THE COVENANTER
shredded the night, screaming up the road caps, the tunic shirts, and the knickerbocker
in streams of coloured lead and gushing trousers caught in below the knee by the
through the windscreen between us, beside bound putties. Under cloth caps the flat
us, and on out the back and side windows. yellow faces were slantingly swarthy; evil.
The mutilated car, bucking and skidding, Then came a sound that set the short hairs
was a maelstrom of flying glass fragments. pricking at the base of my neck. One of
The noise and the bullets filled the air and them was cocking a carbine. It might have
the road and the car. The car was slowing been mine. The mechanisms slid back and
now and Morgan jumped out as it slewed clicked home again as a round socketed into
crab-wise across the wet road and hit the the breech.
log. At my side the car was in the lallang. Another face loomed from the group, bent
I saw Morgan jump the log and double fast over me, so close that I saw the pore-pocked
up the road. I snatched my carbine from the glistening skin and his eyes, obliquely
seat beside me, opened the door and leapt hawklike: alert, watching. Without moving
out. Before I touched the ground I was hit. my glazed irises I could just see the carbine,
Shot in the left leg. The bullet ripped into gleaming metallically in his hands. Now
my thigh just above the knee-cap. The force there were just two of us in the world. The
of the shot knocked me over and I fell into stench of death itself choked my nostrils
the lallang. My carbine had slipped from my and I knew I was going to die. He raised the
grasp and I could see it just a few paces from muzzle almost gently against the corner of
me in the grass. I thought of trying to reach my right eye. It was a cold, and as certain
it. But suddenly there were men everywhere. as the death I smelled. Yet I did not move;
I lay sprawled, flat-bellied in the grass, my even when he pressed harder and my flesh
face on one side. I could see the canvas crawled alive and my belly and bowels
shoes and tight-wrapped leggings of a dissolved to liquid. I lay still. My brain was
terrorist move between me and the carbine. blank. A whining rose from that blankness
I thought he had seen me, but he moved then and filled my head until there was
off, short-kneed, trotting, to join the others only the whine and the gun muzzle. After
at the car. There were about twelve of them, an age a voice cut through the whine,
all shouting. Most of them were shining saying in Malay, “Tintu mati”. My tortured
torches; and now they were looking for me. forelock was released and I dropped limply
At any moment they’d find me. I thought into the grass. The face backed into the
again of trying to reach the carbine, so bulk of bodies that I could sec again, taking
temptingly near. But the moment I moved death and the smell of death with it. I was
they would have seen me. “Definitely Dead”. They were not going to
Then my flesh froze. A foot sank into my waste another bullet on me. But the horror
back as one of the searchers stood on me, had just begun Four men dragged me on
weight on my spine. He recoiled with a to the road. All the time about six torches
yell of fright that brought his comrades shone on me. On the road I felt a hand slap
running. on one of my epaulets; they had noticed I
Now there was only one course left: to act was an officer. Then they stripped me. They
dead. took my watch, my signet ring, my wallet
I was grabbed by my forelock and jerked with most of a month’s pay, and my shirt.
viciously on to my back. Torches flashed in They argued over my shorts but left them,
my face. They lifted me again, sharply by only because they were unserviceably soaked
the hair, and again torches blinded me. But with blood. Now I was suffering great pain
I had seen a few men shot-dead and kept from my leg. They tore off one stocking and
my eyes staringly open: the irises rolled the agony was intense as the tightly bound
hard and upward to the left, almost under garter material was hauled over my calf.
the lids. I was numb with shock; otherwise As they pulled off the stocking from my
it would have been impossible. There was wounded leg I felt my nerve give. In torment
no feeling in my left leg, but my olive-green I wanted to scream, “For heaven’s sake untie
shirt and shorts were smeared and spattered the garter!”. But to flinch would have been
with blood that clotted and spurted from the death. They got it off.
wound above my knee cap. I could see them
moving around me, gibbering in Chinese. Meanwhile a party was ransacking the car,
I could smell them, too, their sweat, their preparing it for burning. Seats were gashed
breath. My staring eyes picked out the and the stuffing ripped out. They laid a trail
triple-red stars on the prow of their peaked of the stuffing fuse-like from the petrol tank,
59
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