The Sound of Thunder (25 page)

“I’ll go first, then you follow me, Saul, and watch those big feet of yours!

He was vaguely aware that some show of resistance was being organized among the survivors of the wreck. He could hear the officers rallying them and now a hundred rifles were returning the Boer fire.

“All right. I’m off.” Sean stood up. “Follow me as soon as I get across. ” At that moment a new voice hailed them. “What are you men UP to?”

“What’s it to you?” Sean flashed impatiently.

“I’m an officer,” and then Sean recognized the voice and the lanky figure with a bared sabre in one hand. “Acheson!”

A second’s hesitation before Acheson recognized him.

“Courtney. What are you doing?”

“I’m going up that don ga to attack the Maxim.

“Think you can reach it?”

“I can try.- ” “Good fellow-off you go then. We’ll be ready to support you if you make it. ” “See you at the top,” said Sean and ran out towards the mouth of the don ga

They moved quietly in single file upwards and the guns and the shouting cloaked the soft sounds of their advance. Sean could hear the voices of the burghers above them growing closer and louder as they approached-very close now-on the side of the don ga just above their heads-then behind them, and they were through.

The doun ga was shallower here, starting to flatten out as it neared the crest. Sean lifted his head above the side and looked out.

Below him he could just make out the lumpy shapes of the Boers in the grass but their rifles threw long orange spouts of flames when seen from above-while the British replies were mere pinpricks of light from around the dark tangle of coaches.

Then Sean’s attention focused on the Maxim and he could see why the rifle-fire from below had made no effect on it. Sited just below the crest of the ridge on a forward bulge of the slope, it was protected by a scharnz: of rock and earth that had been thrown up in front of it. The thick water-jacketed barrel protruded through a narrow opening and the three men that served it crouched low behind the wall.

-Come on,” whispered Sean, and wriggled -up out of the don ga on to his belly to begin the stalk.

One of the gunners saw him when he was a few yards from the gun.

“Magtig! Pasop, daars “n- ” and Sean went in with the rifle clubbed in both hands and the man never finished his warning. Mbejane and Saul followed him in, and for a few seconds the emplacement was filled with a struggling mass Of bodies. Then it was over and the three of them panted heavily in the stillness.

“Do you know how to work this thing, Saul?”

“No. ” “Nor do I” Sean squatted behind the gun and settled his hands on to the twin grips, his thumbs automatically resting on the firing-button.

“Wat makeer june daar bo? Skiet, man, skeet!” a Boer shouted from below, and Sean shouted back,

“Wag maar “n oomblik-dan skeet ek bedonderdWites daar? Who’s that?” The Boer demanded and Sean depressed the gun.

It was too dark to use the sights, so he took a vague aim over the barrel and thrust his thumbs down on the button. Immediately his shoulders shook like those of a man using a jack hammer and he was deafened by the harsh beat of the gun, but he swung the barrel in a low, sweeping arch across the ridge below him.

A storm of shouts and cries of protest broke out along the Boer line, and Sean laughed with savage delight. The Boer fire upon the train withered miraculously as men jumped up and scattered beneath the spray of bullets. Most of them streame( back to where their horses waited behind the crest, keeping well out on the flanks of the Maxim, while a line of cheering British infantry followed them up from the train-giving the support that Acheson had promised.

Only a tiny but determined group of Boers came up the slope towards Sean, yelling angrily and shooting as they came. There was dead ground directly below the emplacement where Sean could not reach them with the Maxim.

“Get out of here. Run out to the sides,” Sean shouted back at Saul and Mbejane as he hoisted the heavy gun on to the rock wall in front of him to improve its field of fire. But the movement twisted the belt of ammunition and after the first burst the gun jammed hopelessly. Sean lifted it above his head, stood like that for an instant and then hurled it among the men below him. It knocked two of them down into the grass. Sean snatched up a pumpkin-sized rock from the top of the wall and sent it after the gun-and another, and another.

Howling with the laughter of fear and excitement, he rained rocks upon them. And they broke.

Most of them veered out to the sides and joined the general rush for the horses.

Only one man kept coming, a big man who climbed quickly and silently. Sean missed him with three rocks, and suddenly he was too close-not ten feet away. There he paused and lifted his rifle. Even in the dark, at that range, the Boer could hardly miss and Sean sprang from the top of the wall. For an instant he dropped free, and then with a shock that knocked the wind from both of them, he drove into the burgher’s chest. They rolled down the slope, kicking and grappling, bouncing over the rocky ground, until a small thorn bush held them.

“Now, you bloody Dutchman!” rasped Sean. He knew there was only one possible outcome to this encounter. With supreme confidence in his own strength Sean reached for the man’s throat, and with a sense of disbelief felt his wrist held in a grip that made the bone creak.

“Kom, ons slaat aan, ” the burgher’s mouth was an inch from Sean’s ear, and the voice was unmistakable.

Jan Paulus!”

“Sean!” The shock of recognition eased his grip for an instant, and Sean broke his hand loose.

Only once in his life had Sean met a man whose strength matched his own-and now again they were pitted against each other. He drove the heel of his right hand up under Jan Paulus’s chin, forcing his head back against the encircling left arm. It should have broken Jan Paulus’s neck. Instead he locked his arms around Sean’s chest below the level of his armpits-and squeezed. Within seconds Sean felt his face swelling and congesting with blood, his mouth opened and his tongue came out between his teeth.

Without breath, yet he maintained the pressure on Jan Pauls’s neck, felt it give fractionally-and knew that another inch of movement would snap the vertebrae.

The earth seemed to tot and turn beneath him, he knew he was going for his vision was blotched with moving patches of deeper darkness-the knowledge gave him a little more strength.

He flung it all on to Jan Paulus’s neck. It moved. Jan Paulus gave a wild muffled cry and his grip on Sean’s chest eased a fraction.

Again, Sean told himself, again. And he gathered all of what was left for the final effort.

Before he could make it, Jan Paulus moved quickly under him, changing his grip, lifting Sean clear of his chest. Then his knees came up under Sean’s pelvis and with a convulsive heave drove Sean’s lower body forward and over-cartwheeling him so that he was forced to release Jan Paulus’s neck and use his hands to break his own fall.

A rock caught him in the small of the back and agony flared in him like sheet lightning in a summer sky. Dimly through it he heard the shouts of the British infantry very near, saw Jan Paulus scramble up and glance down the slope at the starlight on the bayonets, and saw him take off up the slope.

Sean dragged himself to his feet and tried to follow him but the pain in his back was an effective hobble and Jan Paulus reached the crest ten paces ahead of him. But as he ran, another dark shape closed on his flank the way a good dog will quarter on a running rybuck. It was Mbejane and Sean could see the long steel in his hand as he lifted it above Jan Paulus’s back.

“No! ” shouted Sean. “No, Mbejane! Leave him! Leave him!

Mbejane hesitated, slowed his run, stopped and looked back at Sean.

Sean stood beside him, his hands clasped to his back and his breathing hissed in his throat. Below them from the dark rear slope of the ridge came the hoof-beats of a single running pony.

The sounds of Jan Paulus’s flight dwindled, and they were engulfed in the advance of the lines of the bayonet men from the train. Sean turned and limped back through them.

Two days later, on the relief train, they reached Johannesburg.

“I suppose we should report to somebody,” Saul suggested as the three of them stood together on the station platform beside the small pile of luggage they had been able to salvage from the train wreck.

“You go and report, if that’s what you want,” Sean answered him.

“Me, I’m going to look around.”

“We’ve got no billets, ” Saul protested.

“Follow your Uncle Sean.”

Johannesburg is an evil city, sired by Greed out of a dam named Gold. But it has about it an air of gaiety, of brittle excitement and bustle. When you are away from it you can hate it-but when you return you are immediately reinfected. As Sean was now.

He led them through the portals of the railway building into Eloff Street and grinned as he looked up that well-remembered thoroughfare.

It was crowded. The carriages jostled for position with the horse-drawn trams. On the sidewalks beneath the tall three-and four-storeyed buildings the uniforms of a dozen different regiments set off the butterfly colours of the women’s dress”.

Sean paused on the station steps and lit a cigar. At that moment the sounds of carriage wheels and human voices were drowned by the plaintive wail of a mine hooter and immediately others joined in signalling the noon. Automatically Sean reached for his pocket-watch to check the time, and noticed the same general movement in the crowded street. He grinned again.

Jo’burg; hasn’t changed much-still the old habits, the same feeling about it. The mine dumps higher than he remembered them, a few new buildings, a little older and a little smarter but still the same heartless bitch beneath it all.

And there on the corner of Commissioner Street, ornate as a wedding-cake with its fancy ironwork and corniced roof, stood Candy’s Hotel.

With rifle and pack slung over each shoulder, Sean pushed his way through the press on the sidewalk with Saul and Mbejane in his wake.

He reached the hotel and went in through the revolving glass doors.

“Very grand.” He looked about the lobby as he dumped his pack on the thick pile of the carpet. Crystal chandeliers, velvet curtains roped with silver, palms and bronze urns, marble tables, fat plush chairs.

“What do you think, Saul. Shall we give this flophouse a try?”

His voice carried across the lobby and stilled the murmuring of polite conversation.

“Don’t talk so loudly,” Saul cautioned.

A general officer in one of the plush chairs hoisted himself and slowly turned his head to train a monocled stare upon them, while his aide-de-camp leaned across and whispered,

“Colonials.

Sean winked at him and moved across to the reception desk.

“Good afternoon, sir. ” The clerk regarded them frostily.

“You have reservations for my chief of staff and myself.

“What name Sir? ” “I’m sorry, I can’t answer that question.

We are travelling incognito,” Sean told him seriously, and a helpless expression appeared on the man’s face. Sean dropped his voice to conspiratory level. “Have you seen a man come in here carrying a bomb?”

“No. ” The man’s eyes glazed a little. “No, sir. No, I haven’t.

” “Good. ” Sean appeared relieved. “In that case we’ll take the Victoria Suite. Have our luggage sent up.

“General Caithness has the Victoria Suite, sir.” The clerk was becoming desperate.

What?” Sean roared. “How dare you!”

“I didn’t … We had no . stuttering the clerk backed away from him.

Call the owner,” ordered Sean.

“Yes, sir. ” And the clerk disappeared through a door marked “Private.

“Have you gone mad?” Saul was fidgeting with embarrassment. “We can’t afford to stay at this place. Let’s get out of here. ” Under the concentrated scrutiny of every guest in the lobby he was very conscious of their grubby travel-stained uniforms.

Before Sean could answer a woman came through the

“Private” doorway, a very lovely but very angry woman with eyes that blazed like the blue sapphires at her throat.

“I am Mrs. Rautenbach-the owner. You asked to see me.”

Sean just smiled at her, and her anger withered slowly as she began to recognize him beneath the creased HI-fitting tunic and without the beard.

“Do you still love me, Candy?”

“Sean?” She was still uncertain.

“Who else?”

“Sean!” And she came to him on the run. Half an hour later General Caithness had been evicted and Sean and Saul were settling comfortably into the Victoria Suite.

Freshly bathed, with only a towel around his waist, Sean lay back in his chair while the barber scraped away his three-day growth of beard.

“Some more champagne?” Candy had not taken her eyes off him for the last ten minutes.

“Thanks.

She filled his glass, replaced it at his right hand and then touched the thick muscles of his upper arm. “Still hard,” she murmured. “You’ve kept ahead of the years. ” Her fingers moved on to his chest. “Just a little grey here and there-but it suits you,” and then to the barber,

“Haven’t you finished yet?”

“One moment more madam. ” He again scissored along the line of Sean’s temple, stood back and studied his masterpiece then with modest pride, held the mirror for Sean’s approval.

“Excellent. Thank you.”

“You may go now. See to the gentleman next door.” Candy had waited long enough. As the door closed behind the barber she turned the key. Sean stood up from the chair and they faced each other across the room.

“My God, but you’re big. ” Her voice was husky, unashamedly hungry.

“My God, but you’re beautiful,” Sean answered her, and they moved slowly to meet in the centre of the floor.

Later, they lay quietly while the darkness gathered in the room as evening fell. Then Candy moved her mouth across his shoulder and, the way a cat cleans its kittens, she began gently to lick the long red scratches upon his neck.

When the room was truly dark Candy lit one of the shaded gaslights and sent down for biscuits and a bottle of champagne.