The Strange Land

by Hammond Innes

  We turned the corner of the fort and struck the beaten path that led to the Bureau. The French truck was still parked outside. The door of the Bureau was locked. ‘Let’s try the sleeping quarters,’ Ed said. ‘Maybe your friend Bilvidic is there.’ The guest rooms were built on to the Bureau in the form of an L. The door was locked and Ed beat on the wooden panels with the butt of his gun. The noise seemed shatteringly loud in the night stillness. The dog’s barking became frantic. The sound of the wailing continued unchanged - insistent and agonised. The building outside which we were clustered remained silent as the grave.

  ‘We’d better try the house,’ Jan said.

  Ed beat once more upon the door, but nobody answered, and we trudged, coldly, wearily, through the sand to the house. The dog barked his fury at us from the wired-in enclosure. Once more Ed shattered the night with the hollow thudding of his gun-butt against wood. A window was thrown open and a voice demanded, ‘Qui va la?’ It was Bilvidic. I never thought I should be glad to hear his voice. ‘I’ll come down immediately,’ he said as soon as he discovered who we were.

  It was bitterly cold standing there waiting outside that door. The sweat lay against my body like a coating of steel. The dog had stopped barking now and there was utter silence except for the sound of wailing which came to us loud and clear on a chill breath of wind. A light showed between the chinks of the heat-contracted woodwork of the door. The bolts were drawn back and there was Bilvidic. He peered at us in the beam of the torch he carried. ‘Come in,’ he said. His face was puffed with sleep and his voice sounded irritable.

  It was as cold inside as it was out, except that there was no wind. ‘You must phone Agdz immediately,’ Ed said in his halting French. ‘They must send troops. Something terrible has happened.’ He glanced quickly round the room. It looked bare and chill in the hard beam of the torch. ‘Where’s the telephone?’

  ‘The telephone is broken,’ Bilvidic said. ‘It is cut when the piste is destroyed.’

  So that was that. ‘We should have gone over the mountains,’ Jan said.

  ‘If we’d done that we might all be dead by now,’ I answered sharply.

  Karen had slumped into an easy-chair. ‘It’s so cold,’ she said. She was shivering and I glanced at Julie. Her face was pale and she looked desperately tired. We were all of us tired.

  Bilvidic’s assistant joined us then. He was angry at having been got out of bed. ‘What’s happened?’ he demanded. ‘Why have you returned here at this time of the — ‘

  But Bilvidic cut him short. ‘Georges. Go to the Capitaine’s room and bring the cognac and some glasses.’ He turned to us. ‘First you have something to warm you and we get a fire lit. Afterwards we talk, eh?’ He went to a door leading out to the back and shouted, ‘Mohammed! Mohammed! Venez ici. Vite, utter My estimation of him soared then, for he must have been consumed with curiosity and a man is seldom at his best when rudely woken in the small hours.

  Mohammed came and was ordered to produce a fire immediately. We moved into Legard’s study. Paraffin blazed in the wood-piled grate and Bilvidic handed each of us a quarter tumbler of neat cognac. ‘Eh, bien. Now we will talk. What happened last night at Kasbah Foum? There were rumours that the Caid was dead and that several indigenes had lost their lives. What happened, monsieur?’ He was looking at me.

  I told him the whole thing then, sitting there by the fire, sipping my drink, my body gradually relaxing with the warmth.

  When I had finished he sat quite silent for a long time. He was frowning and his fingers were beating a tattoo on the desk where he was seated. At length he said to me, ‘Do you know this country? Do you understand the people here?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is the first time I have been south of the Atlas.’

  He clicked his tongue. ‘That is a pity, for I also do not know it. This is a military area and there is seldom any reason for us to come down here.’ He scratched his thinning hair. ‘It is a pity because it would be helpful if we had some idea what they would do. It is an extraordinary situation, quite extraordinary.’ He was using the word in its literal sense. ‘First there is the failure of the dates, then the piste is cut so that the food trucks, which are delayed anyway, cannot get through. Then they are frightened by the change in the colour of the water that feeds their palmerie and the wells. Their Caid is dead. And now this. It is too much - too much for any primitive and warlike people.’ He looked across at me. ‘I agree with you, monsieur. There is likely to be trouble.’ He paused and scratched his head again. ‘The question is - what do we do? Soon they will know that you are here.’

  ‘If we could get to Agdz,’ Ed said.

  But Bilvidic shook his head. ‘Unfortunately, the only vehicle here has something the matter with it. And you cannot go on foot. It is a long way. Also it is too dangerous.’ He pulled a pack of American cigarettes out of the pocket of his jacket which he was wearing over his vest. He made a spill from a strip of paper and lit it from the fire. Then he started pacing up and down, taking quick, nervous puffs at the cigarette.

  I leaned back and closed my eyes. The drink and the warmth of the fire were enveloping me with sleep. I seemed to slide away into darkness, engulfed by a beautiful lethargy.

  I awoke to the sound of voices raised in argument. I opened my eyes and blinked in the brilliance of the light. It was morning and the room was full of sunshine. Jan lay asleep in the chair opposite me. The grate was piled white with wood ash. A single log was still burning, its flames obliterated by the brightness of the sunshine. ‘I have sent a runner to Agdz by mule,’ Bilvidic was saying. ‘What else can I do?’

  ‘But it’ll take him all day to get there,’ Ed cried.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Bilvidic shrugged his shoulders. ‘But there is a chance that he will find transport up there where they are repairing the piste. Also I have told him to get the road gang to try and repair the telephone.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’ll take hours. Meantime anything can happen.’

  ‘What’s the trouble?’

  Ed swung round. ‘Take a look out of the window.’

  I crossed the room and peered out. The open space between the forts was full of people. They stood or sat in little isolated groups, silently watching the house as though waiting for something to happen. And from the direction of Foum-Skhira came the sound of tam-tams beating. It was a sound without rhythm, an insistent, urgent tattoo like drums beating to quarters. I glanced at my watch. It was just after nine. ‘You should have woken me earlier,’ I said.

  ‘There was nothing you could do,’ Bilvidic declared quietly. ‘There is nothing any of us can do now except wait here and hope they do not attack.’

  ‘Attack?’ I stared at him, my brain still dulled with sleep. ‘Do you mean you think they may attack the Post?’

  He nodded his head slowly. ‘Yes. I have just had a visit from Hassan - that is the Caid’s second son, the man who is now, in fact, the Caid. He came at some risk to himself to warn us that he had not the influence to hold his people back and that we were in imminent danger.’

  ‘They know we’re here at the Post then?’

  He nodded. ‘I cannot understand how they know, but they do.’ He swung round at the sound of the front door opening. It was Georges. He carried a rifle slung over his shoulder. ‘You found the armoury then?’ Bilvidic said.

  But Georges shook his head. He had searched the Bureau building, but he had failed to find it. The rifle he had found in the orderly’s room, but there had been no ammunition with it. Bilvidic went through into the main room where Julie and Karen were peacefully asleep in easy-chairs with blankets wrapped round them. He pulled open the door leading to the back premises and shouted, ‘Mohammed! Mohammed!’ But there was no answer. We searched the whole place, but there was no sign of him.

  ‘Looks like he’s cleared out while the going was good,’ Ed said. ‘Isn’t there somebody else around here to tell us where they keep their weapons?’

  ‘Only the orderly,’ Bi
lvidic said. ‘And that is the man I sent to Agdz.’

  ‘But there is a Military Post,’ I said. ‘There must be some troops here.’

  Bilvidic shook his head. ‘Not at the Post. Farther south there is the Camel Patrol. But here Legard has only two orderlies and the other is away.’

  ‘And you didn’t ask the man you sent to Agdz where the armoury was?’

  ‘Why should I? I had no reason then to believe that we should be attacked.’

  ‘But we told you there’d be trouble. We told you that a party had been sent out into the mountains — ‘

  ‘Yes, yes, but that does not mean they will attack a French Post. It is many years now since a Post was attacked.’

  ‘Monsieur. Here. Quick!’ It was Georges and his voice was urgent. He was standing by the front door, his head on one side. ‘Listen! Do you hear?’ He turned the key in the lock and pulled open the door. We heard it then. It was a sound like the sea breaking along the sands, the murmur of many voices and the tramp of many feet. The tattoo of the tam-tams had ceased and in its place was the single, menacing beat of a drum giving the time to an army on the march. And then we saw them, coming up out of the palmerie just to the left of the souk. They were a great mob of people and they flowed over the sand towards the house like a tide. There must have been a thousand or more, including the children running on the outskirts. I felt my heart hammering and my mouth was dry. If they attack in a body … I glanced at Julie, still sleeping peacefully in her chair.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ It was Jan. He had come through from the study and was standing, looking first at his wife and then through the open door at the advancing mob. ‘We must do something.’ He rubbed his eyes, half-dazed with sleep, blinking owlishly. ‘Shall I wake them?’ He was looking at the girls again.

  ‘Let them sleep on,’ I said. ‘There’s no point in their knowing about this till they have to.’ I turned to Bilvidic. ‘Exactly what arms have we got?’ I asked.

  He put his hand into his pocket and brought out a French service pistol which he tossed across to me. ‘That is Legard’s. We have plenty of rounds for that. Also Georges and I have each an automatic with a full magazine and one spare.’

  ‘And I have my Luger,’ Ed said.

  Four pistols! I stared out of the door at the approaching mob. It wasn’t much if they really meant business. ‘We ought to move to the fort,’ Ed said.

  But Bilvidic shook his head. ‘It is too big. We could never hold it.’

  ‘But we could hold one of the towers.’

  ‘Yes, but we must be near the telephone. That is essential.’

  ‘The Bureau then,’ I suggested.

  But again he shook his head. ‘They could come at us across the roof from the fort. Here we have an all round field of fire. It is not good, but it is the best we can do. Close the door now, Georges.’

  The door slammed to. The key grated in the lock. We could no longer hear the angry sound of the mob. Only the beat of the drum penetrated the room. ‘I think,’ Bilvidic said to me, ‘that you should get all your people upstairs.’ He was staring at the advancing mob, searching it with his eyes narrowed over their little pouches. ‘I do not think they have a leader. Without a leader they will not attack unless they are given cause. They have only been told that you are here. They do not know. And if they do not see you, then they will begin to doubt and lose their nerve. Get your people upstairs.’ His voice was more urgent now. ‘Vite! Hurry! And when you are up there, do not show yourselves at the windows.’

  ‘But that leaves only the two of you down here,’ Ed said. ‘If they once get inside this place …’ He hesitated. ‘What makes you so sure they won’t attack?’

  Bilvidic turned and looked at him. ‘I know about mobs, monsieur,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘In Casablanca I have had to do with many riots. Now hurry, please.’

  I knew he was right. It was no time to argue, anyway. I woke Julie and Karen and bundled them up the stairs, explaining the position to them as we went. Jan followed close at my heels and Ed was behind him.

  There were Venetian blinds in one of the upper rooms and through the slats we watched the mob slow down and come to a halt in front of the house. Bilvidic was right. It had no leader. It was moved only by the sense of being a mob. Those behind pushed forward and spilled out to the sides, spreading round the house. The people who had been watching and waiting in the space between the forts moved into the herd as though drawn by instinct. The inarticulate murmur of the mass gradually died into silence. It was like a brute beast standing with his head down, wondering whether to charge.

  I could pick out individual faces now. They were curiously blank. Many of those in front were young men. They were awed by the stillness of the house, by the Tricolour floating from its flagstaff and by the looming mass of the forts behind, mute evidence of France’s mastery of this land. A little knot gathered in the centre and a young man was pushed forward. He was too young to have any hair on his face and he was scared. But he had women behind him who goaded him on and he suddenly clutched the silver hilt of the knife at his waist and ran forward.

  But all he did was to peer in at the windows and then he ran back to the crowd, which opened out and sucked him into its bosom. He was shaking his head and then the mob had closed up again and I could no longer see him. But it wasn’t a silent crowd now. The people were talking and becoming individuals again in the process. It was no longer a headless, dangerous mass, but a thousand individuals all full of their own opinions. Looking down on it was like looking at some disease through a microscope. It writhed and seethed, splitting up into little eager groups.

  The danger, for the moment, was over.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, for there were women in the crowd, many of whom would have lost menfolk in the disaster at Kasbah Foum. If this bonfire was to catch fire, it was they who would set the match to it. And the mob was armed. Apart from the knife which every Berber carries at his waist, I counted at least two dozen, perhaps more, with long-barrelled, old-fashioned guns.

  ‘What will they do now?’ Julie asked. And it was only then, as I glanced at her and saw her face close to mine, that I realised that I had my arm round her shoulder. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘They will talk and talk. And then they will get hungry and go home.’

  A buzzer sounded downstairs. It was an odd, mechanical little sound in the stillness that had descended on the house. It stopped and then started again. I heard the scrape of a chair on the tiles and a man’s tread as he crossed the main room towards the study. ‘By God, it’s the telephone,’ Ed cried. ‘We’re through to Agdz.’ And he went clattering down the stairs. I shouted at him to stop, but all he said was, ‘I want a word with the Commandant myself.’

  ‘Ed! Come back!’ I flung myself down the stairs after him.

  The stairs descended into a recess between the main room and the study. As I reached the bottom Ed was already in the study. Bilvidic was seated at the desk with the field telephone pulled in front of him and the receiver to his ear, and behind him, framed in the window, was the lined, gaunt face of an old Berber. He was staring into the room and he saw Ed moving towards the desk, his mouth opened slightly to reveal a solitary tooth, like a fang hanging in the muzzle of an old dog; and then the face was gone and I heard Bilvidic saying, ‘Oui, out, tout de suite.”

  ‘Let me talk to him,’ Ed said. I think he thought they’d take more notice of an American.

  But Bilvidic waved him away. ‘Get back upstairs.’

  There was the sudden crack of a gun and a splintering crash. A bullet thudded into the woodwork above my head. Glass from the shattered window-pane rained on to the desk. Bilvidic shouted to us to get down. But Ed was standing dazed in front of the desk with blood welling from a cut on the side of his head and trickling down his face. He turned slowly to the shattered window. A big, wild-eyed man was standing staring at us, the long-barrelled gun with which he had fired the shot still smoking in his hand.

  Ed�
��s reaction was instantaneous. His hand grabbed at his Luger. ‘Don’t fire!’ Bilvidic screamed at him. ‘For God’s sake don’t fire!’

  For an awful moment there was a stillness in the room. Then Ed lowered the gun. He put his hand up to the side of his head and stared at the blood on his fingers. ‘He tried to kill me,’ he said in a dazed voice.

  I didn’t say anything. Bilvidic wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘If you had fired,’ he said slowly in a small, quiet voice, ‘the lust for blood would have entered into that mob out there. You would have been committing suicide - for yourself and for all of us.’ He turned to me. ‘You take the gun, monsieur; and get him upstairs out of sight of these people.’

  , Ed turned to me then and gave a little shaken laugh. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I guess I shouldn’t have come down.’ He glanced towards the window, listening to the roar of the crowd who had become excited at the sound of the shot. Blood dripped from his chin to the floor. Then he turned to Bilvidic who was busy explaining to the man at the other end of the line what had happened. ‘Monsieur. You must get them to send troops. That’s what I came down to tell you. We need troops here, and we need them quick.’

  Bilvidic looked at me and nodded towards the door. ‘Get him upstairs,’ he said. ‘And get one of the ladies to see to that cut.’ And then he was back on the telephone. ‘Allo. Allo. Monsieur le Commandant? Est-ce que vous avez…’ Ed stood there listening to Bilvidic’s request for a military detachment to be despatched immediately.

  ‘Come on,’ I said.

  He nodded and moved towards the door, his handkerchief held to the side of his head. ‘Well, at least they know what’s going on. They’ll send troops now.’

  I got him back up the stairs and handed him over to Julie. Fortunately it was only a superficial cut from a piece of flying glass and it had missed his eye.

  ‘So they know we’re in the house now,’ Jan said when I had explained what had happened.

  I nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’