The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 36

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"It's over, General St. John," she said, and he flinched as though she had struck him across the face, and staggered groggily to his feet.

He felt his own tears sting the rims of his eyes.

"I cannot believe it." Then he realized that Elizabeth was smiling through her tears, and she was proffering the enamelled pot she held in both hands.

It stank of ammonia and the peculiar rotting odour of the disease, but the colour of the fluid had changed, from the deadly black of Guinness stout to the light golden of Pilsner beer.

"It's over," Elizabeth repeated. "Her water has cleared. She's safe. Thank God, she's safe." By that afternoon Robyn was well enough once more to order Mungo St. John to leave Khami Mission, and the following morning she tried to rise from the cot to enforce that order.

"I cannot allow my son to come under your evil influences for another day." "Madam,he started, but she swept his protest aside.

"So far I have resolved not to tell the child about you. He does not know that his father once commanded the most notorious slaving fleet that ever made the middle passage. He does not know of the thousands of damned souls, innocent children of Africa, whom you carried away to a far continent. He does not yet understand that it was you, and your ilk, that waged bloody and unprovoked war upon Lobengula and the Matabele nation, nor that you are the instrument of cruel oppression over them but unless you leave, I shall change that resolve." Her voice crackled with some of its old force, and Juba had to hold her by the shoulders. "I order you to leave Kharni immediately." The effort left Robyn white and panting, and under jubas gentle chubby hands she sank back against the bolster, and Elizabeth whispered to Mungo. "She might have a relapse. Perhaps it would be best." The corner of Mungo's mouth twisted up in that mocking grin that Robyn remembered so, well, but in the golden depths of his single eye there was a shadow, a regret or a terrible loneliness, Robyn could not be sure.

"Your servant, ma'am." He gave her an exaggerated bow, and strode from the sick room. Robyn listened to his footsteps crossing the veranda and going down the steps. Only then did she push Juba's hands away and roll on her side to face the blank whitewashed wall.

At the crest, where the path ran through a saddle between the thickly forested hills, Mungo St. John reined in his mare, and looked back. The veranda of the homestead was deserted and he sighed and picked up the reins again and faced ahead down the road into the north, but he did not shake up the mare. Instead he frowned, and lifted his chin to look into the heavens.

The northern sky was dark. It was as though a heavy curtain fell from the high heaven to the earth. It was not a cloud, for it had a peculiar density and body to it, like the poisonous plankton of the mysterious red tide which he had seen sweeping across the surface of the southern Atlantic, spreading death and desolation wherever it touched.

Yet Mungo had never seen anything like this. The magnitude of it challenged the imagination. It reached in a great arc around half the horizon, and even as he watched, it swept towards the sun which stood near its noon zenith.

Far north Mungo had seen the khamsin winds raise the mighty sandstorms over the Sahara, yet he realized there was not a sand desert within a thousand miles which could generate such a phenomenon. This was beyond his experience, and his puzzlement turned to alarm as he realized the speed at which this thing was bearing down upon him.

The fringes of the dark veil touched the rim of the sun and the white noon light altered. The mare fidgeted uncomfortably under Mungo, and a troop of guinea fowl, that had been chittering in the grass beside the track, fell silent. Swiftly the murky tide flooded the heavens, and the sun turned a sullen orange, like a disc of heated metal from the smithy's forge, and a vast shadow fell upon the land.

A silence had fallen upon the world. The murmurous insect chorus from the forest was stilled, the tin king and cheeping of small birds in the scrub had died away, sounds that were the background song of Africa, unnoticed until they were gone.

Now the stillness was oppressive. The mare nodded her head and the tinkle of her curb chain sounded jarringly loud. The spreading curtain thickened and smothered the sky, the shadow deepened.

Now there was a sound. A faint and distant sibilance like the wind shifting the sugary white sands of the desert dunes. The sun glowed dully as the ashes of a dying camp-fire.

The faint hissing sound gathered strength, like the hollow echo in a seashell held to the ear, and the filtered sunlight was a weird purplish glow. Mungo shivered with a kind of religious awe, though the heat of noon seemed even more oppressive in the gloom.

The strange rustling sound mounted swiftly, became a deep humming flutter, and then the rush of high winds, and the sun was gone, blotted out completely. Out of the hal flight he saw it coming low across the forest, sweeping towards him in twisting columns like some monstrous fog bank

With a low roar of millions upon millions of wings, it was upon him. It struck like a volley of grapeshot from a cannon, driving into his face, the impact of each horny winged body striking with a numbing shock that broke his skin and drew blood.

He flung up his hands to protect his face, and the startled mare reared, and it was a miracle of horsemanship that he kept his seat. He was half-blinded and dazed by the rushing torrent of wings about his head, and he snatched at the air, and they were so thick that he caught one of the flying insects. it was almost twice as long as his forefinger, wings a glaring orange slashed with intricate designs of black. The thorax was covered in horny armour, and from the helmeted head stared the bulging multiple eyes, yellow as polished topaz, and the long back legs were fanged with red-tipped thorns. It kicked convulsively in his hand, piercing the skin and leaving a fine line of blood droplets upon it.

He crushed it and it crackled and exploded in a burst of yellow juice. "Locusts!" He looked up again, marvelling at their multitudes.

"The third plague of Egypt,"he spoke aloud, then swung the mare away from the onrushing wall of flying bodies, and put his heels into her, driving her at a gallop back down the hill towards the Mission. The locust cloud flew faster than the mare could go at a full gallop, so he rode in semi-darkness, surrounded by the great drumming roar of wings.

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