The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 78
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Down the centre of the floor stood a row of fifty yellow drums.
Stencilled on each lid in black paint were the words. "Heavy Duty Engine Oil. 44 gals." Ralph slipped off his beige linen jacket, pulled down the knot of his necktie and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He selected a two-pound hammer and a cold chisel from the nearest workbench and started to hack open the lid of the nearest drum. The four other men crowded closer to watch. The hammer strokes echoed hollowly about the long shed. The yellow paint flew off in tiny flakes beneath the chisel, and the raw metal was bright as newly minted shillings.
At last Ralph prised open the half-severed lid, and bent it back.
The-surface of the oil glimmered glutinous and coal black in the poor light, Ralph thrust his right arm into it as far as the elbow, and drew out a long oilskin-wrapped bundle dripping with the thick oil. He carried it to the workbench, and slit the binding with the chisel, and there were exclamations of satisfaction as he stripped away the covering.
"The very latest Lee Metford bolt-action rifles firing the new smokeless cordite load. There is no other rifle in the world to match it." They passed the weapon from hand to hand, and when it reached Percy Fitzpatrick, he rattled the bolt, opening and closing it rapidly.
"How many?" "Ten to a drum," Ralph answered. "Fifty drums." "And the rest of them?" demanded Frank Rhodes. He was as unlike his younger brother as Ralph was to Jordan. A tall lean man with deepset eyes and high cheekbones, his greying hair receding from a deep bony forehead.
"I can bring through a shipment every week for the next five weeks," Ralph told him, wiping his greasy hands on a ball of cotton waste.
"Can you do it quicker than that?" "Can you clean and distribute them quicker than that?" Ralph countered, and without waiting for a reply, turned to John Hays Hammond, the brilliant American mining engineer whom he trusted more than Mr. Rhodes" ellete brother.
"Have you decided on the final plan of action?" he asked. "Mr. Rhodes will want to know when I return to Kimberley." "We will seize the Pretoria fort and the arsenal as our first objective," Hays Hammond told him, and they fell into a detailed discussion with Ralph scribbling notes on the back of a cigarette packet, When at last Ralph nodded and stuffed the packet into his back pocket, Frank Rhodes demanded. "What is the news from Bulawayo?" "Jameson has his men, over six hundred of them. They are mounted and armed. He will be ready to move southwards to Pitsani on the last day of the month, that's his latest report." Ralph shrugged on his jacket again. "It will be wiser if we are not seen together." He returned to shake hands with each of them, but when he reached Colonel Frank Rhodes, he could not resist the temptation to add, "It would also be wiser, Colonel, if you could limit your telegraph messages to essentials only. The code you are using, the daily references to this fictitious gold-mine flotation of yours is enough to attract the attention- of even the most dimwitted of the Transvaal police agents, and we know for certain that there is one in the Johannesburg telegraph office." "Sir, we have indulged in no unnecessary traffic," Frank Rhodes replied stiffly.
"Then how do you rate your latest effort? "Are the six hundred northern shareholders in a position to take up their debentures?" Ralph mimicked his prim old maidish diction, then nodded farewell and went out to where his horse was tethered and rode down the road to Fordsberg Dip and the city.
Elizabeth rose at a glance from her mother, and began to gather up the soup bowls.
"You haven't finished, Bobby," she told her young brother.
"I'm not hungry, Lizzie," the child protested. "It tastes funny."
"You always have an excuse not to eat, Master Robert," Elizabeth scolded him. "No wonder you are so skinny, you'll never grow up strong and tall like your papa." "That's enough, Elizabeth," Robyn spoke sharply. "Leave the boy, if he's not hungry. You know he isn't well."
Elizabeth glanced at her mother, then dutifully stacked Robert's boWl with the others. None of the girls had ever been allowed to leave food, not even when they were giddy with malaria, but she had learned not to protest the unfairness of Robyn's indulgence of her only son.
With the kerosene lantern in her other hand, Elizabeth went out of the back door and crossed to the thatched kitchen hut.
"It is time she had a husband." Juba shook her head mournfully.
"She needs a man in her bed and a baby to her breast to make her smile." "Don't talk nonsense, Juba," snapped Robyn. "There will be time for that later. She is doing important work here, I could not let her go. She is as good as a trained doctor." "The young men come out from Bulawayo one after the other, and she sends them all away, "Juba went on, ignoring Robyn's injunction.
"She's a sensible, serious girl," Robyn agreed. "She is a sad girl, with a secret." "Oh Juba, not every woman wants to spend her life as some man's chattel," Robyn scoffed.
"Do you remember when she was a girl?" Juba went on unperturbed.
"How bright she was, how she shone with joy, how she sparkled like a drop of morning dew." "She has grown up." "I thought it was the tall young rock-finder, the man from across the sea who took Vicky away."
Juba shook her head. "It was not him. She laughed at Vicky's wedding, and it was not the laughter of a girl who has lost her love. It is something else," Juba decided portentously, "or somebody else." Robyn was about to protest further, but she was interrupted by the sound of excited voices in the darkness outside the door, and she stood up quickly.
"What is it?" she called. "What is happening out there, Elizabeth?" and the flame of the lantern came bobbing back across the yard, lighting Elizabeth's flying feet but leaving her face in darkness.
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