The Sun Is God Read Free Page A

from where Will was standing and Albright assumed his position on the ground. He had taken off his hat and jacket and was holding both pistols, cocked and ready.
    The seconds retreated and a hush went over the small crowd of spectators. Albright’s shirt billowed in the light breeze and his golden hair flowed freely behind his head. Without further ado Albright immediately raised both his pistols and before Will quite knew what was happening he saw a cloud of pistol smoke and heard two reports. One of the balls whisked so close to his left ear that he felt its hum in passing, but the other came nowhere near him.
    When the smoke cleared he saw Albright’s pale, amazed face. Will displayed both his arms Christ fashion to demonstrate that he was unhurt. Albright nodded, began to tremble, and after a quarter-minute pulled himself together and stood to attention, facing his potential assassin. Will could see that the poor man was terrified. Even third sons of Earls loved life and hated death.
    Will grinned and discharged both his pistols into the earth. When the smoke cleared Albright looked at him with wonder. The seconds reloaded the pistols and the men were moved five paces closer. Albright cocked his dueling pistols and pointed them at Will.
    A hawk was rising on a thermal. The sea was turning a deeper shade of blue.
    Yes , Will thought, c ome on, man, do it!
    Albright saw the gleam of acceptance in Will’s eye, held the pistols horizontal for a moment and then shook his head.
    â€œHe wants to die, Donnybrook, he wants me to kill him, to save himself the trouble. I will not give the damned fool what he wants!”
    Albright began walking back to his horse. “Come back, you coward!” Will yelled.
    Albright ignored him.
    â€œStand your ground or I’ll shoot you in the bloody back!”
    Albright kept walking.
    Will pulled the trigger on one of the pistols and shot Albright in the thigh. He went down with a strange animal-like shriek. Donnybrook ran to attend him and a booing noise arose from the small crowd.
    They rode back to Cape Town and it wasn’t until the next afternoon that Will was arrested. Albright survived the gunshot but the wound suppurated and a fever nearly did away with him. Popular sentiment was against Will from the start and the verdict of the rapidly constituted court martial was a foregone conclusion. He had no connections of any kind and, but for the DSO, he would have been reduced to the ranks and sent to a penal station on some godforsaken rock thousands of miles from anywhere.
    As it was he was simply lectured by the Judge Advocate, cashiered without pay or remittances, and quietly drummed out of the army. He was blackballed in every club and pub in town and formally told to quit Cape Town. He found his way to Durban and it was there, among the disaffected Boers and angry Dutch immigrants, that he saw the pamphlets offering loans and passage to the German regions of Africa and elsewhere.
    Will met with the Reich agent who told him that fortunes were still being made among the rubber plantations of the German colonies in the Pacific.
    Will said that he didn’t care where he went, he just wanted to go.
    And so it was that on a bitingly cold Southern Hemisphere winter day Will boarded the third-class gangway of the massive SS Kronprinz Wilhelm bound for the port of Herbertshöhe in far off Deutsch Neu Guinea.

3
    CAPTAIN KESSLER'S REQUEST
    W ill had built his house far enough out of Herbertshöhe so that he or his servant girl could see trouble coming from a very long way off. Hauptman Kessler’s appearance on the road shortly after three o’clock was not, then, a surprise. Kessler was riding Brunhilde, his great grey mare that somehow had weathered every attack by mosquito, black fly, and dengue fever.
    â€œGet the kettle on, love,” Will told Siwa and watched her as she scuttled wordlessly inside to light the range. “And put some clothes on too,