Morelli was firing, steadily, irregularly; careful shots at definite targets. The Sergeant, too, began shooting. There was no need of words. Out on that glistening sand, away beyond the dark blotch which was the result of that earlier shooting of Morelli’s, other black things were moving, coming from out that patch of protecting, unreasonable shadows… One… two… five… six black things, crawling.
They went on firing. Sparingly, with careful aim. But gradually, by almost infinitesimal stages, the six black things held to their advance.
“— it!” said Morelli savagely. “Can’t we shoot a-tall. Or what? What you make the range?”
“Three-fifty, I’ve been at,” the Sergeant said. “Think it’s more.” He slid up the sights.
“Um!” Morelli, nodding agreement, did the same. He fired again. One shot. “Where’s that Yid?” he said.
The Sergeant fired. One shot. He said:
“He’s not comin’. It’s you an’ me now.”
“Eh?” Morelli’s head jerked sharply round.
“You an’ me, I said.” The Sergeant pressed another clip into the magazine of his rifle. “Sanders is moost. Really moost. Stuck a sword through Abelson’s eye… He’s dead.” He raised his rifle to his shoulder, cuddled his cheek down to the hard wood, and took careful aim at the first of those six black things which moved upon the shining glory of the desert.
XVIII
Three… nearly four hours later. There is still a moon, but it is paling; the silver is turning to a light and ghostly grey… The Sergeant and Morelli are still lying there… But they are not firing… There are now, out there in front of them, only three dark blotches. And these are quiet and still: they are not crawling forward, even by stages infinitesimal. They will never, in fact, crawl anywhere again.
Round the left upper arm of Morelli there is tied, tightly, a wad of bandaging torn from the tail of his shirt. For he and the Sergeant have not had all the shooting to themselves. A ricochet caught him, the bullet glancing from a palm trunk and carving a groove from the flesh. Otherwise they are unhurt.
And, for the moment, victorious. The three… or was it four, as Morelli insisted… the living of their enemies had withdrawn into the impenetrable, unreasonable shadow.
Now that there was no longer need for attention utterly undivided, the Sergeant, as he lay, kept half-raising his naked neck and shoulders and peering behind him into the now lightening shadows of the trees.
“What is it?” Morelli said after the third time.
“Sanders.”
Morelli started. “Christ! I’d forgotten… Not there, is he?”
“Can’t see him,” the Sergeant said. “That’s why I was lookin’.” He turned his head again.
Morelli, too, now twisted his body as he lay so that his eyes might peer into the drab shadows. He said:
“Buddoo in front; bloodthirsty bughouse wallah in the rear… Nice party we’re havin’, Sarge!”
They both laughed; short, strained, barking sounds.
The Sergeant said: “I may ’ve killed the poor sod… But I don’t think so… Stood ’im on his head; had to…” He fell silent a moment while his gaze went out again over the desert before them. “There’s Abelson, too,” he added.
“More diggin’!” Morelli said. He began to giggle…
The Sergeant turned savagely. “Stop that blasted row! Stop it, will you!”
The choking laughter died away. “Sorry, Sarge!” Morelli said. “Dunno what’s come over me. Oughta know better.”
“Be dawn in a bit.” The Sergeant’s voice was again in its normal tones. “I want my shirt an’ helmet. You stay here.” He clambered stiffly to his feet, effacing himself from the desert behind a palm trunk. He turned and walked, rifle in hand, softly away.
“Watch your step, for Gawd’s sake…” Morelli’s voice floated after him. He walked on, smiling a twisted smile at this unnecessary advice. As he walked, his rifle was held slantwise beford him and the right forefinger was curled about the trigger. His body was carried tense and inclining forward from the hips. To his ears came sounds which were not sounds at all… creeping footsteps… harsh, insane breathing… the clink of a sword-blade against a tree… He caught himself saying, aloud: “Pull yourself together! You’re not hearin’ a damn thing!” He bit at his lips and walked on at a faster pace.
He came to the hut, and before it the body of Abelson. But there was no Sanders, nor any sight nor sound nor trace of Sanders. He stepped over that twisted body and, with an effort of will which left every muscle quivering, dashed into the darkness of the hut, rifle held protectingly above his head.
But there was no Sanders here…
He took from where they lay upon his blankets his shirt and topee and spine-pad. He thought: “Shall I put my shirt on here? Might come in an’ get me when I’m all twisted up in it…”
He stood undecided a moment. Then the desire for that feeling of additional security which would come with the clothing made up his mind. He laid his rifle down upon the blankets and pulled the shirt over his head, snatching the weapon again so soon as this was done. He said, aloud:
“Jumpy as a cat!” and heard his voice as something rumbling and unnatural.
He tucked his shirt down into his breeches awkwardly with one hand; for the other held his rifle. His belt and its unbuckling and buckling was a difficult task with only five fingers. But it got itself done and he left the hut shirted and spine-padded and helmeted, and with two more laden bandoliers and a haversack swinging from his right shoulder.
As he came out of the doorway the dawn broke with a sudden rush of golden, glittering splendour. There was light everywhere and with it a solace for taut and jangled nerves.
But, at his feet, there lay Abelson’s body… a reminder.
He stepped over it and walked towards the centre of the clearing, his eyes darting glances all about him. But of Sanders there was still no sign nor sound nor trace.
He came to a halt in the middle of the clearing, his eyes restless. There came to his ears Morelli’s voice, shouting:
“Ser-geant! Ser-geant!”
“Right!” he cried back, and ran.
He came racing through the trees and cast himself down, sweating, in his old place. His eyes raked the desert; but found nothing save those three huddled bundles, seeming now, strangely enough, at a greater distance than they had in the soft silver blazing of the moonlight. “What’s up?” he said. He did not turn his eyes to the man beside him.
Morelli said, stammering a little: “I… I… C’n you see anything… out… out there… Behind that third stiff?” He pointed. “Thought… could of sworn I… there was some’p’n moved…” Under his tan the dark blood covered face and neck with a fiery glow. He sent sidelong glances at the Sergeant’s face and sighed almost audible relief to find that the eyes in that face were not upon his. For the truth was that Morelli had neither seen, nor even imagined himself to have seen, any such movement as he had described: it had merely come to him, after ten minutes alone which had seemed following that nightmare night to be an hour at the least, that something, probably Sanders, had happened to the Sergeant… He had fought this growing conviction for so long as he might, but had, at last, given way. That cry of “Sergeant! Sergeant!” had seemed to spring from his lips without intent. So soon as it had died away and there had come that answering shout he had felt, literally, that he would have given a hand to have kept silent…
Beside him, after long, dragging minutes, the Sergeant said:
“Can’t see anythin’… Where’re those glasses?”
There came, from behind them, the faint wraith of a sound. Both heard it, but neither spoke of having heard. They suspected themselves of nerves. But, though they did not speak, they stiffened, straining their ears. The Sergeant’s question seemed still to hang suspended above them.
There… again that shadow of a sound… They both turned sharply… Morelli still lay gaping, his eyes wide, the blood ebbing from
his face and leaving the tan a dirty, sickly grey. The Sergeant was on his feet almost in one movement. He stood, staring, breathing short and jerkily.
Before them, naked as a new-born child, stood Sanders… Naked and empty-handed… They who had pictured a murderer saw now a foolish saint.
He held out to them those empty hands, palms upwards. Upon his face was a smile which seemed of ineffable sweetness and then, after the first glance, froze a man with sick horror by its flaunting insanity.
The little group was motionless… utterly without a shadow of movement… for minutes which seemed a microcosm of eternity. They posed for some tableau devised by the great satirist.
Then Sanders moved. He came towards them with slow and delicate steps, those hands still supplicatory, the smile graven upon his features. He spoke; and the voice, deep and deliberately resonant, was so utterly unlike the voice which they knew that their first shock of incredulity and horror was surpassed by this second.
“I leave you,” said the voice. “Ere I do so, kneel you and pray with me.” He knelt, and clasped his hands, raising them high before his face. The eyes closed, but still the mouth was curved into that smile.
The voice again. “Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”
The Sergeant came to life. His face was pale and carved with deep lines. He muttered: “Not decent… Stop it…” He came forward and put a hand, whose fingers shook, upon the naked, bony shoulder. He said, in a strange uncertain voice:
“That’ll do now… That’ll do!”
He was smitten, immediately after they had left his mouth, by the futile inadequacy of these words. He shook at the shoulder with iron fingers. “Get up now,” he said. “Get up!”
He stooped suddenly and put a hand beneath each armpit of the kneeling figure and lifted it bodily to its feet. Certainty; his usual sureness; desire for a definite line of action; these had all, in a measure, returned to him.
Morelli, still staring wide-eyed from the ground, was thrown a curt: “You stay. Watch out there. Back peechi!” saw, before rolling over again upon his stomach, that nine-and-a-half-stone nakedness lifted like a child into the Sergeant’s arms and carried off through the trees towards the hut. Even as he rolled over, so that once more his eyes should command the desert, he saw, with another horrified thrill, that over the Sergeant’s retreating shoulder lolled and jerked that face with its smile which was not seraphic but so foolish as to seem an obscenity.
“God help us!” groaned Morelli, and lay once more looking out over that maddening infinite half-circle of once-more blazing, glaring sand.
It seemed to him a month of hours before there came footsteps behind him and the Sergeant’s voice, pitched low to conceal the shrieking of his nerves.
“Anythin’ doing?” it said.
Morelli, not looking up, shook his head. “No,” he said. And his voice, even in his own ears was high and taut and unrecognisable.
The Sergeant lay down in his old place. They looked at each other for a fleeting second, then hastily away, as if each feared, as indeed he did, to find in the face of the other what he knew was written on his own.
The Sergeant wiped with wet hand at his streaming forehead. He was breathing hard and quickly, almost panting: his hand shook and his lips moved one upon the other as if the thoughts which raced turgid through his head were striving after utterance too long denied.
Morelli pressed a dry tongue over drier lips. He asked: “What you do with ’im?” He had meant his voice to be calm and casual, but the little sentence came as a half-whispered croak.
“Hut,” the Sergeant mumbled. “Tied ’im up… Three-four reins joined… round his middle, out through window, round a palm… Don’t see how he can get away… Yet it oughtn’t t’ hurt ’im… Taken the swords an’ all away; he can’t cut the leather… an’ I swear he’ll not undo that raffle o’ knots behind his back… He can move about, too… An’ I’ve left him dates an’ water… He’s still prayin’; with that smile…” His voice died away.
Morelli was silent.
The Sergeant burst out at him. “Well! Had to do it, didn’t I? He won’t put any clothes on… Can’t let ’im wander round spare an’ the sun just gettin’ up… What else could I do? Eh? Tell me! What else?”
Morelli said, quickly, so that his words tripped and stumbled one upon the heels of the other:
“Sure! Sure! Had to tie ’im up. Sure! But I was just thinking…” He cut his speech off abruptly.
“Thinkin’ what?”
“Thinking that… that… Well, now… I… I was just wond’ring… wouldn’t it be best all round if… if… well, sod it! if we was to put the pore guy out of his trouble? Wouldn’t it, now?”
“Thought o’ that,” said the Sergeant. Then, turning, he shot out: “Who’s goin’ to do it? Would you?”
Morelli flinched. He was a man of some imagination. He did not speak again, but lay staring straight out before him.
“Would you?” came the Sergeant’s voice, insistent.
Morelli shook his head, slowly. “No,” he muttered. “Not now as I come to think of it… Not but what it wouldn’t be right as we’re all goin’ to be for the high jump… But I couldn’t. No, sir!”
“Nor me…” the Sergeant said. “I thought of it… An’ then I looked at the poor devil… Sittin’ there, smilin’ like that, and prayin’ away… Damn it, Morelli, I believe I would ’ve done it if he’d been dressed!”
“Ah!” Morelli nodded. “… What about some grub?”
The Sergeant passed, from where it lay beside him in the haversack, the half of the wad of picked and squeezed-together dates which he had carried with him on his last return from the hut.
They ate, chewing in silence and washing down the fruit with tepid water from the bottles. They finished the meal and the Sergeant examined his cigarette-case. “Five,” he said. “How many you?”
“Three,” Morelli said, “but… there’s Abelson’s…” He passed one to the Sergeant and put another to his own mouth.
Smoke curled lazy above their heads: it hung like infant clouds in the shimmering air. With almost every minute the heat grew more savage, and always with a threat of worse to come.
Morelli broke a long silence. “Sergeant…” he said, “ever hear tell of Jonahs?”
“Yes.” The Sergeant nodded. His attention seemed to wander. “Wish to God,” he muttered, “those devils ’d do something… This waiting!”
Silence.
“About Jonahs…” came Morelli’s voice. “You listening?”
“Yes,” said the Sergeant. “Yes.”
“I’m one!” Morelli’s voice was low-pitched and slow. “Here… I’ll tell you…”
XIX
They dug, by turns, away on the far side of the hut, a grave for Abelson. The Sergeant put the body in and piled the earth atop of it and stamped it down.
A day passed; a night… another day and another night.
Time ceased for these two men. Its harsh man-made divisions melted in the sun’s furnace and the silver bath of the moon. They ate now and then; they drank much water. They slept in turn, fitfully or not at all. By turn they beat down dates to renew their store and drew water. By turn they walked dazedly to the hut and gave food and drink to the naked madman who prayed there, smiling; who suffered himself to be led out, like a beast, for exercise; whose only words to his keepers were: “I leave you… kneel you and pray with me!”
At times they talked, sometimes in monosyllables, sometimes loquaciously for hours together. Once they were silent for so long as it takes the sun to make his circuit. But always they watched, with eyes that burned and ached and wept from the glare of the sun or the glinting of the moon. It seemed to them that for their whole lives… for the whole of time… they had been lying thus upon their bellies, with elbows worn and torn by propping their weight, looking out over Nothing with aching, burning eyes; waiting for an enemy they dared not seek and could not see but whose existence w
as a fact; a magic enemy who hid where was no hiding-place, who brought back, hideously defaced, the bodies of their friends to lie and foully mock them; who would eventually conquer them as those others had been conquered.
Their eyes were coals. Over their dark faces grew stubbled beards. Though their lair was in a measure shaded, the heat thrashed at them like a savage animal, so that each sun cycle was a crescendo of fire with a night in its wake scarcely more tolerable. The wooden stocks of their rifles burnt their hands, and the metal parts were agony to touch. Always, ceaselessly, their bodies poured out sweat until it seemed to them that soon they must utterly dissolve. They felt, at times, that their sanity was leaving them. Around and above them, tall, minatory sentinels, were the palms, unstirred, unmoving always. Before them was that aching semi-circle of nothingness; a barren furnace by day, a leprous silver bowl by night. The nothingness grew in their minds to a fevered, lustful, inimical personality which hated them and would send them madness before death.
“If only something ’d move!” Morelli groaned. “Any bloody thing!”
The Sergeant turned on an elbow. He had been silent for nearly a day; now the speech came frothing out of him like an angry torrent. He said, nearly shouting:
“Yes. Yes. I know. Somethin’ ought to move. Yes. But what ought to move? Eh? Why, those bloody devils! — em, I say! Cod rot ’em and blister their blasted souls! They’ll get us! But by the bones o’ their Prophet, we’ll get them, too! Ever had Ambition, Morelli? ’Course you have! So’ve I. Not one, but a thousand of ’em. I’ve had it bad in my time, Morelli. But by God I’ve never had it as I’ve got it now. I’ll get those swine! I’ll get ’em, I tell you! I’ll get ’em. An’ then I’ll die…” His voice ceased; he had suddenly become aware that he was shouting loud and louder, at a man so near that a whisper would have reached him. And his own voice, its strange tone, still rang unpleasantly in his ears. He bit at his lip and strove for composure.
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