III
They first saw it between three and four o’clock that afternoon.
“Bell!” The Sergeant pointed, ahead and slightly to the right. “See that… over there?”
Bell strained forward in his saddle, peering. He said: “See something. Or think I can. Not sure.” He rubbed at his smarting, aching eyes with the back of a gritty hand. “There’s such a bleedin’ shimmer!” he said.
The Sergeant turned in his saddle. He called to Pearson, now riding, with the officer’s charger, as first file: “Pass the word for Brown.”
“Brown!” went a shout. “Brown! Brown!” and the man cantered his horse presently up the line, past the walking horses of his fellows.
“Brown,” said the Sergeant, “you’ve got eyesight: what d’you make that out to be?” He pointed again.
Brown dropped the reins on his horse’s neck and fumbled, with both hands at the back of his head, to undo the tape which kept in position his sun-goggles of green talc. All had such goggles, but those who used them were evenly divided against those who did not. The goggles had advantages and disadvantages. Those who did not use them wore them, like two great staring eyes, up round their helmets over the pugaree.
The knot eased, Brown slipped the goggles from his eyes, which followed now the still pointing arm. He said:
“Trees. A clump of ’em. Absolutely.”
“H’m.” Bell shifted uneasily in his saddle. “Mirage.”
“My foot!” said Brown. “Palms all right, Sergeant. ‘Where beneath the golden palm, the silver water sings.’”
“Right. Thanks. Fall back.” The Sergeant turned to his second in command. “He’s right, Bell.”
The Corporal blew out his lips. “Maybe. Or maybe not. He’s mad, anyway. ‘Artist’ he calls himself.”
“Good soldier, though,” said the Sergeant.
“Mm! Certainly known worse.”
They rode on in silence. Imperceptibly the Sergeant altered his course, so that now, instead of marching by the compass, he took that distant break in the desert’s monotony as his guide.
Brown was right, for no mirage was this, but trees and water: a knoll of green in a waste of glaring, throbbing, dun and grey desolation.
But it took them five hours’ march to reach it: six altogether, for at seven o’clock the Sergeant halted them, ordering all but two of the horses to be unsaddled. There was water, a little, and food of a sort for men and beasts. Food which could barely be swallowed for the torturing inadequacy of their drink.
For an hour the men lay about in the sand; they panted with the heat, and sweat rolled from them. Three, too, of the horses lay. Of speech there was barely any, for their fatigue was great and their thirst and discomfort exceeded it. There was no shelter and the sun beat at them.
Only Hale was talkative. “Wot’s Mespot?” he asked of the sky. He lay on his back, legs and arms outspread, beneath his head a doubled-up canvas bucket. “Wot’s Mespot? ’Y a wide expanst of sweet damn all wiv’ a river runnin’ froo it! Hon all sides, wot did the soljers see? ’Y, sweet Fanny Adams! Rahver be in the New Cut meself.” No one answered: no one laughed. He raised his head and surveyed those nearest to him. He said: “Pore little darlin’s!” and subsided again and lay softly singing to himself:
“Sta-ar of the Ever-nin’
Bee-ootiful Ever-nin’ Star-ah-ar;
Sta-ar of the Ever-nin’
A-shinin’ on ther…”
He broke off suddenly as Sanders, who lay near him, got to his feet and walked away. With his eyes Hale followed. He called: “Oy! Oy! You, Sanders! Don’t you like my dulket teenor?”
“’Tisn’t y’r voice,” Abelson spoke from behind his recumbent horse, “it’s the naughty, naughty words that was coming! … You pie-faced sod!” He swerved suddenly round as he lay and clutched at Sanders’ ankle as he walked by.
The man came down with a rush, face foremost. Abelson laughed; a barking sound.
“Chubbarow, Abie!” said Hale. “Leave the pore bleeder alone.” He sat up. “Wot abaht some nicet roast pork?”
Abelson jumped to his feet and crossed to Hale with the quick neat steps of a boxer. Morelli, interested, stood up. Cook and MacKay rolled over to watch. In the background, Sanders raised himself slowly to his feet. His eyes, his nostrils, his mouth; all were full of sand. He stood, limply endeavouring to brush it away. He paid, apparently, no attention to the quarrel. But his eyes were wild.
Abelson stood over the Cockney. He said:
“I’ve had too many remarks from yeh! Get me? Stand up. Come on, stand up!”
Hale sat on. He cocked his head back and grinned up at the Jew. “Moses,” he said, “wot d’yer tike me for? Yore a perfessional scrapper; I’m not. If you ever so much as starts to ’it me, I’m goin’ to kick you right stryte w’ere it ’urts most.” He held up a minatory hand. “I means it, Aaron. I do! Shape up ter me, me lad, an I’ll qualify yer for the ’Arem stakes, an’ bleedin’ quick too!”
Abelson crouched; his mouth worked, but no sound came out of it. He seemed about to throw himself on the other.
The Sergeant’s voice spoke from behind him. It said:
“Get saddled up. Quick! No hanging about. Abelson!”
“Sergeant?” The Jew turned slowly.
“Your turn to lead Mr. Hawkins’ horse. Take over from Pearson. Looka live now, you men.” He turned and walked away.
Abelson picked up his saddle. “—him!” he growled. “As for yeh, Hale, yeh slimy, ignorant choot; just wait! … No hawkers! no organs!”
IV
They rode on. The sun dropped low and lower, then suddenly went.
There was a moon. A silver sickle in the spangled velvet of the sky. It flooded the waste and these moving specks that toiled across the sand. It bathed the higher places in the desert’s floor with silver, and cast gaunt, pitch-black shadows in depressions invisible by sunlight. It gave a lying promise of coolness, and a true, almost ecstatic, peace after the sun’s ferocity.
“Why,” asked Brown of the sky, “does the moon make quiet?”
“Make quiet!” Morelli said. “You’re nutty! Isn’t it always as quiet in this blasted place as Aberdeen on collection day? Quiet! Huh!”
Brown turned his head. “You poor —!” he said. “You wretched, half-sized, measle-brained little abortion! You sawn-off, chirpy, slab-sided dumble!”
Morelli laughed. “Go to it, you big stiff!”
“But can’t you see,” Brown said, “what I mean? The sun makes noise: not a noise like a drum, or you snoring, or a shell; but just one bloody great blare. Then the moon comes and the blare goes and there’s a sort of immense quiet.” He dropped his reins and stretched his aching muscles with outflung arms. “God!” he said, “I’d like to paint this… if I could. I’d…”
“What I’d like,” Morelli said, “is a quart of bitter! Cold! So God-damn cold it made me scream when it hit my guts!”
“Stinking materialist!” Brown shook his great shoulders. “But I suppose you’re right.” He pointed ahead. “You can bust those guts with pawny soon, anyhow.”
“Yep.” Morelli nodded, for before them, at the head of a rise steady but so slight as to be almost imperceptible until after three-quarters of its length it suddenly sprang up, was the clump of palms. They looked, in their blackness against the silver of the sand, like a piece of painted scenery. And, thought Brown, very bad scenery too. They’d never believe you if you did that.
“Ah’m thinkin’,” said MacKay, “’at yon’s proveedential.”
“Ar!” Cook solemnly gave agreement.
“What far d’ye make the deestance? A’ these rookies ’ull be thinkin’ they’re juist atop o’t. But they’ll be wrong, as everr. Yon’s three-four mile yet.”
“Ar,” said Cook.
The old soldier was right. Every next minute, it seemed, they could be there among those trees, seeking the cool water; and every next minute found the distance seemingly undiminished.
>
But arrive they did. The sergeant halted them perhaps half a mile from the knoll; sent the Corporal forward with Hale and MacKay.
They were back within fifteen minutes.
Bell was smiling. “O.K.,” he said. “Lot o’ trees. A spring… good. Plenty dates. And… queer… a mutti hut, empty!”
The sergeant raised his eyebrows. “A hut, eh? Any signs of occupation?”
“Nary sign.”
“How old?”
Bell scratched his chin. “We-ell… difficult to say. Number o’ years, I should guess. It’s crumblin’ a bit in parts.”
“Um! …” said the Sergeant. He lifted his voice. “Get mounted.”
They rode on then and up into a corner of Paradise. There were trees here; real trees which cast upon the ground at their feet a long lattice of black and silver, cool shade and cooler moonlight. Here, in a clearing round which the palms stood sentinel, was a spring from which water and water and more water endlessly, prodigally, bubbled. Here, by night, was a calmness and peace promising shelter and solace by day; here was bounty in the midst of desolation.
“Dis-mount!” said the Sergeant. “And keep those horses well away from the spring.”
On foot, the men had difficulty in obeying this latter order, for the horses, scenting water, grew restless. The nervous bay mare which Pearson rode put a heavy hoof upon his foot: he squealed and loosed the bridle and sat heavily: the mare made straight for the spring. She cannoned into Abelson, struggling with his own gaunt grey and the charger. She knocked Morelli from his feet, though he kept his reins and his horse. She burst out, finally, from the group.
The sergeant sprang at her head, catching the off reins close to the bit. He checked and soothed her. Bell jerked Pearson to his feet. “Go an’ get the damn’ horse,” he said. “And keep her. For the love o’ God, wake up, man!”
Presently there was an order. Each man had taken from the neck of his horse the “bilt-up” rope; these had been joined and pegged firmly to the ground; the horses, free of saddle and bridle, were tied by their head-ropes to the line and shackled; the men, cursing, were rubbing them down. MacKay and Cook, at the Sergeant’s orders, were filling canvas buckets at the spring and passing down the line… one and a half buckets to each horse. The Sergeant was invisible.
He was in the mud hut which hid, in the darkness, among the trees on that side of the little clearing remote from the line of horses. The hut was perhaps twelve feet long by nine broad. Its roof was, like the walls, of dried mud, which, unlike the walls, had been laid upon woven straw strengthened with sticks. Save for a hole in one corner of this roof and one in each of its walls, the little house was sound. The holes in the walls interested the Sergeant. He knew something of building with desert-sand and water, but never had he seen holes made in the side of a mutti structure without that structure collapsing. He could not see well, for the hut was dark and very dark, but he felt about the edges of the holes. His fingers found cane, strips of it. The holes then, though vilely irregular, were windows. He rubbed at his jaw reflectively for a moment; then turned on his heel and went out and across the clearing to the men and horses.
“All watered, Sergeant,” said Bell. “All rubbed down. Feed?”
The Sergeant nodded. “Yes. A third of the spare nose-bagsful. Right away. When that’s done, the men can finish.”
“Right!” Bell turned away.
“And… Bell!” called the Sergeant.
“Yes?”
“Tell ’em they can kip down in the palace.” He jerked his head in the direction of the hut. “Everybody except the guard.” He looked at the watch on his wrist, lifting the projecting cover. “Hm. Nearly ten. Revelly five; that’s seven hours… call it seven and a half… Take three men for guard: two and a half hours’ reliefs.”
“Who?” said Bell.
“Can’t choose,” the Sergeant said. “Fall ’em in, now; number ’em off, and take two, five, and eight. Put them on.”
“Right.” Bell turned away again. The Sergeant, as he too turned, heard his voice, “Fall in! come on, now. Drop all that!”
Numbers two, five and eight were Abelson, Cook and Pearson.
“Dis-miss!” said the Corporal.
The men in a mass, went for the spring. The Sergeant was there. He said, “Now, take it steady. Steady!”
Some did; some did not. There was, however, none among them really ill for lack of water, so that even the greedy did not suffer.
They lay about a while, satiate: they smoked and ate such dates as they could beat off the high branches by slinging ropes with weights such as mess-tins or stirrup-irons tied to them. Not a man touched biscuit or put knife to a tin of the bully beef.
The Sergeant sat alone, his back to a palm-trunk. He smoked a slow pipe to its end, knocked out the ash against his heel, and stood up.
“That’ll do. All to kip now. In the hut. Bell!”
The Corporal came.
“Got the guard?”
“Yes—Abelson, Cook, Pearson. That order.”
“Right. You get along and sleep.” The Sergeant turned and walked towards the little line of horses; Abelson, the first relief, already by them. On the other side of the clearing, Bell, like a collie, was getting his flock into their pen. Over his arm each man carried the two blankets which, folded, go beneath every cavalryman’s saddle; and, under that arm, his sword.
The Sergeant walked up and down the line of horses. He tested the firmness of the pegs which anchored the line to the ground and those which fixed the heel-ropes strapped to each rearhind. He felt at headstall and head-rope knots. He ran quick hands over each horse. He found a swollen hock and two backs with incipient soreness, one more tender than the other. He called, in a low voice:
“Abelson!”
The Jew came; his hands were deep in the pockets of his breeches; he lounged, his rifle, hung by its sling, banged against his shoulders as he walked. In the silver light, filtering interlaced with black through the palm fronts, his face showed patchy, its expression unreadable.
“Smarten up!” The Sergeant spoke sharply. “And carry that rifle. Don’t sling it.” He paused while the weapon was transferred from shoulder to hand. “This your horse?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Thought so. I’ve told you before. Look at his back. To-morrow you’ll ride Mr. Hawkins’s. See? And lead this. And be careful of your blankets. Don’t think there’s a space right through, make sure. Pull ’em well up under the front arch before you girth up.”
“Right, Sergeant.” Abelson was pleased: monotony broke him, and even the prospect of a change of horses, though a reflection upon his care, was a change, and therefore good.
“Tired?” the Sergeant asked.
The man nodded.
“Hm! Well, it’s only about two hours. Got a watch?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Right, wake your own relief. Who is it? Cook or Pearson?”
“Cook.”
“Right. And if you want me, I’ll be sleepin’ outside the hut. Where that bit of grass is at the back, the far side. Don’t forget. ’Night.” He walked to where his saddle lay, behind his horse, and took from on top of it his blankets. He bore these off into the darkness and pitched them in a heap at the foot of a tree behind the hut.
He set off then, through the trees, to the edge of the mound and climbed down it on to the level plain. He walked once round the knoll, his eyes searching the ground and the distance. He came up on to the knoll again as quietly as he might. He emerged from the trees at a point behind the line of horses, standing relaxed with hanging heads and limply straightened tails.
He left the shadow and stepped into a patch of silver light.
“Whogerthere!” Abelson stood in the dark shade of the next tree with levelled rifle.
“Friend.” The Sergeant stepped nearer. “It’s all right. Me.”
“Christ!” The Jew laughed. “Thought you was a Buddoo, Sergeant. You nearly caught a packet
.”
“Quite right. ’Member where I’m sleeping if you want me. Tell Cook, and tell him to tell Pearson.”
“Right, Sergeant. G’night, Sergeant.”
“’Night.” The Sergeant went again to where his blankets lay. He folded them each lengthways in four, then laid them down, horse-blanket first, one upon the other. He slipped off from his chest the ammunition-laden bandolier, and placed this, under the eight thicknesses of blankets, for a pillow. He took off his topee, dropped it by this couch, and lay down. His eyes, so heavy-lidded that for hours a conscious effort had been needed to keep them open, closed before his head was down.
The oasis slept. Every now and then would come a faint stirring as a horse changed its position, or the shuffle of a man’s hushed footsteps as the guard walked up and down and roundabout. Between these sounds was silence; not the lesser noise that passes for silence in town or forest, but a lack of sound, utter and cruel and Absolute.
V
By stages at first imperceptible, then rapid, the moon lost its glory. It grew pale and lifeless and the last of its silver gave place to sickly pallor. The grey fingers of another day drove out gleam and shadows alike. The desert flattened again; dismally, terribly the same. A pale, dingy light spread itself, like the rays from a dusty lamp.
Then the sun came. Not gradually, but with a brusque suddenness like that of a conjuring trick. The dingy grey light was gone. The sun outrageously blared.
It mounted higher. A shaft came through the palms and struck the Sergeant’s eyes as he lay. He waked.
He sat up, yawned once, and stretched himself. He glanced across the clearing, and, as if from a giant spring, shot suddenly to his feet. His right hand went to his breeches pocket and came away grasping the small, illegal automatic he had taken from the subaltern’s pocket. In a jump he was at the hole in the hut’s wall. He roared through it: “Turn out!” and raced away across the clearing.
Patrol Page 2
