Cupid in Africa Part 38

With a wild yell, the big Baluchis and little Gurkhas charged, and the line was borne back toward the machine-gunners, who disappeared with wonderful dispatch, in search of a desirable and eligible pitch, preferably on a flank, for their next musical performance.

"Hullo, Priceless Old Thing, stopped one?" asked Augustus, pausing in his rush.

"Bit chipped," Bertram managed to say.

"Oh, poignant! Search-" began Augustus . . . and fell across Bertram, causing him horrible agony, a bullet-hole the size of a marble in his forehead, the back of his head blown completely out.

Bertram fainted as his friend's brains oozed and spread across his chest.

Having dodged and manuvred to a flank position, one of the machine-gunners played a solo to the wounded while waiting a more favourable moment and target. His fellow sons of _kultur_ wanted no wounded German _askaris_ on their hands, and of course the wounded Sepoys and British were better dead. Dead men don't recover and fight again. . . .

So he did a little neat spraying of twitching, writhing, crawling, wriggling or staggering individuals and groups. Incidentally he hit the two British officers again, riddling the body which was on top of the other, putting one bullet through the left arm of the underneath one. . . .

Then he had to scurry off again, as the fighting-line was getting so far towards his left that he might be cut off. . . . Anyhow he'd had a very good morning and felt sure his "good old German G.o.d" must be feeling quite pleased about it.

CHAPTER IV _Baked_

--1

When he recovered consciousness, Bertram found himself lying on a stretcher in a little natural clearing in the bush-a tiny square enclosed by acacia, sisal, and mimosa scrub. On a candelabra tree hung a bunch of water-bottles, a helmet, some haversacks, a tunic, and strips of white rag.

An officer of the Royal Army Medical Corps and a _babu_ of the Indian Subordinate Medical Service were bending over a medical pannier.

Stretcher-bearers brought in another burden as he turned his head to look round. It was a Native Officer. On top of his head was an oblong of bare-shaven skull-some caste-mark apparently. Following them with his eyes Bertram saw the stretcher-bearers place the unconscious (or dead) man at the end of a small row of similar still forms. . . . There was Brannigan. . . . There was a man with whom he had shared a tent for a night at Taveta. . . . What was his name? . . . There were the two Baluchi subalterns. . . . Was that the dead row-the mortuary, so to speak, of this little field ambulance? Was he to join it?

The place stunk of blood, iodine and horrors. He could move neither hand nor foot, and the world seemed to be a Mountain of Pain upon the peak of which he was impaled. . . .

The continued rattle of firing was coming nearer, surely? It was-much nearer. The stretcher-bearers brought in another casualty, the stretcher dripping blood. No "walking wounded" appeared to come to this particular dressing-station.

The firing was getting quite close, and the sound of the cracking of branches was audible. Leaves and twigs, cut from the trees by the bullets, occasionally fell upon the mangled and broken forms as though to hide them. . . .

"Sah-they are coming!" said the _babu_ suddenly. His face was a mask of fear, but he continued to perform his duties as dresser, as well as his shaking hands would permit.

Suddenly a ragged line of Gurkhas broke into the clearing, halting to fire, retreating and firing again, fighting from tree to tree and bush to bush. . . . The mixed, swaying and changing battle-line was going to cross the spot where the wounded lay. . . . Those of them who were conscious knew what _that_ meant. . .

So did the medical officer, and he shouted to the stretcher-bearers, _babu_, mule-drivers, porters, everybody, to carry the wounded farther into the bush-quick-quick. . . .

As his stretcher was s.n.a.t.c.hed up, Bertram-so sick with pain, and the cruel extra agony of the jolts and jars, that he cared not what befell him-saw a group of _askaris_ burst into the clearing, glare around, and rush forward with bayonets poised. He shut his eyes as they reached the other stretchers. . . .

--2

On the terrible journey down the Tanga Railway to M'buyuni, between Taveta and Voi, Bertram kept himself alive with the thought that he would eventually reach Mombasa. . . .

He had forgotten Eva only while he was in the fight and on the stretcher, but when he lay on the floor of the cattle-truck he seemed to wake from a night of bad dreams-to awake again into the brightness and peace of the day of Love.

Of course, the physical agony of being jolted and jerked for a hundred and fifty miles, throughout which every b.u.mp of every wheel over every railway joint gave a fresh stab of pain to each aching wound and his throbbing head, was a terrible experience-but he would rather have been lying on the floor of that cattle-truck b.u.mping towards Mombasa, than have been marching in health and strength away from it.

Every b.u.mp that racked him afresh meant that he was about forty feet nearer to M'buyuni which was on the line to Voi which is on the line to Mombasa.

What is the pain of a shattered right elbow, a broken left arm, a bullet hole in the right thigh and another in the left calf, when one is on the road to where one's heart is, and one is filled with the divine wonder of first love?

He could afford to pity the poor uninjured Bertram Greene of yesterday, marching farther and farther from where all hope, happiness, joy, peace and plenty lay, where love lay, and where alone in all the world could he know content. . . .

She would not think the less of him that he had temporarily lost the use of his hands and, for a time, was lame. . . . He had done his duty and was out of it! Blessed wounds! . . .

--3

In the hospital at M'buyuni the clean bullet-holes in the flesh of his legs healed quickly. Lucky for him that they had been made by nickel Maxim-bullets and not by the horrible soft-nosed slugs of the _askaris'_ rifles. The bone-wounds in his arms were more serious, and he could walk long before he could use his hands.

His patient placidity was remarkable to those who came in contact with him-not knowing that he dwelt in a serene world apart and dreamed love's young age-old dream therein.

Every day was a blessed day in that it brought him much nearer to the moment when he would see her face, hear her voice, touch her hand. What unthinkably exquisite joy was to be his-and was his _now_ in the mere contemplation of it!

His left arm began to do well, but the condition of his right arm was less satisfactory.

"Greene, my son," said the O.C. M'buyuni Stationary Hospital to him one day, "you're for the Hospital Ship _Madras_, her next trip. Lucky young dog. Wish I was. . . . Give my love to Colonel Giffard and Major Symons when you get on board. . . . You'll get a trip down to Zanzibar, I believe, on your way to Bombay. . . . You'll be having tea on the lawn at the Yacht Club next month-think of it!"

Bertram thought of something else and radiated joy.

"Aha! That bucks you, does it? Wounded hero with his arm in a sling at the Friday-evening-band-night-tea-on-the-lawn binges, what?"

Bertram smiled.

"Could I stay on in Mombasa a bit, sir?" he asked.

The O.C. M'buyuni Stationary Hospital stared.

"Eh?" said he, doubting that he could have heard aright. Bertram repeated the question, and the O.C., M.S.H., felt his pulse. Was this delirium?

"No," he said shortly in the voice of one who is grieved and disappointed. "You'll go straight on board the _Madras_-and d.a.m.ned lucky too. . . . You don't deserve to. . . . I'd give . . ."

"What is the procedure when I get to Bombay?" asked Bertram, as the doctor fell into a brown study.

"You'll go before a Medical Board at Colaba Hospital. They may detain you there, give you a period of sick leave, or invalid you out of the Service. Depends on how your right arm shapes. . . . You'll be all right, I think."

"And if my arm goes on satisfactorily I shall be able to come back to East Africa in a month or two perhaps?" continued Bertram.

"Yes. Nice cheery place, what?" said the Medical Officer and departed.

He never could suffer fools gladly and he personally had had enough, for the moment, of heat, dust, stench, monotony, privation, exile, and overwork. . . . _Hurry_ back to East Africa! . . . Zeal for duty is zeal for duty-and lunacy's lunacy. . . . But perhaps the lad was just showing off and talking through his hat, what?

--4