Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur - Страница 103

"Fool" grunted Fleischer, and strode over to the litter.

He lifted his foot and placed it on Flynn's lower body. As he brought his weight down on it Flynn stiffened and gasped with pain,

releasing the Askari's wrist.

"Do it this way." Fleischer lunged forward and took a handful of

Flynn's hair, roughly he yanked Flynn's head forward. "Now, the rope,

quickly." The Askari dropped the noose over Flynn's head and drew the slip-knot tight until it lay snugly under Flynn's ear.

"Good." Fleischer stepped back. "Four men on the rope," he ordered. "Gently. Do not jerk the rope. Walk away with it slowly. I

don't want to break his neck." Rosa's hysteria had stilled into cold horror as she watched the preparations for the execution, and now she found her voice again.

"Please," she whispered. "He's my father. Please don't.

Oh, no, please don't."

Hush, girl,"

"You'd not shame me now by " pleading with this fat bag of pus."

roared Flynn.

He swivelled his head, his eyes rolled towards the four Askari who stood ready with the rope end.

"Pull! You black sons of bitches. Pull! And damn you. I'll beat you to hell, and speak to the devil so he'll have you castrated and smeared with pig's fat."

"You heard what Fini told you," smiled Fleischer at his Askari. "Pull!" And they walked backwards in single file,

shuffling through the dead leaves, leaning against the rope.

The litter lifted slowly at one end, came upright and then left the ground.

Rosa turned away and clenched her eyelids tight closed, but her hands were bound so she could not stop her ears, she could not keep out the sounds that Flynn Patrick O'Flynn made as he died.

When at last there was silence, Rosa was shivering. Bar spasms that shuddere&through her whole body.

"All right," said Herman Fleischer. "That's it. Bring the woman.

We can get back to camp in time for lunch if we hurry." When they were gone, the litter and its contents still hung in the fever tree.

Swinging a little and turning slowly on the end of the rope. Near it lay the carcass of the elephant, and a vulture planed down slowly and made a flapping ungainly landing in the top branches of the fever tree.

It sat hunched and suspicious, then suddenly squawked and launched again into noisy flight, for it had seen the man coming.

The little old man limped slowly into the grove. He stopped beside the dead elephant and looked up at the man who had been his master and his friend.

"Go in peace, Fini." said Mohammed.

The alleyway was a narrow low-roofed corridor, the bulkheads were painted a pate grey that glistened in the harsh light of the electric globes set in small wire cages at regular intervals along the roof.

At the end of the corridor, a guard stood outside the heavy watertight door in the bulkhead that led through into the handling room of the forward magazine. The guard wore only a thin white singlet and white flannel trousers, but his waist was belted in a blanc oed webbing from which hung a sheathed bayonet, and there was a Mauser rifle slung from his shoulder.

From his position he could look into the handling room, and he could keep the full length of the alleyway under surveillance.

A double file of Wakarnba tribesmen filled the alleyway, living chains along one of which passed the cordite charges; along the other the nine-inch shells.

The Africans worked with the stoical indifference of draught animals, turning to grip the ly cylindro-conical ug shells, hugging a hundred and twenty pounds" weight of steel and explosive to their chests while they moved it on to the next man in the chain.

The cordite charges, each wrapped in thick paper, were not so weighty and moved more swiftly along their line.

Each man bobbed and swung as he handled his load, so it seemed that the two ranks were sets in a complicated dance pattern.

From this mass of moving humanity rose clouds of warm body odour,

that filled the alleyway and defeated the efforts of the air-conditioning fans.

Sebastian felt sweat trickling down his chest and back under the leather cloak, he felt also the tug of weight within the folds of the cloak each time he swung to receive a fresh cordite charge from his neighbour.

He stood just outside the door of the handling room, and each time he passed a charge through, he looked into the interior of the magazine where another gang was at work, ac king the charges into the shelves that lined the bulkheads, and easing the nine-inch shells into their steel racks.

Here there was another armed guard.

The work had been in progress since early that morning, with a half-hour's break at noon, so the German guards had relaxed their vigilance. They were restless in anticipation of relief. The one in the magazine was a fat middle-aged man who at intervals during the day had broken the monotony by releasing sudden ear-splitting posterior discharges of gas.

With each salvo he had clapped the nearest African porter on the back and shouted happily.