Лорд Дансейни - Guerrilla

"Are there any Germans between us and the mountains?" asked Srebnitz.

"Sometimes there are a few," said the farmer. "But they are very cautious, and, if you meet them and start a fight, the men in the mountains will come down to help you."

"We must go quickly," said Srebnitz, for those were his orders from Hlaka.

But at this moment Sophia returned, and her two aunts followed her. They had brought few enough possessions to this house, and they soon gathered them up. Farewells took up some time, and Srebnitz drew back from the door so as to make no leave–taking, which would have added many more seconds to the delay, and the farmer came too, carrying bundles for Sophia's aunts.

Srebnitz ran with Sophia, in order to encourage Isabella and Angelica to go their utmost pace. But, when they were moving as fast as they could, he dropped behind with Sophia, knowing that it would be no use to the waiting plane if he got there five minutes before they did. Confident that he and Sophia could overtake the aunts when they chose, he dropped back with her.

And that short walk, with no time to spare for loitering, was the idyllic time of their lives, the time to which they would long look back, with the scene that was now about them undimmed by the years; the rocky land, the green maize growing in fields, and, shining upon the wilder land, the anemones. Words said by Srebnitz too, and Sophia's answers, echoed on in his memory, to linger there probably when old age shall have come to him, and when he has learned a graver way of talking, outlasting there the pronouncements of statesmen, the inventions of savants, the sayings of wise men, and even the words of songs. And no less clearly these words in Sophia's memory rang on with undying echoes, echoes that always heartened her in the long days of waiting for The Land to be free. And one could record here these memorable words, but that they were too trivial, and would never gather about them in cold print the magic with which they were all enchanted, a magic that seemed to Srebnitz to come from the hills and anemones, and butterflies and the light of the sky, and scores of other ingredients out of which Love brews his charms. But the general purport of their talk was that they would remember each other for ever, and that they would be married as soon as The Land should be free.

Farewells were brief at the river–bank. If a wandering Stuka came by there would be no concealing the Sunderland, and it had not the speed to escape. So every minute brought risk.

"Well, Chief," Malone called out from the plane, "let us know anything you want. We'll send you a wireless transmitting set, and all you'll have to do is to ask."

Before his words could be translated he was back inside the plane, to allow Isabella and Angelica to come in, whom two men had carried from the river. Srebnitz carried Sophia. And that was a memory that Srebnitz treasured for two years in the Blue Mountains.

The moment the three ladies were on board the engines started, and Hlaka's men waved their hats and gave a cheer for the victory that they knew in their hearts they would win, to hearten the ladies as they left their native land; not that they heard it above the roar of the engines, but they saw by the faces of the men that they were cheering and that they saw victory shining through the mist of the years to be.

Then the curtain of foaming water hid everything for a while, and when it fell away Isabella, Angelica and Sophia saw come true a dream with which they were all familiar, for the poets of their country had dreamed it for three thousand years, and taught the dream to others, until the scientists dreamed it, and then the workers; and at last man flew. They saw their loved Land below them with all its colours and shapes, and every detail except altitude, so that they could not always distinguish between bushes and trees, or between mounds and mountains.

Soon, like sheep–dogs about a lonely sheep, to fit one metaphor to their purpose, or like gnats in summer above a horse's head, if a metaphor is chosen to fit the eye, there appeared an escort of Spitfires to see the Sunderland past the German aerodrome near the city, and safely out to sea. So small and high they were that the three ladies never noticed them; and Malone, who stood beside them, did not point them out, seeing no reason to inform them of details of the protection of the British Empire, letting it suffice that that protection was over them like a shield. A few more minutes and there came into sight the deep–blue Mediterranean. Soon The Land lay behind them and the three ladies who saw the dreams of old poets come true now saw, just as Shelley had seen it, either with his two eyes from some high cliff or from some airy height to which his genius had soared:

"The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams."

For strange streams slept along the floor of the sea, wrapped round by purple seaweeds, which, from the height at which they were, showed as clearly among the greens and the blues as they could have been seen by a diver. What they were none of the ladies knew, nor could Malone tell them. Perhaps they were inland rivers far out to sea, and cutting their beds through the floor of it and heaping those beds with seaweed, as silks and satins are brought to adorn men's houses. Or they may have been tracks of old storms that have long since rested, leaving the weeds where they had led them on their wild adventure.

Sophia was satisfied with the sheer beauty of the sea, but Isabella wanted to hear something of the cause of these purple streams that ran amongst cobalt green, and turned to enquire of Malone; but Malone had gone away to wring out his wet shirt.

They went through the morning over the inland sea, and at noon saw the square white shapes of the houses of Alexandria, and crossed the Nile's greatest luxuriance, till the pyramids came in view; things older than The Land, older than its whole story. There was something breathtaking in that, something inspiring awe, as does a great precipice. Sophia and her aunts saw no especial beauty in them, but they were like precipices among the ages, looking sheer on abysses of time.

A few miles from these stupendous monuments they alighted on the water. There in Cairo they were cared for with many of their compatriots, whose men repaid the debt by fighting in the desert. In those days all the jacaranda was blooming, beautifying Cairo with its great masses of mauve–tinted blue. They went right up to the pyramids, to see their mystery closer. And there they stood, the memorials of one of those great struggles that a man makes every now and then, out of bravado, ambition or any other whim, against the things that threaten him; Cheops against oblivion, Hitler against liberty; both of them winning at first, both of them holding out still. And then they went to the Sphinx and tried to make out what she seemed to be saying to the dawn. So old she is that the dawn has grown weary of her at last and has moved a little away from the spot at which on midsummer's day she used to smile in front of the face of the Sphinx. And when the bloom of the jacaranda fell, and the scarlet began to flash upon the flamboyants, places were found for them on one of the Sunderlands that was to fly to Natal. Malone came with an interpreter to say good–bye to them.

"Tell them," he said to the interpreter, "that they'll be right as rain in Natal. No Boches there to bother them, and we'll bring them back as soon as we've driven the heilhitlers out of The Land. And tell them that the Chieftain will be all right. There are lots of men with him, and we'll keep them well supplied. And men like him and them will be about the only people that will be able to manage those mountains; the Germans won't have a chance. And, well, that is about all."