CHAPTER XII
Reflections
That night Bertram was again unable to sleep. Lying awake on his hard and narrow bed, faint for want of food, and sick with the horrible stench of the swamp, his mind revolved continually round the problem of how to “personally conduct” a convoy of a thousand porters through twenty miles of enemy country in such a way that it might have a chance if attacked. After tossing and turning for hours and vainly wooing sleep, he lay considering the details of a scheme by which the armed escort should, as it were, circulate round and round from head to tail of the convoy by a process which left ten of the advance-guard to occupy every tributary turning that joined the path and to wait at the junction of the two paths until the whole convoy had passed and the rear-guard had arrived. The ten would then join the rear-guard and march on with them. By the time this had been repeated sufficiently often to deplete the advance-guard, the convoy should halt while the bulk of the rear-guard marched up to the head of the column again and so da capo. It would want a lot of explaining to whoever was in command of the rear-guard, for it would be impossible for him, himself, to struggle up and down a line miles long—a line to which anything might happen, at any point, at any moment. . . . He could make it clear that at any turning he would detail ten men from the advance-guard, and then, when fifty had been withdrawn for this flanking work, he would halt the column so that the officer commanding the rear-guard could send fifty back. . . . Ten to one the fool would bungle it, and he might sit and await the return of the fifty until the crack of doom, or until he went back and fetched them up himself. And as soon as he had quitted the head of the column there would be an attack on it! . . . Yes—or perhaps the ass in command of the ten placed to guard the side-turnings would omit to join the rear-guard as it passed—and he’d roll up at his destination, with a few score men short. . . . What would be done to him if he—
Bang! . . .
Bertram’s heart seemed to leap out of his body and then to stand still. His bones seemed to turn to water, and his tongue to leather. Had a shell burst beneath his bed? . . . Was he soaring in the air? . . . Had a great mine exploded beneath the Camp, and was the M’paga Field Force annihilated? . . . Captain Hall sat up, yawned, put his hand out from beneath the mosquito curtain of his camp-bed and flashed his electric torch at a small alarm-clock that stood on a box within reach.
“What was that explosion?” said Bertram as soon as he could speak.
“Three-thirty,” yawned Hall. “Might as well get up, I s’pose. . . . Wha’? . . . ’Splosion? . . . Some fool popped his rifle off at nothing, I sh’d say. . . . Blast him! Woke me up. . .”
“It’s not an attack, then?” said Bertram, mightily relieved. “It sounded as though it were right close outside the hut. . . .”
“Well—you don’t attack with one rifle shot—nor beat off an attack with none. I don’t, at least,” replied Hall. . . “Just outside, was it?” he added as he arose. “Funny! There’s no picket or sentry there. You must have been dreaming, my lad.”
“I was wide awake before it happened,” said Bertram. “I’ve been awake all night. . . . It was so close, I—I thought I was blown to bits. . . .”
“’Oo wouldn’ sell ’is liddle farm an’ go ter War,” remarked Hall in Tommy vein. “It’s a wearin’ life, being blowed outer yer bed at ar’ pars free of a mornin’, ain’t it, guv’nor?”