'Yeah, you do that.' Again they were silent in the steady swish of the
wind and the drone of the motor.
'There's a railway.' Ruffy pointed to the blue-grovelled embankment
through the trees.
'Nearly there,' said Bruce.
They came out into another open glade and beyond it the water tank of
Msapa junction stuck up above the forest.
'Here we are,' said Ruffy and drained the bottle in his hand.
'Just say a prayer that the telegraph lines are still up and that
there's an operator on the Elisabethville end.' Bruce slowed the Ford
past the row of cottages. They were exactly as he remembered them,
deserted and forlorn.
The corners of his mouth were compressed into a hard angle as he looked
at the two small mounds of earth beneath the asia flora trees.
Ruffy looked at them also but neither of the spoke.
Bruce stopped the Ford outside the station building and they climbed out
stiffly and walked together on to the verandah. The wooden flooring
echoed dully under their boots as they made for the door of the office.
Bruce pushed the door open and looked in. The walls were painted a
depressing utility green, loose paper scattered on the floor the drawers
of the single desk hung open, and a thin grey skin of dust coated
everything.
'There she is,' said Ruffy and pointed to the brass and varnished wood
complexity of the telegraph on a table against the far wall.
'Looks all right,' said Bruce. 'As long as the lines haven't been cut.'
As if to reassure him, the telegraph began to clatter like a typewriter.
'Thank God for that,' sighed Bruce.
They walked across to the table.
'You know how to work this thing?' asked Ruffy.
'Sort of,' Bruce answered and set his rifle against the wall. He
was relieved to see a Morse table stuck with adhesive tape to the wall
above the apparatus. It was a long time since he had memorized it as a
boy scout.
He laid his hand on the transmission key and studied the table.
The call sign for Elisabethville was
'EE'.
He tapped it out clumsily and then waited. Almost immediately the set
clattered back at him, much too fast to be intelligible and the roll of
paper in the repeater was exhausted. Bruce took off his helmet and
laboriously spelled outl
'Transmit slower.' It was a long business with requests for repetition.
'Not understood' was made nearly every
second signal, but finally Bruce got the operator to understand that he
had an urgent message for Colonel Franklyn of President Tshornbe's
staff.
'Wait,' came back the laconic signal.
And they waited. They waited an hour, then two.
'That mad bastard's forgotten about us,' grumbled Ruffy and went to the
Ford to fetch the beer crate. Bruce fidgeted restlessly on the unpadded
