Horizon Read Online Free PDF Page A

slipping second could spell disaster.
    From the courtyard there came the sharp, uneven rattle of a machine gun. The diversion had begun.
    The sergeant-major’s arm dropped. Someone knocked the door’s latch free, someone swung the heavy mass of oak wide open. The four sharpshooters were already taking aim as they entered the hall. The men surged forward. They were shouting. The haggard faces were alive once more.

3
    In the hall the German captain had placed six of his men in a well-spaced line to flank the curve of stairway. Their guns were pointed towards the row of officers, still waiting patiently, expectantly. Two other German soldiers guarded the head of the staircase. Their guns pointed too, but their eyes kept glancing sideways along the upstairs corridor, in which the angry voices of the two remaining Germans were combined with the sounds of a rough-and-ready removal.
    The captain, standing at the foot of the staircase, was obviously angry. His fury increased as his patience evaporated. He fingered his revolver. Another minute of this impudence and he would order his men upstairs to shoot. If only these damned Anglo-Saxons would make one move then his men’s guns would have an answer for them. But they gave no appearance of mutiny, no excuse for shooting. They just sat and stared at him calmly. Impudence—that was it. Some of them were evensmiling: that American up there was grinning broadly. Damn these Italians and their lax discipline. If only they had had their full quota of guards when his party had arrived here; the rooms upstairs would have been ready by this time. And if only the damned Americans hadn’t bombed the Brenner railway line yesterday the damned train carrying the prisoners wouldn’t now be held up at Bozen until the damned line could be repaired. He glared at the Italian Commandant. He’d tell this fat bucking jackass a thing or two, once they had the prisoners all safely locked up.
    The Commandant fingered the decorations on his tunic and cleared his throat. But the German’s angry face silenced the beginning of an apology. The Commandant even stopped fingering his decorations. This captain wouldn’t let himself notice the row of medals. This captain hadn’t even treated him as an officer of superior rank. The smothered apology turned sour in his mouth. With stilted dignity he walked over to the wall, and looked at the mass of foreigners with distaste. Two years ago everything had been so different. The tears filming his eyes as he thought of that change dried in alarm. He had suddenly remembered that he still had to explain to this German that the Italian guards, now away from the camp, were absent without leave. Deserters...he hadn’t dared mention that word. He sighed wearily. He wished he were upstairs in his pleasant room, listening to his wireless set: he might have learned by this time if this afternoon’s rumours were true or false. Then he would know what to do. He glared at the smiling Allied officers. His heart suddenly twisted as he thought of his country at the mercy of barbarians. His eyelids drooped. He held his weakening underlip rigid with his teeth. He studied thefloor at his feet, as if he could read there why his Italy should suffer such unhappiness, such injustice.
    There was the sudden rattle of a machine gun in the courtyard.
    All heads turned sharply to the entrance-door of the hall.
    “Watch the prisoners!” the German captain shouted. “You there!—anyone who moves will be shot. Meyer, Hofmann, with me!” He started smartly towards the courtyard. Probably only an Italian trying to desert, he thought, and his pace hesitated. The Commandant’s eyes lifted and met his, and the German saw the same thought in them. There was fear, too, and shame.
    Perhaps there was more than one deserter, the German thought, perhaps that was why this fat fool had acted so strangely ever since the unexpected arrival of prisoners in this camp. Perhaps there was a lot of trouble