Patrol

by MacDonald, Philip;

  And away before him, out on the desert, something moved. A long darkness, thicker than the shadow from which it had emerged, crawled with slow but unceasing movement towards the oasis. At every hundred yards or so this movement ceased; as if the mover were waiting the answer to its movement.

  But answer there was none. Among the trees, Sanders slept, a great peace upon that strange, gaunt face. And the movement went on.

  It drew close and closer, this thick, creeping shadow. So close that had the eyes of Sanders been opened they would have seen that behind the thick blackness trailed, jerkily, comically, a thicker more clumsy whiteness, shining in the moon rays.

  The movement ceased. Now, there were not more than ten yards separating it from the beginning of the slope to the trees. It ceased for minutes together; then, cautiously, began again. But not the same movement.

  Upon his hands, the head of Sanders stirred. Then was still. Then stirred again and was lifted.

  He waked, at once and completely. There had rushed into his mind, from somewhere, the memory that his eyes were needed.

  He saw, at the foot of the slope, two white blurs and a thick, black shadow which was no shadow. On the instant he was filled again with those clamant leprous fears.

  Shaking, he somehow got his rifle to his shoulder. He fired, wildly, emptying his magazine. The thick black shadow straightened. It became the figure of a man, in dark robes, which turned and ran, its kaftan flying in a wild stream behind its head. It ran, not straight, but in a regular zig-zag, ever lengthening.

  Sanders fumbled with shaking hand at a pouch of his bandolier. His magazine needed another clip. The button of the pouch seemed fast wedged…

  Morelli, when those shots had been fired, was dressing himself for his coming relief. The sharp crackle of the rifle smote on his ears. He was on his feet in a bound. “Turn out!” he bellowed and snatched his rifle. He shot from the hut and raced through the trees. He came to the western fringe and hurled himself flat and raked the desert with his eyes. He saw the running, dodging figure, now half-way back to those bars of black shadow from which it had come.

  His rifle came to his shoulder. Its barrel followed steadily the sweeps and darts of that diminishing figure.

  “Sod ’im!” he muttered. He aimed, carefully, a few feet to the right of that darting figure. He fired. “Wow!” he cried. “Got the bleeder!” For the figure had lurched, spun round, and fallen. It lay like a stain upon the sand.

  With a thudding of boots came the Sergeant and Abelson, both stripped to the waist but carrying rifles and with laden bandoliers ludicrous across their naked chests.

  The Sergeant lay beside Morelli. Abelson dropped, too, but farther to the right, between Morelli and the invisible Sanders.

  “What’s on?” the Sergeant said. He looked. He saw that dark blot two hundred yards away. “Good!” he said. “Any more of ’em?”

  “Not seen any,” Morelli grunted. “How’d this start, anyway?”

  From their right came the crackle of Sanders’ rifle. At last his fumbling, shaking fingers had reloaded. He fired now utterly at random…

  “What the hell?” The Sergeant leapt to his feet and raced through the trees. He came upon Sanders just as the second clip was spent. He dropped down beside the man and laid a hand on the wavering rifle. “What you at?” he said. “Where are they?”

  Sanders turned to him a face which made him start. The man’s helmet had fallen off and there was no shadow to hide from the moon-ray, coming down between the tree-tops, those half-closed eyes, those open, loose lips, saliva flecking their corners, that whole semblance of semi-idiotic terror.

  The Sergeant looked away. “What happened first?” He spoke sharply.

  There came no reply, and he did not wait for one. For his eyes had fallen upon those two whitenesses lying below him at the foot of the slope. He drew in his breath with a sharp hiss. He got to his feet and went nearer, right to the edge, and looked down.

  “Almighty God!” he said between his teeth. He lifted his voice. “Morelli! Abelson!” he called.

  They came running. He stood, pointing. Their eyes followed his arm. They gasped.

  “It’s Englishmen!” Morelli whispered.

  Abelson craned forward. Suddenly he laughed, a high note of hysteria. “You bloody fool!” he cried, “it’s Jock an’ the Matlow! …”

  Silence fell upon them, aching silence. The Sergeant said, at last:

  “They can’t be left there… like that.”

  “We’ll get ’em. Him an’ me.” Abelson jerked a thumb towards Morelli.

  “No!” said the Sergeant. “One’s enough. You an’ Morelli lie here. ’F you see a movement out there, start shootin’ like all hell. I shan’t be much of a mark. An’ it’ll only take half a minute.”

  He threw off his bandolier and plunged down the slope. His naked torso must have made a shining target at once discernible, for there came two distinct reports and spurts of sand, one at his feet, the other short of him by two yards. Above him, Abelson and Morelli opened fire with a burst so rapid as to sound almost like that of a Vickers gun…

  The Sergeant stooped and caught in either hand a cold, stiff, white arm, one thin and sinewy, the other enormous with lumps of knotted muscle like twisted cables… He turned away his eyes, for what he had seen had made his gorge to rise and almost choke him… He backed, bent double and hauling, up the slope.

  Over his head Abelson and Morelli kept up their hail of bullets. But two more shots came from the shadows, one so close that the sand it sprayed splashed, stinging, upon the Sergeant’s face. He strained, panting, racking every muscle. He got his double burden of twenty-two odd stone at last to the crest and over it and into the shadow.

  He lay, panting, some feet away from the two white things which he had dragged. Morelli and Abelson ceased firing. They twisted their heads to look.

  “Oh my Christ!” mumbled Abelson.

  Morelli was silent, but lurched suddenly to his feet and took three steps away and began to vomit.

  Sanders, like a thin ghost, came from where he lay. He stood looking down at the two bodies as they rested in that pool of moonlight which somehow gave their utter nakedness a kind of extra horror. There was no scar upon those bodies save the mark of the rope which had dragged them back to their fellows… this mark and that one most shameful mutilation.

  Sanders said, softly and with a strange suddenness:

  “Their faces… how… what are those? …” Then: “Oh!” he shrieked suddenly on the dreadful head note of a woman’s scream. “Oh! … No. No. No!” His rifle dropped with a clatter at his feet. He flung an arm across his eyes and turned and fled wildly back through the trees.

  XVII

  “Let him go!” the Sergeant said; for Abelson had started forward. “Get those entrenchin’ tools. Jildi!”

  The Jew went, running. Morelli, recovered, stood clear of the trunk against which he had leant. He stooped and picked up his fallen rifle; in the moonlight which pierced the shadow where it lay, his face showed pallidly green.

  The Sergeant went to him. “You get down here,” he said. “An’ watch out. Abelson and I’ll get the other job done right away.”

  Morelli got down. He muttered thickly:

  “Thought I had a cast-iron belly! But that’s got me all right all right! … Never puked before, not even when that 18-pounder dropped a couple right into B Squadron at Eisal ’fore we knew it was there… an’ that was a mess, if you like! … But that!” He jerked his head behind him and shivered.

  The Sergeant nodded. “Makes it worse, too, when you know the fellers. I’ve seen it before… once. Bad enough then… but with Jock and Cook…”

  He broke off as Abelson returned, panting, with the little spades. He went to meet him and took one of these. He looked about him, measuring with his eye certain spaces. “Just there’ll do,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get at it. Morelli’s watchin’ out there.”

  Abelson threw from him his ban
dolier. Half-naked, sweating until a little rain ran from their bodies to splash upon the earth, they toiled in silence for half an hour or more.

  Abelson straightened himself for a moment, hands pressed to his aching back. “God!” he muttered. “God! … The bloody — sons of —!” He bent again to the task. But now, as he worked, he talked.

  “Sergeant!” he said. “What they do that for? What the hell! Shoot ’em all neat like that… no mess… through the back o’ the head… Why not leave ’em… Why do that? …”

  The Sergeant grunted. “Why everythin’? … It’s an old trick of the Arab women…”

  “Women!” cried the Jew. “Women! ’F I caught the bitch that done that I’d…” He said what he would do.

  “But this mayn’t ’ve been women,” the Sergeant said. “Don’t see how…” He broke off and stepped out of the pit they had dug. “That’s deep enough,” he said.

  Abelson climbed out and stood by his side. They both had their backs to that place where lay the bodies of Cook and MacKay. They were conscious of those bodies, and of extreme reluctance again to look upon them. They stood awkwardly, saying nothing, yet most acutely aware that delay must end and the time come when with their hands they must put those white clammy things which had once been their comrades into this hole they had made in the earth.

  They were aware, too, of other things as they stood thus, as it were in suspended action; they knew, now, that what for these last long days had been filling their minds and absent from their speech… that hope at first faint then by sheer desire growing almost into a belief… they knew that now rescue was an improbability so wild as to be wellnigh impossible… This they knew and also a nearer and more immediate horror, foolishly far more to be dreaded than that other, that they could not, somehow, bury those bodies of their comrades as they were; that they must, however weak and sentimental and unnecessary this might be, not cover those bodies with the earth before that frightful transposition had been remedied and those staring, shocking faces made no longer obscene and bestial travesties but the features of Cook and MacKay.

  The night, still and heavy and drenched around them with bars of black and silver, was silent with a silence which pressed upon them like a great weight. Each man of those three, Morelli lying with his eyes searching the desert, the Sergeant and Abelson standing on the lip of that grave, heard in his head this silence, broken only by the thud-thudding in their ears of their own hearts.

  “God!” said the Sergeant, suddenly and beneath his breath. He tapped Abelson on the shoulder and swung round. “Come on!” he muttered, and crossed with rapid steps to where the still, white, dead things lay in their moon pool.

  Abelson followed, more slowly. He saw the Sergeant stand a moment, looking down; saw his shoulders rise with a sudden taking of the breath; saw him kneel and put both hands to the face of the dead MacKay.

  He came closer and slowly knelt by the side of that other body, facing the Sergeant, from whose lips came a stifled mutter, curses or prayer or self-exhortation… He looked down at what he himself must do; then suddenly stumbled to his feet and turned away. He said, aloud:

  “No good… Can’t do it… Can’t!”

  There was a silence behind him: it seemed to last for a year of dragging moments. Then the Sergeant’s voice.

  “That’s that! Give us a hand!”

  Abelson turned, reluctance clogging his movements. He did not mean to… he had determined that he would not… look down. But he did. His eyes of their own volition went straight to the bodies at the Sergeant’s feet… And then he was flooded with inexpressible relief, for he saw that the moon now shone upon the faces of Cook and MacKay and did not lie, like a glistering lustre, upon faces which were not faces at all…

  He stooped, and, stooping, dragged the great body of Cook across those intervening yards to the grave…

  And soon there was no Cook, or MacKay… merely a slightly raised lump of newly-broken earth, beaten flat with boot and spade.

  The Sergeant broke a long silence. “And how,” he said, slowly and heavily, as a man will find himself speaking in a dream, “and how the hell did they get here?”

  Abelson turned sharply. His mouth fell open; the little spade dropped from his hand. “By —!” he breathed. “Never thought… they were lyin’ there just after that first shot…”

  “Yes,” the Sergeant said. “An’ we were on the scene not more than a couple o’ minutes later…”

  “How do yeh…” Abelson’s voice was awed and shaken and fragmentary; it uttered little bursts of words, each burst starting loud and tailing off to silence at its end. “But how the —! … Can’t of dropped outa the… I tell yeh, Sergeant, it’s—it’s…”

  “Unless, of course,” came the Sergeant’s voice. “That’s it! That fool was asleep. That’s it… Buddoo must ’ve dragged ’em up from over there… from somewhere… Sanders is asleep an’ doesn’t see ’em till they’re close up … Must be that… If it isn’t… then God help us all… But it was that.”

  A sigh broke from the Jew. “’S right!” he said. “Must be… The scab! … S’pose there’d been a dozen Buddoos, eh? What about that? … They’d of been all over us afore we knew it… The —!” His tone changed, suddenly. He turned, and his fingers clutched the Sergeant’s wrist. He said, hoarsely: “What they bring ’em back here for? Eh? What for?”

  The Sergeant shook his head wearily. “How the hell do I know… How would anybody know that… They’re just bloody devils… that’s all…” He laughed a little, a mirthless sound. “Bloody-minded devils!” he said. “They want… just to show us!” He turned slowly away from the grave. He seemed to shake himself and draw rigidly erect, with back-flung shoulders. He said, sharply, in a voice with an intensified parade-ground sharpness:

  “Got to find Sanders! Get to it, Abelson. There’ll be no guard to-night: we’ll all be on.”

  “The soors won’t come twice,” Abelson said. “Not in one night.”

  “You find Sanders!” snapped the Sergeant. “You fool; never heard of a double bluff!” He walked off, back to where Morelli lay. Abelson, with a grimace, set off through the trees.

  The Sergeant stood over Morelli. “Anything doin’?” he said.

  “No… Fanny Adams… I got that sod, though.” He pointed out across the gleaming sand to where that dark blotch still stained the silver.

  “That’s one of ’em,” said the Sergeant. “But how many more are there? … Two, I should say… P’r’aps three… No, maybe four or five because somehow they’ve been joined by the ones that caught Jock and Cook… An’ as we didn’t see any, God knows how many the total is now… But I don’t think… it can’t be more than five… if it was there’d ’ve been a pukka attack…” He broke off; was silent for a long moment; then added. “Stick here. Goin’ to get my shirt. We’ll all be with you peechi.”

  He walked quickly through the trees in the direction of the hut. As he saw it some ten or fifteen yards away, he heard the voice of Abelson.

  “Sanders! Sand-ers! Where the hell are yeh? Speak up, you holy bahstud! Where are yeh?”

  He saw, then, Abelson come out of the shadow to the eastward side of the hut and peer into it through one of those irregular holes which must be windows. He heard him cry, exultant: “Kerm out of it, you scab-faced —!”; saw him rush through the doorway and disappear.

  And then, as he broke into a run, for he did not want Sanders knocked about, he heard a strange noise. A clattering. He checked his stride while his mind worked over this sound. He ran on again. It must be the swords. One of the two men had run into the little pile of eleven swords which had been in that corner since that night when first they had arrived here.

  He smiled grimly at himself and the wild senseless imaginings which that metallic clattering had roused in him. He eased his run to a walk. Then, suddenly, he was racing, at the very top of his speed, across the few yards which still separated him from the hut. He had remembered that these swords had
not been standing up so that they could be knocked down. They lay in a pile and therefore must have been deliberately raised before being dropped to make that noise.

  So he ran. But not fast enough. When he was almost at that doorway, there came a sudden babel of sound from within: low, rasping, curses from Abelson, a high-pitched, crazy confusion of Biblical incoherence from the throat of Sanders. And then a hush, appalling in the rapidity with which it had fallen.

  Out through the doorway, backwards, fell Abelson into the Sergeant’s arms, which caught him.

  “Steady up!” said the Sergeant’s voice. “What the…”

  He stopped; for the body in his arms was limp. He laid it down and a moonbeam showed a gaping hole where should have been the right eye and upper cheek…

  And now through the doorway burst a figure, wild and babbling and three-quarters naked. It held in its hand, with a tense and dreadful awkwardness, an unsheathed cavalry sabre whose point was dark and sluggishly gleaming. The man’s mouth drooled gouts and flecks of saliva between its shouted incoherent words.

  It seemed to the Sergeant, looking up from the thing at his feet, that this other, live thing would attack him. He crouched and leapt. His hands caught the bony legs round each ankle. He straightened, keeping his hold. Sanders’ head met the oven-baked ground with a thud which was almost a report. He too, lay still.

  The Sergeant dropped upon his knees by the childishly huddled body of the Jew. He confirmed what he had known. Here, again, was death…

  He stayed thus, upon his knees, for many black moments, staring with eyes which did not see into the black-shadowed thickness of the trees. He felt numb; like a man who has been partially drugged with chloroform so that, while yet conscious, he is incapable alike of thought or action.

  He was roused. From the trees came the sudden crack-crack of Morelli’s rifle. Then four more shots and a voice, hailing.

  He jumped to his feet and over the two still bodies, one dead and the other in unconsciousness as deep as death. He rushed into the hut and came out with two rifles, three laden bandoliers, and a water-bottle. He jumped over the bodies again and raced through the trees to where Morelli lay and cast himself down beside him.