'Monsieur,' he explained, 'I wish to-'
'Get back here!' roared
Bruce. The man hesitated in confusion and then he began closing his fly.
'Hurry up - you bloody fool.' Obediently the man hastened the closing of
his trousers.
Everyone had stopped work and they were all watching him. His face was
dark with embarrassment and he fumbled clumsily.
'Leave that.' Bruce was frantic. 'Get back here.' The first arrow rose
lazily out of the undergrowth along the river in a silent parabola.
Gathering speed in its descent, hissing softly, it dropped into the
ground at the man's feet and stuck up jauntily. A thin reed, fletched
with green leaves, it looked harmless as a child's plaything.
'Run,' screamed Bruce. The man stood and stared with detached disbelief
at the arrow.
Bruce started forward to fetch him, but Ruffy's huge black hand closed
on his arm and he was helpless in its grip.
He struck out at Ruffy, struggling to free himself but he could not
break that hold.
A swarm of them like locusts on the move, high arching, fluting softly,
dropping all around the man as he started to run.
Bruce stopped struggling and watched. He heard the metal heads clanking
on the bonnet of the truck, saw them falling wide of the man, some of
the frail shafts snapping as they hit the ground.
Then between the shoulders, like a perfectly placed banderilla, one hit
him. It flapped against his back as he ran and he twisted his arms
behind him, vainly trying to reach it, his face twisted in horror and in
pain.
'Hold him down,' shouted Bruce as the coloured man ran into the shelter.
Two gendarmes jumped forward, took his arms and forced him face
downwards on to the ground.
He was gabbling incoherently with horror as Bruce straddled his back and
gripped the shaft. Only half the barbed head had buried itself - a
penetration of less than an inch - but when Bruce pulled the shaft it
snapped off in his hand leaving the steel twitching in the flesh.
'Knife,' shouted Bruce and someone thrust a bayonet into his hand.
'Watch those barbs, boss. Don't cut yourself on them.'
'Ruffy, get your boys ready to repel them if they rush us,' snapped
Bruce and ripped away the shirt. For a moment he stared at the crudely
hand-beaten iron arrowhead. The poison coated it thickly, packed in
behind the barbs, looking like sticky black toffee.
He's dead,' said Ruffy from where he leaned over the 'bonnet of the
truck. 'He just ain't stopped breathing Yet.' The man screamed and
twisted under Bruce as he made the first incision, cutting in deep
beside the arrowhead with the point of the bayonet.
'Hendry, get those pliers out of the tool kit.'
'Here they are.'
Bruce gripped the arrowhead with the steel jaws and pulled. The flesh
clung to it stubbornly, lifting in a pyramid.
with the bayonet, feeling it tear. Bruce imagined It was like trying to
get the hook out of the rubbery mouth of a cat-fish.
