They were too busy
to do more than nod at Scott and Martyn, and stare curiously at
William, who could do nothing except make tea, and watch how her
men staved off the rush of wailing, walking skeletons, putting them
down three at a time in heaps, with their own hands uncoupling the
marked trucks, or taking receipts from the hollow-eyed, weary white
men, who spoke another argot than theirs. They ran out of ice, out
of soda-water, and out of tea; for they were six days and seven
nights on the road, and it seemed to them like seven times seven
years.
At last, in a dry, hot dawn, in a land of death, lit by long red
fires of railway-sleepers, where they were burning the dead, they
came to their destination, and were met by Jim Hawkins, the Head of
the Famine, unshaven, unwashed, but cheery, and entirely in command
of affairs.
Martyn, he decreed then and there, was to live on trains till
further orders; was to go back with empty trucks, filling them with
starving people as he found them, and dropping them at a famine-camp
on the edge of the Eight Districts. He would pick up supplies and
return, and his constables would guard the loaded grain-cars, also
picking up people, and would drop them at a camp a hundred miles
south.
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