A few minutes later, his stomach warmed by a big shot of Bourbon, cigar in mouth, his speech finished, Sam started to dig. The bamboo shovel had a sharp edge, but the grass was so tough and thick that it was necessary to use the shovel as a machete. Sweating, swearing, declaring that he had always hated physical exertion and was not cut out to be a ditch-digger, Sam chopped away the grass. On driving the now-dulled shovel into the earth, Sam found he could not bring up even a half shovelful. It would be necessary to hack away at the grass and the dirt between.
“By the great horn spoon!” he said, flinging the shovel down on the ground. “Let some peasant who’s cut out for this drudgery do it! I’m a brain-worker!”
The crowd laughed and set to work with flint and bamboo knives and flint axes. Sam said, “If that iron is ten feet down, it’ll take us ten years to find it. Joe, you’d better bring back plenty of flint, otherwise we’re done for.”
“Do I have to go?” Joe Miller said. “I’ll mithth you, Tham.”
“You gotta go, as all men do,” Sam said. “Don’t worry about me.”
12
During the next three days, a hole ten feet across and one foot deep was made. Von Richthofen organized the teams so that a new one replaced the previous crew every fifteen minutes. There was no lack of fresh and strong diggers, but delays were caused by the flaking of new flint tools and the making of new bamboo tools. Bloodaxe growled about the damage to the axes and knives, saying that if they were to be attacked, the stone weapons could not cut through the skin of a baby. Clemens begged him for the dozenth time to be allowed to use the steel ax, and Bloodaxe refused.
“If Joe were here, I’d have him take the ax away from him,” Clemens said to Lothar. “And where is Joe, anyway? He should be back by now, empty-handed or bearing gifts.”
“I think we ought to send somebody in a dugout to find out,” von Richthofen said. “I’d go myself, but I think you still need me around to protect you from Bloodaxe.”
“If something’s happened to Joe, we’ll both need protection,” Sam said. “All right, that Pathan, Abdul, can be our spy. He could wriggle unnoticed through a basket of rattlesnakes.”
At dawn, two days later, Abdul paddled in. He woke Sam and Lothar, who were sleeping in the same hut for mutual protection. In broken English, he explained that Joe Miller was tied up in a strongly built bamboo cage. Abdul had tried to get a chance to free Joe, but the cage had an around-the-clock guard.
The Vikings had been greeted with friendliness and sympathy. The chief of the region had seemed surprised that his flint for their iron would be a very good trade. He had held a big party to celebrate the agreement and had given his guests as much liquor and dreamgum as they wished. The Norse had been overcome while they snored drunkenly. Joe was asleep but had awakened while being tied up. With bare hands only, he had killed twenty men and injured fifteen before the chief had half stunned him with a dub against the back of his neck. The blow would have broken anybody else’s neck; it just reduced his fighting ability enough to permit men to swarm over him and restrain him while the chief hit him twice over the head.
“The chief knows Joe is a mighty warrior,” Abdul said. “Greater than Rustam himself. I overheard some men talking, and they said their chief plans to use Joe as a hostage. He wants to become partners in the iron mine. If refused, he will not kill Joe but will make a slave out of him, although I doubt he can do that. He’ll attack us, kill us, get the iron for himself.
“He can do it. He’s building a huge fleet, many small ships carrying forty men each, hastily put together but serviceable to transport his army. He’ll make an all-out attack with warriors armed with flint weapons, bows and arrows and heavy war-boomerangs.” “And who is this would-be Napoleon?” Sam said.