snap the vertebrae.
The earth seemed to tot and turn beneath him, he knew he was going for
his vision was blotched with moving patches of deeper darkness-the
knowledge gave him a little more strength.
He flung it all on to Jan Paulus's neck. It moved. Jan Paulus gave a
wild muffled cry and his grip on Sean's chest eased a fraction.
Again, Sean told himself, again. And he gathered all of what was left
for the final effort.
Before he could make it, Jan Paulus moved quickly under him, changing
his grip, lifting Sean clear of his chest. Then his knees came up
under Sean's pelvis and with a convulsive heave drove Sean's lower body
forward and over-cartwheeling him so that he was forced to release Jan
Paulus's neck and use his hands to break his own fall.
A rock caught him in the small of the back and agony flared in him like
sheet lightning in a summer sky. Dimly through it he heard the shouts
of the British infantry very near, saw Jan Paulus scramble up and
glance down the slope at the starlight on the bayonets, and saw him
take off up the slope.
Sean dragged himself to his feet and tried to follow him but the pain
in his back was an effective hobble and Jan Paulus reached the crest
ten paces ahead of him. But as he ran, another dark shape closed on
his flank the way a good dog will quarter on a running rybuck. It was
Mbejane and Sean could see the long steel in his hand as he lifted it
above Jan Paulus's back.
'No! ' shouted Sean. 'No, Mbejane! Leave him! Leave him!
Mbejane hesitated, slowed his run, stopped and looked back at Sean.
Sean stood beside him, his hands clasped to his back and his breathing
hissed in his throat. Below them from the dark rear slope of the ridge
came the hoof-beats of a single running pony.
The sounds of Jan Paulus's flight dwindled, and they were engulfed in
the advance of the lines of the bayonet men from the train. Sean
turned and limped back through them.
Two days later, on the relief train, they reached Johannesburg.
'I suppose we should report to somebody,' Saul suggested as the three
of them stood together on the station platform beside the small pile of
luggage they had been able to salvage from the train wreck.
'You go and report, if that's what you want,' Sean answered him.
'Me, I'm going to look around.'
'We've got no billets, ' Saul protested.
'Follow your Uncle Sean.'
Johannesburg is an evil city, sired by Greed out of a dam named Gold.
But it has about it an air of gaiety, of brittle excitement and bustle.
When you are away from it you can hate it-but when you return you are
immediately re-infected. As Sean was now.
He led them through the portals of the railway building into Eloff
Street and grinned as he looked up that well-remembered thoroughfare.
It was crowded. The carriages jostled for position with the
horse-drawn trams. On the sidewalks beneath the tall three- and
four-storeyed buildings the uniforms of a dozen different regiments set
