beside him and peered

from under the truck across open ground at the remains of the bridge.

"Trucks will be back soon," he said. "Won't take long to repair that."

Jacque did not answer. There was a worried frown on his high intelligent

forehead and his face was shiny with perspiration.

"It's the waiting, Captain. It softens the stomach."

"They will

be back soon," repeated Bruce. If this one is worried, and he is the

best of them, then the others must be almost in a jelly of dread.

Bruce looked at the face of the man on the other side of Jacque.

His expression shrieked with fear.

If they attack now, God knows how it will turn out. An African can think

himself to death, they just lie down and die. They are getting to that

stage now; if an attack comes they will either go

berserk or curl up and wait with fear.

You can never tell.

Be honest with yourself – you're not entirely happy either, are you? No,

Bruce agreed, it's the waiting does it.

It came from the edge of the clearing on the far side of the laager. A

high-pitched inhuman sound, angry, savage.

Bruce felt his heart trip and he spun round to face it. For a second the

whole laager seemed to cringe from it.

It came again. Like a whip across aching nerves. Immediately it was lost

in the roar of twenty rifles.

Bruce laughed. Threw his head back and let it come from the belly.

The gunfire stammered into silence and others were laughing also.

The men who had fired grinned sheepishly and made a show of reloading.

It was not the first time that Bruce had been startled by the cry of a

yellow hornbill. But now he recognized his laughter and the laughter of

the men around him, a mild form of hysteria.

"Did you want the feathers for your hat?" someone shouted and the

laughter swept round the laager.

The tension relaxed as the banter was tossed back and forth.

Bruce stood up and brought his own laughter under Control.

No harm done, he decided. For the price of fifty rounds of ammunition, a

purchase of an hour's escape from tension.

A good bargain.

He walked across to Shermaine. She was smiling also.

"How is the catering section?" He grinned at her. "What miracle of the

culinary art is there for lunch?"

"Bully beef."

"And onions?"

"No, just bully beef. The onions are finished." Bruce stopped smiling.

"How much is left?" he asked.

"One case – enough to last till lunchtime tomorrow." It would take at

least two days to complete the repairs to the bridge; another day's

travel after that.

"Well," he said, "we should all have healthy appetites by the time we

get home. You'll have to try and spread it out.

Half rations from now on." He was so engrossed in the study of this new

complication that he did not notice the faint hum from outside the

laager.

"Captain," called Jacques. "Can you hear it?" Bruce inclined his head

and listened.

"The trucks!" His voice was loud with relief, and instantly there was an

excited murmur round the laager.

The waiting was over.

They came growling out of the bush into the clear, Heavily loaded,

timber and sheet-iron protruding backwards from under the canopies,

sitting low on their suspensions.

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 six4inch 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 arrowhead with the steel jaws and pulled. The flesh

clung to it stubbornly, lifting in a pyramid.

with the bayonet, feeling it tear. Bruce imagined 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 eptance of

violent death, "the calm African in him, fresh This boy's a goner.

That's no horse! That's snake juice 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.

take 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 ran 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 on a blanket into the laager and laid him 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."

as Bruce fitted the hypodermic needle on to the syringe 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." 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 loop holes 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, liftv 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.

"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