The Sound of Thunder (13 page)

“Saul, please. You must try. Just a little farther.”

“Glossless,” whispered Saul. “There is no gloss on it. I don’t want it. ” And he closed his eyes, his lips bulged open and his breath snored through them in tiny bubbles of spittle.

A suffocating despair dropped down over Sean as he studied Saul’s face. The eyes had receded into dark plum-coloured cavities, leaving the skin stretched tight across his cheeks and across the gaunt bony nose.

Not because I nearly killed him, not because I owe it to him.

But because-but because? How can you define your feelings for another man. All you can say is-because he is my friend.

Then, because he is my friend I cannot leave him here.

Sinking down beside him, Sean lifted his slack body into a sitting position, draped one of Saul’s arms around his shoulder and stood up.

Saul hung beside him, his head lolled forward on his chest, and Sean looked ahead. He could see the survivors from the bridge struggling back through the village, dragging their wounded with them.

Across the whole breadth of the plain, singly and in twos and threes, harried by shrapnel, beaten, broken, Buller’s mighty army was in retreat. And there, not a hundred yards from where Sean crouched in the railway ditch, drawn up neatly in the grass, deserted, forlorn, stood the field guns.

Quickly Sean averted his eyes from them and began plodding away from the river. Over his shoulder he held Saul’s wrist, his free arm was wrapped around Saul’s waist.

“Then slowly he was aware that the Boer fire was crescendoing once more. Shell that had fallen haphazard among the retreating men began to concentrate on an area directly ahead of Sean.

Behind him the rifle-fire that had popped spasmodically on the heights now swelled into a fierce, sustained crackle like a bush fire in green forest.

Leaning against the side of the ditch Sean peered ahead through the mimosa trees and the storm of dust and bursting shell. He saw horses, two teams in harness, men with them racing in through the thorn trees, lifting pale dust in a cloud to mingle with the dust of the shells. Far ahead of them, brandishing his cane, leading them in towards the abandoned guns, galloped a figure on a big shiny bay.

“He’s laughing. ” In wonder, Sean watched the leading rider disappear behind a column of dust and high explosive, only to emerge again as he swerved his mount like a polo player. His mouth was open and Sean saw the glint of white teeth. “The fool is laughing his head off!”

And suddenly Sean was cheering wildly.

man, ride!” he shouted and his voice was lost in the shriek and crash of the bombardment.

“They’ve come to fetch the guns,” howled Sean. “Saul, they’ve come for the guns. ” Without knowin how he had done it, mad with the excitement of it, Sean found himself out of the ditch, running with new strength, running with Saul’s unconscious weight slung over his shoulder, running through the grass towards the guns.

By the time he reached the battery the first team was already there. The men were down struggling to back the horses up to the trail of the Number One gun. Sean slid the inert body from his shoulder and dropped it in the grass. Two of them were trying to lift the trail of the field gun, but this task required four men.

“Get out of the way!” Sean shouted at them and straddled the long wedge-shaped trail of steel. He locked his hands into the grips and heaved upwards, lifting it clear and high.

“Get the carriage.” Quickly they rolled the detachable axle and wheels in under the trail and locked them into position.

Sean stepped back panting.

“Well done!” The young officer leaned forward in his saddle as he shouted at Sean. “Get up on the carriage.

But Sean turned and ran to Saul, he picked him up and stumbled with him to the carriage.

“Grab him! ” he grunted at the two soldiers who were already aboard. Between them they dragged Saul up on to the carriage seat.

“No room for you, cock. Why don’t you take Taffy’s place on the right-hand wheeler?” one of them shouted down, and Sean saw he was correct. The drivers were mounting up, but one saddle was empty.

“Look after him,” he told the man who held Saul.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got him,” the gunner assured him, and then urgently,

“You’d best grab a seat-we’re pulling out.”

“Look after him,” Sean repeated and started forward.

In that moment the luck which had protected him all morning ran out. A shell burst beside him. He felt no pain but his right leg gave under him and he went down on his knees.

He tried to stand but his body would not obey.

“Forward! ” shouted the subaltern, and the gun carriage trundled away, gathering speed, beginning to jolt and bounce as the drivers lashed the horses. Sean saw the gunner who held Saul staring back at him from the carriage, his face was contorted with helplessness.

“Look after him! ” Sean shouted. “Promise me you’ll look after him. ” The gunner opened his mouth to reply, but another shell burst between them, throwing up a curtain of dust that hid the carnage. This time Sean felt the shrapnel tear into his flesh. It stung like the cut of a razor and he sagged sideways. As he went down he saw that the subaltern had been hit as well. Saw him throw up his arms and fall backwards over the rump of his horse, rolling from the saddle, hitting the ground with his shoulder, one foot caught in the stirrup so that he dragged over the rough ground until the stirrup leather snapped and left him lying. His horse galloped away in pursuit of the careering gun carriage.

Sean dragged himself after it. “Look after him,” he shouted.

“For God’s sake, look after Saul. ” But nobody heard that shout for they were gone away amongst the trees, gone away in the dust with the shellfire escorting them like a troop of brown demons.

Still Sean crawled after them, using one hand to reach ahead and claw into the earth and inch his whole body belly down through the grass. His other arm dragged at his side, and he could feel his right leg slithering after him, until it caught and tethered him. He struggled against it, but his toe had hooked in a tuft of coarse grass and he could not free it. He wriggled on to [us side and doubled up with his broken arm beneath him to look back at his leg.

There was much blood, a wet, slippery drag mark of it across the flattened grass, and still it welled up out of his body. But there was no pain, only a dizziness and a weariness in his head.

His leg twisted at a ridiculous angle from his trunk, and the spur on his boot stood up jauntily. He wanted to laugh at the leg, but somehow the effort was too great and he closed his eyes against the glare of the sun.

Near him he heard somebody groaning and for a while he thought it must be Saul. Then he remembered that Saul was safe, and it was the young subaltern. With his eyes closed Sean lay and listened to him die. It was an ugly sound.

Battle-General Jan Paulus Leroux stood upon the heights above the Tugela and removed his Terai hat. His head was bald with a fringe of ginger hair above the ears and thick around the back.

The skin of his pate was smooth and creamy white where the hat had protected it from the sun, but his face had been weathered and sculptured by the elements until it looked like a cliff of red-stone.

“Bring my pony, Hennie.” He spoke to the lad who stood beside him.

“Ja, Oorn Paul.” And he hurried away down the reverse slope to the pony laager.

From the firing trench at Jan Paulus’s feet one of his burghers looked up at him.

“God has heard our prayers, Oom Paul. He has given us a great victory. ” Jan Paulus nodded heavily, and his voice as he replied was low and humble, without any trace of jubilation.

“Ja, Fredevik. In God’s name, a great victory.

But not as great as I had planned it, he thought.

Out of cannon shot, almost out of range of the naked eye, the last tattered remnants of the British were dwindling into the brown distance.

If only they could have waited, he thought with bitterness. So clearly I explained it to them, and they did not heed me.

His whole strategy had revolved upon the bridge. If only his burghers on the kopJe below the heights had held their fire and let them cross. Then God would have delivered the enemy to them in thousands instead of hundreds. Caught in the amphitheatre of the heights with the river at their backs none of them would have escaped when his artillery destroyed the bridge behind them. Sadly he looked down upon the trap he had laid with such infinite care. From above he could see the trenches, each of them, masked and cunningly overlapped so that an unbearable fire could sweep the grassy bowl into which he had hoped to lure the British centre. The trap that would never be sprung, for he knew they would not come again.

Herime climbed back to him, leading his pony, and Jan Paulus mounted quickly.

“Come, let us go down.

At forty-two years of age, Jan Paulus Leroux was very young for the command he held. There had been opposition in Pretoria to his appointment when old Joubert refired, but President Kruger had ridden rough-shod over it and formed the Volkraad to accept. Ten minutes before, Jan Paulus had sent him a telegraphed message, which had justified this confidence.

With long stirrup leathers, his massive body loose and relaxed in the saddle, his sjambok willing from his wrist and the wide brimmed hat shading his face, Jan Paulus went down to gather the harvest of war.

As he reached the kopJes and rode in among them, his burghers rose from their trenches on the slopes and cheered him.

Their voices blended in a savage roar that echoed from the heights like the jubilation of lions on a new kill. Impassively Jan Paulus examined their faces as he passed. They were coated with red dust and burned powder, and sweat had run in dark lines through the grime. One man used his rifle as a crutch to balance himself against his wound, and there were harsh lines of pain around his mouth as he cheered. Jan Paulus checked his pony. “Lie down, don’t be a fool, man!” The man grinned painfully and shook his head.

“Nee, Oorn Paul. I’m going with you to fetch the guns.”

Brusquely Jan Paulus motioned to the men who stood beside the wounded burgher. “Take him away. Take him to the doctors. And he trotted on to where Commandant Van Wyk waited for him.

“I told you to hold your men until they crossed,” he greeted him, and Van Wyk’s grin faded.

“Ja, Oom Paul. I know. But I could not hold them. The young ones started it. When they saw the guns right there under their noses-I could not hold them. ” Van Wyk turned and pointed across the river. “Look how near they were. ” Jan Paulus looked across the river. The guns were standing in the open, so close and so lightly screened by the intervening thorn scrub that he could count the spokes of the wheels and see the sparkle of the brass breech fittings.

“It was too much temptation,” Van Wyk ended lamely.

“So! It is done, and we cannot undo it with words.” Grimly Jan Paulus determined that this man would never command again. “Come, we will fetch them.

At the road bridge Jan Paulus halted the long column of horsemen behind him. Although none of it showed on his face, yet his stomach heaved with horror at what he saw.

“Move them,” he ordered, and as the thirty burghers dismounted and went forward to clear the bridge he called out after them. “Handle them gently, lift them-do not drag them away like mealie sacks. These were men. Brave men.” Beside him the boy, Hennie, was crying openly.

The tears falling on to his patched tweed jacket.

“Be still, Jong,” Jan Paulus murmured gently. Tears are for women.” And he urged his pony into the narrow passage between the dead. It was the dust and the sun and the lyddite fumes which had irritated his own eyes, he told himself angrily.

Quietly, lacking the triumphant bearing of victors, they came to the guns and spread out among them. Then a single rifle-shot 1 cracked out and a burgher staggered and clutched the wheel of a gun carriage for support.

Whiding his pony, and flattening himself along its neck, Jan Paulus charged the don ga beyond the guns from which the shot had come.

Another shot hissed past his head, but by then Jan Paulus had reached the don ga Pulling Ins mount down from full gallop on to its haunches, he jumped from the saddle and kicked the rifle out of the British private’s hands before dragging him to his feet.

“We have killed too much already, you fool. ” Stumbling over the English words, his tongue clumsy with rage, he roared into the soldier’s face. “It is finished. Give up.” And then turning on the surviving gunners who huddled along the don ga “Give up, give up, all of you! ” None of them moved for a long minute, then slowly one at a time they stood up and shuffled out of the don ga

While a party of Boers led the prisoners away, and the others went about the business of hitching up the guns and the ammunition wagon, the British stretcher-bearers began filtering forward through the mimosa trees. Soon khaki figures were mingled everywhere with the burghers as they searched like bird-dogs for the wounded.

Two of them, dark-skinned Indians of the Medical Corps, had found a man lying out on the left flank. They were having difficulty with him, and Jan Paulus handed the reins of Ins pony to Hennie and walked across to them.

In semi-delirium the wounded man was cursing horribly and resisting all attempts by the two Indians to fix splints on his leg.

“Leave me alone, you bastards,” and a flying fist knocked one of them sprawling. Jan Paulus, recognizing the voice and the punch, started to run.

“You behave yourself, or I’ll klop you one,” he growled as he reached them. Groggily Sean rolled his head and tried to focus on him.

“Who’s that? Who are you? Get the hell away from me.

Jan Paulus did not answer. He was looking at the wounds and they made him want to vomit.

“Give to me.” He took the splints from the shaken bearers and squatted down beside Sean.

“Get away!” Sean screamed at him. “I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to cut it off!” dean ” Jan Paulus caught his wrist and held it while Sean writhed and swore.

“I’ll kill you, you filthy bastard. I’ll kill you if you touch it.