Shears could not get rid of his feeling of uneasiness. The vague thought was still struggling to express itself more clearly, yet still defied analysis. Shears's brain was intent on solving this exasperating mystery.
The sound, he could swear, was now no longer the same. A man with Shears's training was quick to note the symphony of the natural elements; he recorded it instinctively. This ability had served him well on two or three previous occasions. The shimmering eddy, the particular gurgling sound of water rushing over sand, the creak of branches bending with the current, all these this morning formed part of a different, less noisy concert— certainly less noisy than last night's. Shears seriously wondered if he was not going deaf. Or perhaps his nerves were not quite so steady?
But the Siamese could not have gone deaf at the same time. There was something else. All of a sudden another aspect of his impression flashed through his mind. There was a different smell as well. The smell of the River Kwai this morning was not the same as it had been. An oozy, dank miasma predominated, like the exhalation from a mud flat.
"River Kwai down!" the Siamese suddenly exclaimed.
And as the light began to reveal the details of the opposite bank, Shears suddenly realized. The tree, the big red tree where Joyce was hiding, no longer had its branches trailing in the water. The River Kwai had sunk. The level had fallen during the night. How far? A foot perhaps? In front of the tree, at the bottom of the bank, there was now a pebbly beach still sparkling with water and shining in the rising sun.
The moment he realized this, Shears felt relieved to have found the explanation for his uneasiness and regained confidence in his nerves. His instinct had not let him down. He was not yet going mad. The eddies were no longer the same, neither those in the water nor those in the air above. It was really the whole atmosphere that had become affected. Newly exposed earth, still wet, explained that dank smell.
Disaster never makes itself felt at once. The mind's natural inertia enforces a delay. Shears realized the fatal implications of this commonplace occurrence, one by one.
The River Kwai had sunk. In front of the red tree could be seen a broad flat area, which yesterday had been underwater. The wire—the electric wire! Shears uttered an obscene oath. He took out his field glasses and anxiously scanned the area of solid ground which had emerged during the night.
There was the wire. A long piece of it was now high and dry. Shears scanned it all the way from the water's edge up to the bank: a dark line dotted here and there with tufts of grass swept up by the cu
rrent.
All the same, it was not too noticeable. Shears had managed to see it because he was looking for it. It could pass unnoticed if a Jap happened to come along that way. But the bank which previously had been inaccessible! There was now an unbroken beach at the foot of the slope, which stretched perhaps as far as the bridge (from here the bridge was out of sight) and which, to Shears's agonized glance, seemed designed to attract the attention of any passer-by. Still, while waiting for the train, the Japs were bound to be engaged on duties which would prevent them from sauntering along the river. Shears wiped his brow.
An operation never takes place exactly according to plan. At the last moment there is always some small, trivial, sometimes grotesque, occurrence which upsets the most carefully worked-out program. Number One blamed himself, as though he was personally responsible, for his negligence in failing to foresee the fall of the river. Of all nights, it had to happen now—not one night later, nor two nights earlier!
That open beach without a blade of grass on it, lying naked, as naked as truth itself, absorbed his whole attention. The river must have sunk considerably. By a foot? By two feet? Perhaps more? Oh God!
Shears suddenly felt faint. He clung to a tree to prevent the Siamese from seeing how his limbs were trembling. This was the second time in his life that he had felt so upset. The first was when he had felt an enemy's blood trickling through his fingers. His heart literally, actually, stopped beating, and his whole body broke out in a cold sweat.
By two feet? Perhaps more? God Almighty! The charges! The charges of plastic on the piles of the bridge!
22
After Shears had shaken his hand and left him alone in the hide-out, Joyce had felt completely fuddled for some time. The realization that he now had no one to rely on but himself went to his head like fumes of alcohol. He was physically insensible to the fatigue of the previous night and the clammy discomfort of his sodden clothes. Never before had he been conscious of that feeling of power and conquest which absolute isolation affords, whether on a mountaintop or in the bowels of the earth.
When his head cleared, he had to reason with himself before he could finally decide to take certain necessary steps before dawn so as to avoid giving in to his lassitude. If this decision had not entered his head he would have stayed there without moving, leaning against a tree, his hand on the plunger, gazing at the bridge whose dark shape could be seen, outlined against a corner of starlit sky above the thick mass of low bushes, through the less thick foliage of taller trees. He had instinctively adopted this position as soon as Shears left.
He got up, took off his clothes, wrung them out, and massaged his frozen legs. He put his shorts and shirt on again; although still wet, they were some defense against the chilly early-morning air. He ate as much as he could of the rice that Shears had left him, then took a long swig of whisky. He felt it was too late now to leave his hide-out to go and fetch some water. He used some of the spirits to wash the wounds which speckled his legs. He sat down again at the foot of the tree and waited. Nothing happened that day. He had not expected anything to happen. The train was not due until the morning; but he felt more able to dictate the course of events by being here on the spot.
Several times he saw some Japanese on the bridge. They obviously suspected nothing and no one looked in his direction. As in his dream, he had picked out an easily distinguishable landmark on the platform, a cross-beam of the parapet which was in line with himself and a dead branch. This was exactly halfway across, that is to say, at one end of the "prepared" section of piles. When the engine reached it, or rather, when it was still a few feet off, he would apply his full weight to the plunger. With the picture of an imaginary engine in his mind, he had disconnected the wire and practiced this simple gesture twenty times over, so as to make it an automatic reaction. The machine was in perfect working order. He had carefully dried it and wiped it clean, conscientiously removing the slightest blemish. His own reflexes were also working well.
The day went by quite quickly. When it was dark he scrambled down the slope, swallowed several mouthfuls of muddy water, filled his bottle, then returned to his hide-out. He allowed himself to doze leaning against a tree, without shifting his position. If, for some extraordinary reason, the train's schedule were to be changed, he would still be able to hear it in the distance, he felt certain. When one has lived for some time in the jungle, one quickly develops the instinctive wariness of a wild beast.
He slept by fits and starts, punctuated by long bouts of insomnia. In between, visions of his present adventure alternated strangely with memories of that past life of his which he had described to Shears before launching out on the river.
He was once again in the dusty workroom in which some of the best years of his life had been spent sitting day after day for long gloomy hours in front of a sheet of drawing paper under a projector lamp. The girder, that bit of metal which he had never actually seen, was responsible for the mathematical symbols in two dimensions which had occupied the whole of his youth. The plan, the outline, the elevation, and countless cross sections came to life before his very eyes, with all the details of the structure, the expert arrangement of which had enabled him to achieve a saving of a pound and a half of steel after two years of tests and experiments.
Superimposed on this picture, against the background of this structure, were the small brown squares, like those Warden had drawn, fixed to the twenty-four piles on the large-scale plan of the bridge. The heading, over which he had sweated so painfully and so many times, the final heading came into focus, then grew blurred as he watched it. He tried in vain to decipher the letters. They were dotted all over his drawing paper, until at last they fused together again, as sometimes happens at the end of a film on a movie screen, to form a single word. It was the word DESTRUCTION, in heavy black letters written in shiny ink, which reflected the light of the projector lamp and bewilderingly filled the whole screen, leaving no room for any other character.
He was not really obsessed by this sight. He could avoid it whenever he wanted. All he had to do was open his eyes. The dark corner in which the River Kwai bridge stood outlined in black banished these dusty ghosts of the past and summoned him back to reality. His life would no longer be the same after this. He was already tasting the fruits of success while witnessing his own metamorphosis.
At dawn, about the same time as Shears, he, too, felt uneasy on account of the perceptible change in the emanations from the river. The alteration had been so gradual that in his fuddled state he had not even been aware of it. From his hide-out he could see only the platform of the bridge. The river was out of sight, but he was certain his feelings were justified. This certainty soon became so overwhelming that he felt he could no longer remain inactive. He pushed his way through the undergrowth toward the river, reached the last curtain of branches, and looked out. He saw the reason for his uneasiness at the same time that he noticed the electric wire lying exposed on the pebble beach.
Following the same course as Shears, his mind slowly grasped the significance of this irreparable disaster. In the same way he felt his whole body quiver at the thought of the plastic charges. From his new position he would be able to see the piles. He had only to raise his eyes. He forced himself to do so.
It took him a fairly long time to appreciate how much the risk had been increased by the River Kwai's whimsical behavior. Even after close observation, he could not assess the extent with any degree of accuracy, but oscillated between hope and despair at each of the thousand ripples which the current created around the bridge. At first glance a wave of voluptuous optimism eased his nerves, which were tense with the horror of his original fears. The river had not sunk so very much. The charges were still under water.
At least they seemed to be, from this position rather far down. But from above? From the bridge? And even from here? Concentrating still more closely, he now noticed a fairly large wave, like one created by a flow of water around a grounded wreck, washing round the piles, those piles which he knew so well and which he had left encrusted with strips of his own flesh. The waves round those particular piles were larger than the rest. And on one of them he thought he could see a patch of brown against the lighter color of the wood. This emerged from time to time like a fish's dorsal fin, yet a moment later there was nothing to be seen but the eddy. The charge was probably just below the surface of the water. A keen sentry would certainly be able to spot those on the outside rows simply by leaning over the parapet.
And what if the level should fall still further? In a moment, perhaps, the charges would be visible for all to see, still dripping with water, sparkling in the harsh light of the Siamese sun! He was numbed by the grotesque absurdity of the picture. What time was it? How long would it take? The sun was just beginning to light up the valley. The train was not due before ten o'clock. Their patience, their toil, their anxiety, their suffering, all had suddenly been rendered pitiful and almost ludicr