Wiley strode up and down, his face anxious, still conferring now and again with the headman sitting on the platform outside his hut. The villagers kept up their strange rites, but the life had gone right out of them now. They were jaded, weary, as if the mainspring of their intention had broken at last, the zest vanishing with the sickness left behind by the heady fumes of the native beer, constant beer which had poured out of them in sweat throughout the long, feverish hours of celebration to leave behind the dreg-deposits of poison. By this time Shaw was drenched in the petrol, yet he guessed that the cans above his head must still be at least three-quarters full. Owing to the extreme humidity, evaporation had been slow and he was standing now in a widening pool of the stuff. His face was white and strained, his lips stiff in an effort to retain his retching as he looked over at Wiley.
He wondered what was on Wiley’s mind. The man seemed to have forgotten about Shaw and the girl. Perhaps Bluebolt wasn’t in position yet… but then surely Hartog would have been able to give a precise timing?
And then, only a few seconds later, something happened at last.
A man came running fast along the jungle path into the clearing, bursting into the middle of the weary dancers. Panting, gasping, this man ran up to the headman, his eyes rolling in terror. He shouted rapidly, hoarsely, as he went; Shaw, watching, saw the old headman turn a greyish colour and speak to Wiley, and then to the guards flanking him. Two men dragged him to his feet, and he stood there swaying and pointing towards the east, calling out in a thin, scared piping voice as the sounds of revelry died completely away.
Shaw looked in the direction in which the old man was pointing, and soon he saw something which at first he didn’t understand. It was one of the most heart-contracting, terrifying sights of his life. Before his eyes the vegetation was disappearing, vanishing frond by frond and leaf by leaf as a heaving, undulating, red-brown mass rolled and tore and bit, eating its way through the jungle.
And then suddenly, horribly, he understood.
The return of the rains was late. But the ants, the dreaded driver ants of which Anne Hartog had spoken, were not. And they were running ahead of the storm.
Men threw down their weapons, and fled, screaming, fighting, giving way to blind panic at the scourge sent by the gods. Some made for the huts, going to the assistance of the aged and the sick. This was why there had been that prescient undercurrent of fear. The driver ants, the anomma, were brutes, one of the terrible phenomena of Africa. Advancing in their thousand-million-strong armies, they could lay bare and clean most of the area through which they passed. Animals, even human beings if left alone and slowed by infirmity or wounds, could be brought down by the agonizing stings and then eaten, millions upon millions of climbing, swarming, scurrying, probing obscene mouths, tiny mouths ripping the living flesh from the bone to leave the skeleton ultimately bare and hygienic. Death would come with frightful pain and revolting, unbelievable horror.
Shaw could only hope the girl hadn’t his knowledge of what was going to happen, didn’t know that when the villagers returned they would find the place bare, and the skeletons of Shaw and the girl hanging on the stakes.
The elders came out, carried on men’s backs or in rough litters.
Apart from those elders it was a case of every man for himself, and the jungle path was the bottleneck. At the entrance men fought with clubs and fists, battering their way through, the weakest to the wall. Many fell, helpless prey to the oncoming hordes, their bloody wounds now a sure attraction for the wicked, tearing mouths of the ant-army. Very suddenly a great wailing cry swept back to the clearing, and the mob seemed to sway and break. A screaming figure, a woman, leapt clear above the others, her body arched in pain and terror. Her hands and arms were flailing, beating, tearing at pointed breasts, and then she fell back. The remainder, or as many as could make it, surged ahead, trampling the broken, bleeding body into the ground. Sobbing cries rang through the heavy air. One of the tall guards turned away from the path, dragging a leg broken by the clubs, shrieking to his gods; his body heaved and jerked, and he seemed not to know where he was going. Then he too fell, moaning and sobbing.
Meanwhile Shaw heard the sound of an engine, saw the truck start forward with Wiley at the wheel behind tight-shut windows, lashing out at stray ants which had come ahead of their fellows into the clearing itself and had entered the vehicle before he could seal it. So Wiley was getting out. The truck accelerated fast, smashing into the crowd still fighting to get through the narrow path leading up to the Jinda-Manalati road. There was a crunch of bone, terrible cries from those who yet lived, and then the truck was gone, flat out along the track, dragging behind it the bleeding bodies of a few Africans who had managed to get a grip as Wiley drove headlong through the middle of the tribe.
Shaw had broken out into a cold, drenching sweat of pure fear now. The fleeing Africans, he thought, must have run smack into an advance guard; the main force would be close behind, coming on in a broad wave, a great wide fighting front that would take in the whole area.
Desperately he had pulled and strained at the ropes on his wrists. He saw Gillian watching him now, her lips moving, the sparkle of tears on her pale cheeks. He tried to give her a grin of encouragement, but his lips just wouldn’t obey. God… but these ropes were tight and strong, too strong… it was, indeed, the post itself which was beginning to give just a very little now, loosening in the petrol-soaked earth. It moved a little in its hole, and the cans on the platform above his head rocked gently.
He thrust his feet out, pushed back hard with his body-weight on the heavy post.
It moved backward a little way, but not far enough.
Shaw looked all round, seeking something, anything that might help him to get free. Some six feet away he noticed a spear thrown down by one of the fleeing villagers. It was well out of reach, he couldn’t even touch it with his feet and hope to manoeuvre it into position so that his bound hands might get a hold of it. He just had to shake loose that pole. Sweat poured off him, mingling with the petrol, streaming down face and neck, and he went on straining at the post, wrenching backward and forward, backward and forward, gradually widening the hole. The post tilted, and the cans of petrol slid off the platform, flew past his head. One split open on a large stone and a gush of spirit flooded out. The post was decidedly loose now, and he knew that if only he could get his hands round it he could lift it clear; but he was quite unable to get a decent grip.
He put all his strength, all his guts into the job of forcing it over. He leaned back again with every ounce of weight on it, thrusting out savagely with his feet, grunting with the effort, his breath coming short and sharp, chest rising and falling painfully, pushing, pushing… and then at last he felt it begin to go, to move away through the softened earth. Suddenly a spurt of that earth flew up and he felt the end of the post hit against his legs. He crashed over backward. The platform at the top hit the ground hard and broke into two sections, falling away. Shaken and jolted, knowing he hadn’t an instant in which to get his breath back yet, Shaw dragged himself along the ground, brought the loop of the rope up the pole until it slipped over the top and he was free.
Free to move, to run, but his hands were still tied behind his back. And he had to free the girl, who was slumped against her post now, shaking like a leaf. He ran over to the abandoned spear which he had spotted, lay down beside it, gripped it, forced it between his wrists, rasped the binding rope across the razor-edge. The flesh tore, he felt the blood running warmly, felt too a horrible pricking sensation in his calves, the jab and thrust of red-hot needles.