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With incredible deliberation the huge insect ambled across Bond's forehead It stopped below the hair What the hell was it doing now? Bond could feel it nuzzling at his skin It was drinking! Drinking the beads of salt sweat Bond was sure of it For minutes it hardly moved Bond felt ith the tension He could feel the sweat pouring off the rest of his body on to the sheet In a second his li on He would start to shake with an ague of fear Could he control it, could he? Bond lay and waited, the breath co ain It walked into the forest of hair Bond could feel the roots being pushed aside as it forced its way along Would it like it there? Would it settle down? How did centipedes sleep? Curled up, or at full length? The tiny centipedes he had known as a child, the ones that always seehole into the empty bath, curled up when you touched theainst the sheet Would it walk out on to the pilloould it stay on in the warm forest? The centipede stopped Out! OUT! Bond's nerves screamed at it
The centipede stirred Slowly it walked out of his hair on to the pillow
Bond waited a second Now he could hear the rows of feet picking softly at the cotton It was a tiny scraping noise, like soft fingernails
With a crash that shook the room Bond's body jackknifed out of bed and on to the floor
At once Bond was on his feet and at the door He turned on the light He found he was shaking uncontrollably He staggered to the bed There it was crawling out of sight over the edge of the pillow Bond's first instinct was to twitch the pillow on to the floor He controlled hi for his nerves to quieten Then softly, deliberately, he picked up the pillow by one corner and walked into the middle of the room and dropped it The centipede came out from under the pillow It started to snake swiftly away across theNow Bond was uninterested He looked round for so to kill it with Slowly he went and picked up a shoe and ca how the centipede had got into his bed He lifted the shoe and slowly, almost carelessly, smashed it down He heard the crack of the hard carapace
Bond lifted the shoe
The centipede hipping frorey-brown, shiny death Bond hit it again It burst open, yellowly
Bond dropped the shoe and ran for the bathroom and was violently sick
VII
NIGHT PASSAGE
By the way, Quarrel-" Bond dared a bus with 'Brown Bomber' painted above its windshield The bus pulled over and roared on down the hill towards Kingston sounding a furious chord on its triple windhorn to restore the driver's ego, "-what do you know about centipedes?"
"Centipedes, cap'n?" Quarrel squinted sideways for a clue to the question Bond's expression was casual "Well, we got so Dey kills folks Dey ston Dey loves de rotten wood an' de ht Why, cap'n? Yo seen one?"
Bond dodged the question He had also not told Quarrel about the fruit Quarrel was a tough man, but there was no reason to sow the seeds of fear "Would you expect to find one in a modern house, for instance? In your shoe, or in a drawer, or in your bed?"
"Nossir" Quarrel's voice was definite "Not hunless dem put dere a purpose Dese hinsecks love de holes and de crannies Dey not love de clean places Dey dirty-livin' hinsecks Mebbe yo find deht places"
"I see" Bond changed the subject "By the way, did those two , cap'n Dey plenty happy wid de job An' dey look plenty like yo an' lanced at Bond and said hesitantly, "I fears dey weren't very good citizens, cap'n Had to find de two arood whiteman from Betsy's"
"Who's Betsy?"
"She done run de lousiest brothel in town, cap'n," Quarrel spat emphatically out of the"Dis whitehed "So long as he can drive a car I only hope they get to Montego all right"
"Don yo worry," Quarrel misunderstood Bond's concern "I say I tell de police dey stole de car if dey don'"
They were at the saddleback at Stony Hill where the Junction Road dives down through fifty S-bends towards the North Coast Bond put the little Austin A3O into second gear and let it coast The sun was coold lanced into the plunging valley There were few people on the road-an occasionalon the flank of a hill, his three-foot steel cutlass dangling froar cane held in his left, or a wo up the road with a covered basket of fruit or vegetables for Stony Hill ot near the village It was a savage, peaceful scene that had hardly changed, except for the surface of the road, for two hundred years orof theover froan's Harbour in 1750