The Sound of Thunder (10 page)

Then he turned and went back. Pacing slowly, counting his footsteps, measuring them out-one each second-timing them carefully to prevent himself from running.

Because if he ran he knew it was finished. He too would never hunt again.

“You all right?” Saul was waiting.

“Yes.” Sean sank down beside him.

“See anything?

“No.” Saul was staring at him. “Are you sure you’re all right?

Sean sighed. Once before he had been afraid. Fear had come to him in a caved-in mine-shaft, later he had gone back and left his fear in the same mine-shaft, and had walked away from it alone. In the same way, he had hoped to leave it now beyond the river, but this time it had followed him back. With a certainty he knew that it would never leave him from now onwards. It would always be near.

I will have to tame it, he thought. I will have to break it to the halter and the curb.

“Yes, I’m all right,” he answered Saul. “What’s the time?”

“Half-past five. ” “I’ll send Mbejane back now.”

Sean stood up and went to where Mbejane waited with their horses.

He handed Mbejane the small square of green cloth which was the prearranged signal that neither the bridge nor the town was defended in force. The red square he replaced in his breast-pocket.

“I will come back,” Mbejane told him.

“No.” Sean shook his head. “There is nothing for you here.”

Mbejane untied the horses. “Stay in peace.”

“Go in peace.” Sean was thankful that Mbejane would not be there as witness, should he break under his new-found fear.

But I must not break, he decided grimly. Today will be the test.

If I can la stout this day, then perhaps I will have tamed it.

He went back to where Saul waited in the darkness, and together they lay and watched the dawn come on.

The darkness drew back, each minute enlarging the circle of their vision. Now the upper works of the bridge stood out, a neat geometrical pattern against the dark bulk of the heights.

Then he could see the patterns of dark bush against pale grass and rock.

The new light distorted distance, made the high ground seem remote and no longer hostile. A flight of egrets flew in long formation above the course of the river, high enough to catch the sun so that they were birds of bright, glowing gold in a world of shadow. And the dawn brought with it a small cold wind whose voice in the grass blended with the murmur of the river.

Then the sun hit the heights as though to bless the army of the Republic. The mist in the gullies writhed in agony at its warmth, lifted into the wind and smeared away.

The rim of the sun pushed up over the edge of the land, and the day came bright and clean with dew.

Through his glasses Sean studied the crest of the high ground.

At a hundred paces there were traces of smoke as the Boer Army brewed coffee.

“You think they’ll spot us?” asked Saul.

Sean shook his head without lowering his glasses. Two small.

bushes and the thin screen of grass they had constructed during the night hid them effectively.

“Are you sure you are all right?” Saul asked once more.

From the set of his face Sean seemed to be in pain.

-Stomach gripes,” Sean grunted. Let it start soon, please let It start. The waiting is the worst.

Then the ground trembled under his chest, the faintest vibration, and Sean felt relief flood through him. “Here come the guns,” he said, and using the cover of one of the bushes, he stood up and looked behind him.

In a single column, following each other at strictly spaced intervals, the guns were moving into action. They were coming in fast, still tiny with distance but growing as the gunners astride the lead horses of each team urged them on. Closer now so that Sean could see the whip arms rising and falling, he heard the rumble and rattle of the carriages and faintly the shouts of the outriders.

Sixteen guns, one hundred and fifty horses to drag them, and a hundred men to serve them. But in the vastness of the great plain before Colenso the column seemed small and insignificant. Sean looked beyond them and saw the foot soldiers following them, line upon line, like the poles of a fence, thousands of them creeping forward across the plain. Sean felt the old wild elation begin. He knew the army was cent red up on the line of markers which he and Saul had laid early the previous night, and that the two of them would be the first across the bridge the first of all those thousands.

But it was elation of a different quality to anything he had experienced before. It was sharper and more poignant, seasoned by the red pepper of his fear. So that for the first time in his life Sean learned that fear can be a pleasurable sensation.

He watched the patterns of men and guns evolve upon the brown gaming-table-counters thrown down at chance, to be won or irretrievably lost at the fall of the dice of war. Knowing also that he was one of the counters, afraid and strangely jubilant in this knowledge.

The guns were close now. He could make sense of the shouting, see the features of the men and even recognize his own feelings in their faces.

Close, perhaps too close. Uneasily Sean glanced back at the forbidding heights beyond the river and gauged the range. Two thousand yards perhaps, long rifle shot. And still the guns came on.

“Jesus Christ! Are they mad?” Sean asked aloud.

“They must engage now. ” Saul also saw the danger. “They can’t come closer. ” And still the guns came on. The sound of their charge was low thunder; dust from the dew-damp earth rose reluctantly behind them; horses with wide mouths ffuming froth as they drove against the traces.

“They’re in range now. They must stop, they must! ” groaned Sean.

Then at last the column splayed open, alternate guns wheeling left and right still at full gallop. Swinging broadside to the waiting Boer rifles.

“My God! My God!” Sean mouthed the blasphemy in agony as he watched. “They’ll be massacred. ” Gunners rising in the stirrups, leaning back to check the car rages The Gun-Captains jumping from their mounts, letting them gallop free as they ran to begin the unhitching and the pointing. In this helpless moment while men swarmed over the guns, man-handling them to train upon the heights; while the horses still reared and whinnied in hysterical excitement; before the shells could be unloaded and stacked beside their pieces-in that moment the Boer rifles opened together. It was a sound that lacked violence, strangely un warlike muted by distance to the popping of a hundred strings of fireworks, and at first there was no effect. The grass was thick enough to hide the strike of the bullets, the dust too lazy with dew to jump and mark their fall.

Then a horse was hit and fell kicking, dragging its mate on to its knees also. TWo men ran to cut it loose, but one of them never reached it. He sat down suddenly in the grass with his head bowed. Two more horses dropped, another red and pawed wildly at the air with one front leg flapping loosely where a bullet had broken the bone above the knee.

-Get out!” roared Sean. “Pull back while there’s still time,”

but his voice did not carry to the gun crews, could not carry above the shouting and the screaming of wounded horses There was a new sound now which Sean could not identify, a sound like hail on a tin roof, isolated at first then more frequent until it was a hundred hammers clanging together in broken rhythm-and he knew it was the sound of bullets striking the metal of the guns.

He saw: A gunner fall forward and jam the breech of the piece until he was dragged clear, A loader drop the shell he was carrying and stumble on with his legs fbi ding until he subsided and lay still; One of the horses break loose and gallop away across the plain dragging a tangle of torn traces behind it; A covey of wild pheasant rise together out of the grass near the batteries and curve away along the river before dropping on stiff wings back into cover; And behind the guns the infantry in neat lines advancing placidly towards the huddle of deserted cottages that was Colenso.

Then, with a crash that made the earth jump, and with sixteen long spurts of blue smoke, the guns came into action.

Sean focused his glasses on the ridge in time to see the first shells burst along the crest. The evil blossoms of greenish-yellow lyddite fumes bloomed quickly in the sunlight, then drifted oily thick on the wind.

Again the guns crashed, and again–each salvo more ragged -than the last until it became a continuous stuttering, hammering roar.

Until the stark outline of the ridge was blurred and indefinite in the dust and lyddite fumes. There was smoke also, a fine greyish mist of it banked along the heights-the smoke of thousands of rifles.

Quickly Sean set the rear sight of his Lee-Metford at a thousand yards, wriggled forward on his elbows, hunched down over his rifle and began shooting blindly into the smoke on the heights. Beside him Saul was firing also.

TWice Sean emptied his magazine before looking back at the guns.

The tempo of their fire had slackened. Most of the horses were down in the grass. Dead men were dragged across the gun carriages, others badly wounded crouched for cover behind the mountings, and where six men had served each piece before, now four or only three carried shell and loaded and fired.

“The fools, the bloody fools,” Sean whispered, and began to shoot again, concentrating his whole attention on the routine of jerking the bolt back, sliding it forward in the same motion, sighting up into the mist of gun smoke, and firing. He did not count the shots and each time the weapon clicked empty he groped for another clip from his bandolier and reloaded. He was starting to sweat now, could feel it trickling down his armpits, his ears buzzed from the concussion of the rifle and his shoulder was beginning to throb.

Gradually a sense of unreality induced by the clamour of the guns and the smell of burnt powder came over him. It seemed that all he would ever do was lie and shoot at nothing, shoot at smoke. Then reality faded further so that all of existence was the vee and dot of a rifle sight, standing solid in mist. And the mist had no shape. In his ears was the vast buzzing silence that drowned all the other sounds of battle. He was alone and tranquil, heavy and dulled by the hypnotic drift of smoke and the repetitive act of loading and firing.

Abruptly the mood was broken. Over them passed a rustle like giant wings, then a crack as though Satan had slammed the door of hell.

Startled he looked up and saw a ball of shimmering white smoke standing in the air above the guns, spinning and spreading, growing in the sky like a flower.

“What the .

“Shrapnel,” grunted Saul. “Now they’re finished.”

Then crack and crack again as the Boer Nordenfeldts planted their cotton flowers of smoke above the plain, flailing the guns and the men who still worked them with a buzzing, hissing storm of steel.

Then there were voices. Confused and dazed by the gunfire, it took Sean a minute to place them. He had forgotten the infantry1 4close UP there.”

“close up on the right. Keep the line!”

“Don’t run. Steady, men. Don’t run. ” Long lines of men, lines that bulged and lagged and straightened again at the urging of their officers, Evenly spaced, plodding quietly with their rifles held across their chests, they passed the guns. Behind them they left khaki bundles lying on the plain, some of the bundles lay still but others writhed and screamed.

As the gaps appeared in the lines they were quickly filled at the chant of

“Close up. Close up there on the flank.”

-They are heading for the railway bridge. ” Sean felt the first premonition of disaster. “Don’t they know that it’s been destroyed? ” - we, have to stop them. Saul scrambled to his feet beside Sean.

“Why didn’t the fools follow our markers?” Angrily Sean shouted the question that had no answer. He did it to gain time, to postpone the moment when he must leave the flimsy cover of the grass shelter and go out into the open where the shrapnel and the Mausers swept the ground. Sean’s fear came back on him strongly. He didn’t want to go out there.

“Come on, Sean. We must stop them.” And Saul started to run. He looked like a skinny little monkey, capering out towards the, advancing waves of foot soldiers. Sean sucked in his breath and held it a moment before he followed.

twenty yards ahead of the leading rank of infantry, carrying a naked sword in one hand and stepping out briskly on long legs, came an officer.

“Hey, you! ” Sean shouted at him, waving his hat to catch his attention. He succeeded. The officer fixed him with bright blue eyes like a pair of bayonets and the waxed points of his grey moustache twitched. He strode on towards Sean and Saul.

“You’re heading for the wrong bridge,” Sean yelled at him, his voice high-pitched with agitation. “They’ve blown the rail bridge, you’ll never get across there. ” The officer reached them and checked his stride.

“And who the hell are you, if it’s not a rude question?”

“We’re the ground scouts …” Sean started, then leapt in the air as a Mauser bullet flicked. into the ground between his legs.

“And put that bloody sword away-you’ll have every Boer on the Tugela competing for you. ” The officer, a colonel by the crowns on his shoulders, frowned at Sean.

“The correct form of address, Sergeant .

“The hell with that!” Sean roared at him. “Swing your advance on to the road bridge. ” He pointed with agitation at the metal superstructure of the bridge that showed on the left through the thorn trees. “If you continue as you’re going they’ll cut you to pieces. ” A moment longer the Colonel fixed Sean with his bayonet eyes, then he lifted a silver whistle to his lips and blew a piercing blast.

“Take cover,” he shouted. “Take cover!”

And immediately the first rank dropped into the grass. Behind them the other ranks lost their rigidity, as men hesitated.

“Get into the town,” a voice shouted. “Take cover in the buildings.” And they broke and ran, a thousand men, jostling each other racing for the security of the cottages of Colenso.

Pouring into the single street, diving into doorways and windows.

Within thirty seconds they had all gone to ground.