He watched the distant mob pulse and contract like some giant black amoeba as the aircraft harassed them, and then regain its shape and come on steadily. He heard the singing swell up in chorus and he could make out the features of those in the front ranks.
The sergeant beside him swore softly. 'My God, just look at those black bastards, there must be thousands of them,' and Lothar recognized in the man's tone his own horror and trepidation.
What they were looking upon was the nightmare of the Afrikaner people that had recurred for almost two centuries, ever since their ancestors moving up slowly from the south through a lovely land populated only by wild game had met suddenly upon the banks of the great Fish river the cohorts, of this dark multitude.
He felt his nerves crawl like poisonous insects upon his skin as the tribal memories of his people assaulted him. Here they were once more, the tiny handful of white men at the barricades, and there before them was the black barbaric host. It was as it had always been, but the horror of his situation was not in the least diluted by the knowledge that it had all happened before. Rather it was made more poignant, and the natural reaction of defence more compelling.
However, the fear and loathing in the sergeant's voice braced Lothar against his own weakness, and he tore his gaze from the approaching horde and looked to his own men. He saw how pale they were, how deathly still they stood and how very young so many of them were - but then it was the Afrikaner tradition that the boys had always taken their places at the laager barricades even before they were as tall as the long muzzle-loading weapons they carried.
Lothar forced himself to move, to walk slowly down the line in front of his men, making certain that no trace of his own fear was evident in expression or gesture.
'They don't mean trouble,' he said, 'they have their women and children with them. The Bantu always hide the women if they mean to fight." His voice was level and without emotion. 'The reinforcements are on their way,' he told them. 'We will have three hundred men here within the hour. Just stay calm and obey orders." He smiled encouragement at a cadet whose eyes were too big for his pale face, whose ears stuck out from under his cap, and who chewed his lower lip nervously as he stared out through the wire. 'You haven't been given orders to load, .long. Get that magazine off your weapon,' he ordered quietly and the boy unclipped the long straight magazine from the side of his sten gun without once taking his eyes from the singing, dancing horde in front of them.
Lothar walked back down the line with a deliberate tread, not once glancing at the oncoming mob, nodding encouragement at each of his men as he came level or distracting them with a quiet word.
But once he reached his post on the station steps again he could no longer, contain himself and he turned to face the gate and only with difficultyprevented himself exclaiming out loud.
They filieLthe entire roadway from side to side and end to end and still they came on, more and more of them pouring out of the side road like a Karoo river in flash flood.
'Stay at your posts, men,' he called. 'Do nothing without orders!" And they stood stolidly in the bright morning sunlight while the leaders of the march reached the locked gates and pressed against them, gripping the wire and peering through the mesh, chanting and grinning as behind them the rest of the huge unwieldy column spread out along the perimeter. Like water contained by a dam wall, compressed by their own multitudes, they were building up rank upon rank until they completely surrounded the station yard, hemming in the small party of uniformed men. And still they came on, those at the back joining the dense throng at the main gates until the station was a tiny rectangular island in a noisy restless black sea.
Then the men at the gates called for silence and gradually the chanting and laughter and general uproar died away.
We want to speak with your officers,' called a young black man in the front rank at the closed gates. He had his fingers hooked through the mesh and the crowd behind him pushed him so hard against the wire that the high gates shook and trembled.
The station commander came out of the charge office, and as he went down the steps Lothar fell in a pace behind him. Together they crossed the yard and halted in front of the gate.
'This is an illegal gathering,' the commander addressed the young man who had called out to them. 'You must disperse immediately." He was speaking in Afrikaans.
'It is much worse than that, officer,' the young man smiled at him happily. He was replying in English, a calculated provocation.
'You see, none of us are carrying our pass books. We have burned them." 'What is your name, you?" the commander demanded in Afrikaans.
'My name is Raleigh Tabaka and I am the branch secretary of the Pan Africanist Congress, and I demand that you arrest me and all these others,' Raleigh told him in fluent English. 'Open the gates, policeman, and take us into your prison cells." 'I am going to give you five minutes to disperse,' the commander told him menacingly.
'Orwhat?" Raleigh Tabaka asked. 'What will you do if we do not obey you?" and behind him the crowd began to chant. 'Arrest us! We have burned the dompas. Arrest us!" There was an interruption and a burst of ironic cheers and hooted laughter from the rear of the crowd, and Lothar jumped up on the bonnet of the nearest police Land-Rover to see over their heads.
A small convoy of three troop carriers filled with uniformed constables had driven out of the side road and was now slowly forcing its way through the crowd. The densely packed ranks gave way only reluctantly before the tall covered trucks, but Lothar felt a rush of relief.
He jumped down from the Land-Rover and ordered a squad of his men to the gates. As the convoy came on the people beat upon the steel sides of the trucks with their bare fists and jeered and hooted and gave the ANC salute. A fine mist of dust rose around the trucks and the thousands of milling shuffling feet of the crowd.
Lothar's men forced the gates open against the pressure of black bodies and as the trucks drove through, they swung them shut, and hurriedly locked them again as the crowd surged forward against them.
Lothar left the commander to haggle and bluster with the leaders of the crowd and he went to deploy the reinforcements along the perimeter of the yard. The new men were all armed and Lothar posted the older more steady-looking of them on top of trucks from where they had a sweeping field of fire over all four sides of the fence.
'Stay calm,' he kept repeating. 'Everything is under control. Just obey your orders." He hurried back to the gateway as soon as he had placed the reinforcements, and the commander was still arguing with the black leaders through the wire.
'We will not leave here until either you arrest us, or the pass laws are abolished." 'Don't be stupid, man,' the commander snapped. 'You know neither of those things is possible." 'Then we will stay,' Raleigh Tabaka told him and the crowd behind him chanted: 'Arrest us! Arrest us! Now!" 'I have placed the new men in position,' Lothar reported in a low voice. 'We have nearly two hundred now." 'God grant it will be enough if they turn nasty,' the commander muttered and glanced uneasily along the lille of uniformed men. It seemed puny and insignificant against the mass that confronted them through the wire.
'I have argued with you long enough." He t/urned back to the men behind the gate. 'You must take these people away now. That is a police order." 'We stay,' Raleigh Tabaka told him pleasantly.
As the morning wore on, so the heat increased and Lothar could feel the tension and the fear in his men rising with the heat and the thirst the dust and the chanting. Every few minutes a disturbance in the ci owd made it eddy and push like a whirlpool in the flow of a river, and each time the fence shook and swayed and the white men fingered their guns and fidgeted in the baking sun. Twice more during the morning reinforcements arrived and the crowd let them through until there were almost three hundred armed police in the compound.