The motor transport was drawn up in the open ground near the headgear of Crown Mine's main haulage, a towering structure, shaped like the Eiffel Tower, steel girders riveted and herring-boned for strength, rising a hundred feet to the huge wheels of the winching equipment. When the shift was in, these wheels spun back and forth, back and forth, lowering the cages filled with men and equipment, hundreds of feet into the living earth, and raising the millions of tons of gold-bearing rock out of the depths.
Now the great wheels stood motionless, they had been dead for three months now, and the buildings clustered about the tower were gloomy and deserted.
The transport was an assortment of trucks and commercial vans, commandeered under martial law, gravel lorries from the quarries, mining vehicles, even a bakery van, but it was clear that there was not enough to take out six hundred men.
As Mark came up, marching on the flank of A Company, there were half a dozen officers in discussion at the head of the convoy. Mark recognized the familiar bearded figure of General Courtney standing head and shoulders above the others, and his voice was raised in an angry growl. I want all these men moved before noon. They've done fine work, they deserve hot food and a place, At that moment he saw Mark, and frowned heavily, waving him over and beginning to speak before he had arrived. Where the hell have you been? With the company I sent you to take a message, and expected you back.
You know damned well I didn't mean you to get into the fighting. You are on my staff, sir! Mark was tired and irritable, still emotionally disturbed by all that he had seen and done that day, and he was in no mood for one of the General's tantrums.
His rebellious expression was unmistakable. Sir, he began, and Sean shouted at him, And don't take that tone to me, young man! An uncaring, completely irresponsible dark rage descended on Mark. He didn't give a damn for the consequences and he leaned forward, pale with fury, and opened his mouth.
The regiment was bunched up now, halted in the open roadway, neat symmetrical blocks of khaki, six hundred men in ranks three deep.
The shouted orders of the N. C. O. s halted each section, one after the other, and stood them at the easy position.
From the top of the steel headgear, they made an unforgettable sight in the rich yellow light of early morning. Ready, luv, whispered Fergus MacDonald, and Helena nodded silently. Reality had long faded and been replaced by this floating dreamlike state. Her shoulders were raw where the carrying straps of the heavy ammunition boxes had bitten into the flesh, but there was no pain, just a blunting numbness of body. Her hands seemed bloated, and clumsy, the nails broken off raggedly and rinded with black half -moons of dirt, and the harsh canvas of the ammunition belts between her fingers felt smooth as silk, the brass cartridge cases cool, so that she felt like pressing them to her dried cracked lips.
Why was Fergus staring at her that way, she wondered with a prickle of irritation that did not last, once again the dreamy floating sensation. You can go down now, Fergus said quietly. You don't have to stay. He looked like a very old man, his face shrivelled and falling in upon itself. The stubble of beard on his lined and haggard cheeks was silvery as diamond chips, but the skin was stained by smoke and dirt and sweat.
Only the eyes below the peak of the cloth cap still burned with the dark fanatic flames.
Helena shook her head. She wanted him to stop talking, the sound intruded, and she turned her head away.
The men below stood shoulder to shoulder in their orderly ranks. The low sun threw long narrow shadows from their feet across the red dust of the roadway.
A second longer Fergus stared at her. She was a pale, wasted stranger, the bones pushing through the smooth drawn flesh of her face, the scarf wound like a gypsy around her head, covering the black cropped hair. All right then, he murmured, and tapped the breech of the Vickers, once, twice, training it slightly left.
There was a group of officers near the head of the column. One of them was a big powerful man with a dark beard. The sunlight sparkled on his shoulder-tabs, Fergus lowered his head and looked through the rear sight of the Vickers.
There was a younger slimmer officer with the other, and Fergus blinked twice rapidly, as something stirred deep in his memory.
He hooked his fingers into the automatic safety-bar and lifted it, priming the gun, and he brought his thumbs on to the firing button.
He blinked again. The face of the young officer moved something in him, he felt a softening and blurring of his determination and he rejected it violently and thrust down on the button with both thumbs.
The weapon juddered on its tripod, and the long belt was sucked greedily into the breech, Helena's small pale hands guiding it carefully, and the empty brass cases spewed out from under the gun, tinkling and ringing and bouncing off the steel girders of the headgear.
The sound was a deafening tearing roar that seemed to fill Helena's head and beat against her eyes, like the frantic wings of a trapped bird.
Even the most skilled marksman must guard against the tendency to ride up on a downhill shot. The angle from the top of the headgear was acute and the soft yellowish early light further confused Fergus aim. His first burst carried high, shoulder-high instead of belly-high, which is the killing line for machine-gun fire.
The first bullets struck before Mark heard the gun. One of them hit Sean Courtney high up in the big bulky body.
It flung him forward, chest to chest with Mark, and both of them went down, sprawling in the roadway.
Fergus tapped the breech block, dropping his aim a fraction on to the belly line, and traversed in a long unhurried sweep along the ranks of standing soldiers, cutting them with the scythe of the Vickers in the eternal seconds that they still stood in stunned paralysis.
The stream of tracer hosed them, and washed them into crazy heaps, piled them on each other, dead and wounded together, their screams high and thin in the rushing hurricane of Vickers fire.
Sean rolled half off Mark, and his face was contorted, angry and outraged, as he tried to struggle on to his knees, but his one arm was dangling. His blood splattered them both and he flopped helplessly.
Mark wriggled out from under him, and looked up at the headgear. He saw the tracer flickering like fire-flies and
