unsighted gunner picked him up again. He plunged onwards and lances of pain shot through the old bullet wounds in his back, wounds which he had not felt in over a year; the pain was in anticipation, as well as from the wrench of his fall.
The bank of red earth on the far side of the road seemed to loom far off while instinct warned him that the Vickers was on to him again. He launched himself feet first, like a baseball player sliding for the plate, and at the same instant the stream of Vickers bullets tore a leaping sheet of dust off the lip of the bank, and the ricochets screamed like frustrated banshees and wailed away into the night.
Mark lay under the bank for many seconds with his face cradled in the crook of his arm, sobbing for breath while the pain in his old wounds receded and his heart picked up its normal rhythm. When he lifted his head again, his expression was bleak and his anger was cold and bright and functional.
Fergus MacDonald swore softly with both hands on the firing handles of the Vickers, his forefingers still holding the automatic safety-catch open and his thumbs poised over the firing button. He kept the weapon swinging in short rhythmic traverses back and forth as he peered down the slope, but he was swearing, monotonous profanity in a low tight whisper.
The man beside him was kneeling, ready to feed the belt to the gun, and now he whispered hoarsely, I think you got him. The hell I did, hissed Fergus, and jerked the gun across as something in shadow caught his eye down on the road.
He fired a short holding burst, and then muttered. Right, let's pull out. Damn it, comrade, we've got them - protested the loader.
You bloody fool, didn't you see him? Fergus asked. Didn't you see the way he crossed the road, don't you realize we've got a real ripe one on our hands? Whoever he is, he's a killer. Are we going to let one bastard chase us You're so right, snapped Fergus. When it's that bucko down there, I'm not going to risk this gun. It's worth a hundred trained men, he patted the square steel breech block. We came here to kill Clever Jannie, and he's down there, cooking in his fancy motorcar. Now, let's get the hell out of here, and he started the complicated process of unloading the Vickers, cranking it once to clear the chamber of its live round and then cranking again to clear the round in the feed block. Tell the boys to cover us when we pull back, he grunted, as he extracted the ammunition belt from the breech pawls, and then started uncoupling the Vickers from its tripod. Come on, work quickly, he snapped at his loader. That bastard is on his way, I can feel him breathing down my neck already. There were eight strikers on the slope of the dump, Fergus and two for the Vickers, with five riflemen spread out around the gun to support and cover. Right, let's go. Fergus carried the thick-jacketed barrel over one shoulder and a heavy case of ammunition in his left hand; his number two wrestled with the ungainly fifty-pounds weight of metal tripod and the number three carried the five-gallon can of cooling water and the second case of ammunition. We are pulling out, Fergus called to his riflemen, look lively, that's a dangerous bastard coming after us! They ran in a group, bowed under their burdens, feet slipping in the loose white cyanided sand of the dump.
The shot was from the left, Fergus had not expected that, and it was impossibly high on the dump. The bastard must have grown wings and flown to get there, Fergus thought.
The report was a heavy booming clap, some sort of sporting rifle, and behind him the number three made a strange grunting sound as though his lungs had been forcibly emptied by a heavy blow. Fergus glanced back and saw him down, a dark untidy shape on the white sand. Good Christ, gasped Fergus. It had to be flukey shooting at that range, and in this impossible light, just the early stars and the ruddy glow of the burning Cadillac.
The rifle boom boomed again, and he heard one of his riflemen scream and then thrash about wildly in the undergrowth.
Fergus knew he had judged his adversary fairly, he was a killer. They were all running now, shouting and firing wildly as they scattered tack under the tee of the dump, and Fergus ran with them, only one thought in his mind, he must get his precious Vickers safely away. It The sweat had soaked through his jacket between the shoulders, and had run down from under his cap so that he was blinded, and unable to speak when at last he tumbled into the cover of a deep donga and sat against the earth of the bank, with the machine gun cradled in his arms like an infant.
one after another his riflemen reached the donga and fell thankfully into cover.
How many were there? gasped one of them. I don't know, panted another, must have been a dozen ZARPS, at least. They got Alfie. And they got Henry also, I saw five of them.
Fergus had recovered his breath enough to speak now. There was one, only one, but a good one. Did we get Slim Jannie? Yes, said Fergus grimly. We got him all right. He was in the first car, I saw his flag and I saw him cooking. We can go home now. It was a little before eleven o'clock when the solitary Rolls-Royce was halted at the gates of police headquarters on Marshall Square by the suspicious sentries, but when the occupants were recognized, half a dozen high-ranking police and military officers hurried down the steps to welcome them.
The Prime Minister went directly to the large visitors drawing-room on the first floor which had been transformed into the headquarters of the military administration, empowered and entrusted by the declaration of martial law with the Government of the nation. The relief on the faces of the assembled officers was undisguised.
The situation was a mess, but Smuts was here at last and now they could expect order and direction and sanity to emerge from the chaos.
He listened to their reports quietly, tugging at his little goatee beard, his expression becoming more grim as the full extent of the situation was explained.
He was silent a little longer, brooding over the map, and then he looked up at General van Deventer, an old comrade in arms during two wars, a man who had ridden with him on that historic commando into the Cape in igoi and Who had fought beside him against the wily old German, Lettow von Vorbeck, in German East Africa. Jacobus, he said, you command the East Rand. Van Deventer whispered an acknowledgement, his vocal chords damaged by a British bullet in or, Sean, you have the west. I want the Brixton ridge under our control by noon tomorrow. Then, as an afterthought, Have your lads arrived from Natal yet? I hope so, said Sean Courtney. So do I, Smuts smiled thinly. You will have a merry time taking the ridge single-handed. The smile flickered off his face. I want your battle plans presented by breakfast time, gentlemen. I don't have to remind you that, as always, the watchword is speed. We have to cauterize this ulcer and bind it up swiftly. in early autumn, the highveld sun has a peculiar brilliance, pouring down through an atmosphere thinned by altitude out of a sky of purest gayest blue.
It was weather for picnicking and for lovers in quiet gardens, but on 14th March 1922 it was not calm, but a stillness of a menacing and ominous intensity which hung over the city of Johannesburg and its satellite towns.
In just two days van Deventer had swept through the East Rand, stunning the strikers with his Boer Commando tactics, rolling up all resistance in Benoni and Dunswart, recapturing Brakpan and the mine, while the Brits column under his command drove through the Madder and Geduld mines and linked with van Deventer at Springs. In two days, they had crushed the revolt on the East Rand, and thousands of strikers came in under the
