He heard the yells and the running steps as the rest of the men broke and ran, but

he stayed put He had a hunch they

were running into trouble, and anyway he was fed up with being a part of Serrurier
army; the further that unit and he
were separated, the better he would fell so he lay in the foxhole and played dead
The machine-gun fire stopped abruptly, but he lay there for fifteen minutes more
before even poking his nose above die
level of the ground When he did so, the first thing he was a long line of men
emerging from the houses on the other
side of the field--Pavel's men were coming over to mop up Hastily he wormed his way
out of the foxhole and crawded on
his belly back towards the shacks, expecting to feel the thud of bullets at any
moment But there was plenty of cover since
the ground had been churned up by the mortar fire and he found he could crawl from
shell-hole to shell-hole with the
minimum of exposure
Finally he got to the cover of the shacks and looked back Pavel's men were nearly
across the field and he had the notion
they would shoot anything that moved and he had better find somewhere safer He
listened to the racket coming from the
left flank--someone was putting up a fight there, but that would collapse as soon
as these oncoming troops hit them He
began to move to the right, dodging from the cover of one shack to another, and
always trying to move back
As he went he ripped off the tunic he was wearing and rubbed at his face Perhaps
the sight of a white skin would cause
hesitation of the trigger-finger--at least it was worth trying He saw no sign of
the Government army and all the
indications were that Pavel was on the verge of punching a hole right through the
middle--there did not seem much to
stop him
Presently he had an idea tried the door of one of the sahcks It had occured to him
that there was no point in
running away; after all, he did not want to catch up with Serrurier's forces, did
he? It would be much better to hide and
then emerge in the middle of Pavel's army
The door was not barred, so he pushed it open with a creak and went inside The
shack was deserted, it consisted merely of
two rooms and needed a minimum of inspection to show there was no one there He
looked about and saw a washbasin on
a rickety stand below a fly-blown and peeling mirror, which was flanked on one side
by a highly coloured oleograph of
the Madonna and on the other by the standard official portriat of Serrurier
Hastily he pulled down the idealized photograph of Serrurier and kicked it under
the bed If anyone interrupted him, he
did not want them getting any wrong ideas Then he poured tepid water into the basin
and began to wash his face, keeping
a sharp ear cocked for anything going on outside At the end of five minutes he
realized in despair that he was still a
light-complexioned Negro, the boot polish was waterproof and would not come off, no
matter how hard he rubbed Many
of the inhabitants of San Fernandez were even lighter complexioned and also had
European features
He was struck by an idea and pallidity, but now he thanked God that he had not felt
the urge to sunbathe As he stripped
off his shirt he prepared for a long wait
What brought him out was the sound of an engine He thought that anyone driving a
vehicle around there would be
civilized enough not to shoot him on sight, so he came out of the cupboard and into
the front room and looked through the
window The Land-Rover that was passing was driven by a white man
"Hey--you!" he shouted, and dashed to the door "You there--arretez!"
The man driving the Land-Rover looked back and the vehicle bumped to a half Causton
ran up ant the man looked at
him curiously "Who the devil are you?" he asked
"Thank God!" said Causton "You speak English--you are English My name's Causton--I
suppose you could call me a war
correspondent"
The man looked at him unbelievingly "You got off the mark pretty quickly, didn;t
you? The war only started yesterday
afternoon You don't look much like a war correspondent--you more like a nigger
minstrel who got on the wrong side
of his audience"
"I'm genuine enough," assured Causton
The man hefted a sub-machine gun which was on the seat next to him "I think Favel
had better have a look at you," he
said "Get in"
"Just the man I want to see," Causton, climbing into the Land-Rover and keeping a
careful eye on the sub-machine
gun "You a friend of his?"
"I suppose you could say so," said the man "My name is Manning
II
"It's too hot," said Mrs Warmington querulously
Julie agreed but did not say so aloud--Mrs Warmington was the last person she felt
like agreeing with about anything She
wriggled slightly, trying to unstick her blouse from the small of her back, and
looked ahead through the windscreen She
saw exactly what she had seen for the last half-hour--a small handcart piled
perilously high with trumpery household
goods being pushed by an old man and a small boy who obstinately stuck to the crown
of the road and refused to draw to
the side
Rawsthorne irritably changed down again from second gear to first "The engine will
boil if we carry on like this in this
heat," he said
"We mustn't stop," said Julie in alarm
"Stopping might prove more difficult than moving," said Rawsthorne "Have you looked
behind lately?"
Julie twisted in her seat and looked through the back window of the car, which was
now cresting a small rise Behind, as
far as she could see, stretched the long line of refuges fleeing from St Pierre
She had seen this kind of thing an old
newsreels but had never expected to see it in actually This was a people on the
move, trudging wearily from the coming
desolation of war, carrying as much of the material minutiae of their lives as they
could on an incredible variety of
vehicles There were perambulators loaded not with babies but with clocks, clothing,
pictures, ornaments there were carts
pushed by hand or drawn by donkey, there were beat-up cars of incredible vintage,
buses, trucks and the better cars of the
more prosperous
But primarily there were people-men and wome, old and young, rich and poor, the
hale and the sick These were people
who did not laugh or speak, who moved along quietly like driven cattle with grey
faces and downcast eyes, whose only
visible sign of emotion was the quick, nervous twitch of the head to look back
along the road
Julie turned as Rawsthorne blasted on the horn at the obstinate old man ahead "The
damned fellow won't move aside," he
grumbled "11 he'd move just a little to the side I could get through"
Eumenides said, "The roas--it drop on side "He pointed to the cart "E fright'e
fall"