Читать книгу Fort in the Jungle - Percival Christopher Wren - Страница 11

Table of Contents

It was a shocking situation, one calculated to unhinge the mind of any person not inured to horrors. Fortunately for me, I was not without experience of such. The fort was a grave, strewn—I had almost said filled—with the hacked and mutilated bodies of my comrades and the corpses of those whom they had slain in the fierce barter of lives.

All that was wrong with me, physically, was an appalling headache, and a wound which, although it had at first seemed to me to be a depressed fracture of the skull, was merely a scalp wound. My thick képi had saved me from the worst injury, and doubtless the confined space in which we had been struggling on the cat-walk had prevented my assailant from doing himself justice....

Never shall I forget the first awful minutes of recovering consciousness, when I found myself pinned down, half-crushed, almost smothered, by the bodies of the dead.

At first I thought I was myself dead; and then, when convinced that I was alive, was sure that I was dying, for I was in hideous pain, and could move neither hand nor foot.

When, however, I fully recovered consciousness, I found, after a few mighty heaves and struggles, that I could sit up ... stand up ... and walk about.

What amazed me was the fact that the fort should be deserted, almost intact; and I concluded that there must be some more attractive object to which the pirate and rebel force had passed on, as soon as our post of Houi-Ninh had fallen and its garrison been exterminated.

As I staggered round the enceinte, averting my eyes from the bodies of my comrades—some of which had been deliberately mutilated—and entered the barrack-room, store-room and other quarters, I saw that the place had been looted and wantonly damaged; but there had been no attempt to set the buildings on fire. Nor had all the tinned provisions been removed.

I wondered whether policy or haste was the reason for this only partial destruction; whether the T’uh Muh, the leader of this horde, had decided that it would be foolish to destroy a captured fort that might later be extremely useful to himself; or whether he had been in too great a hurry to pass on to join General De-Nam and be in at the death.

I decided that haste was the reason; and that it accounted for the fact that only a few of the dead had been mutilated.

Possibly these had fallen, wounded, unable to defend themselves longer, and had been tortured to death. Possibly the mutilation was merely a wanton and savage hacking of the dead by the actual slayers of the fallen légionnaires whose desperate resistance had enraged them.

There lay Paladino, his khaki uniform dark-stained with blood from head to foot, his face in death still wearing its cynical expression, still looking as baffling and enigmatic as in life.

Near him, lay his friend Lemoine who evidently, back to back with him, had sold his life as dearly; for about them was a heaped circle of dacoits, shot, bayoneted, clubbed, in the last struggle of two against a score.

Old Schenko, veteran of a hundred fights, lay where he had fallen from the cat-walk, a bullet through his head.

Near him, savagely slashed and hacked, was the man I had known as Nul de Nullepart, a hitherto attractive man.

There they lay—my comrades; Paladino, Nul de Nullepart, Schenko, Pancezys, Gusbert, Richeburg, Van Diemen, the men who so shortly before had been confessing each his worst sin (some of which had been pretty awful); the men with whom I had lived and marched; eaten and drunk; worked and sung and talked—stiff and grim and gory in death.

And I felt that the least I could do was to give them decent burial.

Having stripped, washed, and bathed my head in a bucket of water, I made coffee, had a meal of cold boiled rice, tinned meat and biscuit; and then walked round the cat-walk staring over the wall into the surrounding jungle, thick, dark and dank, that seemed about to advance across the little clearing, some forty yards in width—studded with thousands of little bamboo stakes, hardened by boiling in castor-oil, and sharpened to a knife-like point—that lay about three walls of the fort.

Not a sign of a human being.

I thought of the heliograph. It was just possible that I could get a reply if I flashed it long enough.

Climbing, by way of the inside staircase, to the heliograph platform on the roof of the high watch-tower, I found that it had been smashed. What surprised me was the fact that the tricolour had been left flying, or rather, drooping, from its mast.

Uncoiling the halyard from the cleat at the mast-foot, I raised and lowered the flag many times. Should any far-distant telescope trained upon it, see this movement of the flag, it would be known that something was wrong at the fort of Houi-Ninh.

I could do nothing more in that way, and I must get to work.

For the next hour or two I laboured like a horse between shafts, seizing the feet of each dead dacoit and dragging him behind me, through the gate, and out across the clearing into the jungle.

This work was not as difficult as it was horrible; and, before long, I had cleared the fort of the bodies of its invaders.

This done, I shut the big iron-wood gates and dropped the steel bar into place. I had had some compunction about opening these, but as the enemy had completely departed, it seemed safe to do so; and, in any case, if there were another attack upon the place, it would be completely impossible for me to hope to defend it alone. In these days of machine-guns, rifle-grenades, and “pineapple” bombs thrown by hand, one légionnaire might do a good deal from a fort wall, against such an enemy. But, at that time, it would have been merely a case of a man with a rifle and bayonet against hundreds, perhaps thousands, equally well-armed. So it really mattered little whether the gates were open or shut.

I then, wearing only my boots and a pair of cotton shorts, began to dig. Fortunately the ground inside the fort was soft; and, by swinging mightily with a pick, and then putting my back into it with the long-handled French army shovel, I made good progress.

Had I had unlimited time, I would have dug a grave for each of my comrades. As it was, I should have to be content to dig one big grave six feet wide and long enough to take them all—in three or four tiers.

With intervals for rest and food, I worked all day, in spite of the heat and a splitting headache; for I had a great feeling of urgency, apart from the fact that, in that climate, the sooner burial follows death, the better. Unless I did this I could not possibly stay in the fort, and I could not drag my comrades out to be devoured by vultures and wild beasts.

I must undoubtedly have had a pretty savage clout on the head, for I distinctly remember that, at one time, when throwing heavy spadefuls of earth up out of the deepening grave, I thought I was on the slag-laden lighter in Valparaiso harbour; that lighter in which I had done the hardest and heaviest labour that I ever did in my life, shovelling the slag, heavy as lead, into great baskets for the ballasting of the ship Valkyrie. I also remember thinking that the vultures that settled on the walls of the fort, and eyed me, were the men of my Watch who, instead of helping with the cruel, heavy work, took a spell and loafed—watching.

It was well for me that I was strong beyond the ordinary and inured to the hardest of labour.

That evening I rested for a couple of hours, and then began work again, closing my ears, as I did so, to the sounds that came across the clearing, from where leopards and other wild beasts disputed over the bodies of the slain dacoits.

By moonlight I buried my comrades, carrying each to the edge of the grave, lifting him down into it, and disposing him as well as I could.

It is not a night that I willingly look back upon; but I am glad that I did what I did, my only regret being that I had to place them all in the one grave, row upon row, like sardines in a box.

When I had finished, and filled the grave in, I carried stones and laid them in an oblong upon the tamped earth. In the midst of the stones I planted a rough cross, formed by nailing a length of packing-case to a wooden post; and on the short arm of the cross I printed, as neatly as I could, with indelible pencil, the usual

Morts sur le Champ d’Honneur.

And on the upright of the cross I wrote their names.

Well, I had done my best, and if France cared to do better, she would have the opportunity.