You'll never know what it's like to be that afraid.
'For-get it, Saul. Leave it alone.'
'I've got to tell you. I owe it to you-from now on I owe you .
If you hadn't come back I'd be . . . I'd still be out there. I owe
you.'
'Shut up, damn you! ' He saw that Saul's eyes were different, the
pupils had shrunk to tiny black specks and he was shaking his head in a
meaningless idiotic fashion. The bullet had con cussed him. But this
could not prevent Sean's anger. 'Shut UP, he snarled. 'You think I
don't know about fear. I was so scared out there-I hated you. Do you
hear that? I hated you!
And then Sean's voice softened. He had to explain to Saul and himself.
He had to tell him about it, to justify it and place it securely in the
scheme of things.
Suddenly he felt very old and wise. In his hands he held the key to
the whole mystery of life. It was all so clear, for the first time he
understood and he could explain it.
They sat close together in the sun, isolated from the men around them,
and Sean's voice sank to an urgent whisper as he tried to make Saul
understand, tried to pass on to him this knowledge that embraced all
truth.
Beside them lay a corporal of the Fusiliers. He lay on his back, dead,
and the flies swarmed over his eyes and laid their eggs. They looked
like tiny grains of rice clustered in the lashes around his dead open
eyes.
Saul leaned heavily against Sean's shoulder, now and then he shook his
head in confusion as he listened to Sean. Listened to Sean's voice
tripping and stumbling then starting to hurry as his ideas broke up and
crumpled, heard the desperation in it as Sean strove to retain just a
few grains of all that knowledge which had been his a few moments
before. Heard it peter out into silence and sorrow as he found that it
was gone.
'I don't know,' Sean admitted at last.
Then Saul spoke, his voice was dull and his eyes would not focus
properly as he peered at Sean from beneath the bloodstained turban of
bandages.
'Ruth,' he said. 'You speak like Ruth does. Sometimes in the night
when she cannot sleep she tries to tell me. Almost I understand,
almost she finds it and then she stops. 'I don't know,' she says at
last. 'I just don't know. 'Sean jerked away from him, and stared into
his face. 'Ruth?'
he asked quietly.
'Ruth-my wife. You'd like her, Sean-she'd like you. So brave-she came
to me through the Boer lines. All the way from Pretoria-riding alone.
She came to me. I couldn't believe it.
All that way. She just walked into camp one day and said,
'Hello, Saul. I'm here!' just like that! You'll like her when you
meet her, Sean. She's so beautiful, so serene .
In October when the big winds blow they come for the first time on a
