owe you one, old son."
"I'll call on you, "Jake grinned.
"Any time. Any time at all." At that moment, Priscilla the Pig roared
heroically, then abruptly backfired in opposition to the Italian
shell-bursts.
Her engine spluttered, surged, farted despairingly, and then fell
silent. "Oh, you son of a bitch!" said Jake with great and passionate
feeling."
"Not now!"
"Reminds me of a girl I knew in Australia,-"
Later, "Jake told him. "Get on the crank handle."
"My pleasure, old boy," and a near miss burst beside them and knocked
him off his precarious perch on the sponson.
Gareth picked himself up and dusted his lapels fastidiously as he
limped to the crank handle.
After a full minute at the handle, spinning it like a demented
organ-grinder with no effect at all, Gareth fell back panting again.
"I say, old chap, I'm a bit bushed," and they changed places quickly.
Jake stooped over the crank handle, ignoring the tempest of bursting
shells and swirling dust clouds, and the thick muscles in his arm
writhed as he spun the crank.
"She's dead, Gareth shouted after another minute. Jake persevered, his
face turning darkly red and the veins in his throat swelling into thick
blue cords but at last even he released the handle with disgust and
stepped back gasping.
"The tool kit is under the seat, "he said.
"You aren't going to do your handyman act here and now?"
Incredulously Gareth made a wide gesture that took in the bloody
battlefield, the Italian guns and the bursting shells.
"You've got a better idea?" Jake asked brusquely, and Gareth looked
about him forlornly, suddenly straightening his slumping shoulders, the
droop of his mouth lifting into that eternally jaunty grin.
"Funny you should risk, old son. It just so happens-" and like a
conjurer he indicated the apparition that appeared suddenly out of the
curtains of leaping dust and fuming cordite.
Miss Wobbly slammed to a dead stop beside them and both hatches flew
open. Sara's dark head appeared in one and Vicky's golden one in the
other.
Vicky leaned across towards Jake, cupping her hands to her mouth as she
shouted in the storm of shellfire, "What's wrong with
Priscilla?" And Jake gasped, still red-faced and sweating. "She's
thrown one of her fits."
"Grab the tow rope," Vicky instructed. "We'll pull you out." The
Ethiopian camp swarmed with victorious swaggering warriors; their
laughter was loud and their voices boastful. Admiring womenfolk, who
watched them from the cooking fires, were preparing the night's feast.
The big, black iron pots bubbled with a dozen varieties of wat, and the
smell of spices and meat lay heavily on the evening cool.
Vicky Camberwell bent over her typewriter, seated under the flap of her
tent, and her long supple fingers flew at the keys as the words tumbled
from her describing the courage and fighting qualities of a people who,
armed only with sword and horse, had routed a modern army equipped with
all the most fearsome weapons of war. When she was in literary flight,
Vicky sometimes overlooked small details that might detract from the
dramatic impact of her story the fact that the biblical warriors of
Ethiopia had been supported by armoured cars and
Vickers machine guns were details of this type, and she ignored them as
she ended, "But how much longer can these proud, simple and gallant
people continue to fight off the greedy lusting hordes of a modern
Caesar intent on Empire? A miracle happened here today on the plains
of Danakil, but the age of miracles is passing and it is clear even to
those who have thrown in their lot with this fair land of Ethiopia that
she is doomed unless the sleeping conscience of a civilized world is
aroused, unless the voice of justice rings out clearly, calling to the
tyrant Hands off, Benito Mussolini!"
"That's wonderful, Miss
Camberwell," said Sara, leaning over to read the last words as they
tapped out on the roller of the machine. "It makes me want to cry,
it's so sad and "I'm glad you like it, Sara. I wish you were my
editor." Vicky stripped the page from the machine and checked it
satisfied, and she folded the despatch into a thick brown envelope and
licked the flap.
"Are you sure he is reliable?" she asked Sara.
"Oh, yes, Miss Camberwell, he is one of my father's best men."
Sara took the envelope and handed it to the warrior who had been
waiting an hour outside the tent, squatting at the head of his saddled
horse.
Sara spoke to him with great fire and passion, and the man nodded
vehemently as she exhorted him and then flung himself into the saddle
and dashed away towards the darkening mouth of the gorge, where the
smoky blue shadows of evening were enfolding the harsh cliffs and
jagged peaks of the mountains.
"He will be at Sardi before midnight. I have told him not to pause
along the way. Your message will go on to the telegraph at dawn
tomorrow morning."
"Thank you, Sara dear." Vicky rose from the camp table and as she
covered her typewriter, Sara eyed her speculatively.
Vicky had bathed and changed into the one good dress she had brought
with her, a light Irish linen in a pale blue, cut with a fashionably
low waist and skirt that covered her knees but displayed rounded calves
and the narrow delicately shaped ankles which gleamed in their sheaths
of fine silk stockings.
"Your dress is pretty," said Sara softly, "and your hair is so soft and
yellow." She sighed. "I wish I were beautiful like you are.
I wish I had a lovely white skin like you."
"And I wish I had a beautiful golden skin like yours," Vicky countered
swiftly, and they laughed together.
"Are you dressed like that for Gareth? He will love you very much when
he sees you. Let us go and find him."
"I've got a better idea,
Sara. why don't you go and find Gregorius. I am sure he is looking
for you." Sara thought about that for a moment, torn between duty and
pleasure.
"Are you certain you'll be all right on your own, Miss
Camberwell?"
"Oh, I think so thank you, Sara. If I get into trouble
I'll call you."
"I'll come right away," Sara assured her.
Vicky knew exactly where she would find Jake Barton, and she came up
silently beside the tall steel hull and watched for a while as he
worked, completely absorbed and totally oblivious of her presence.
She wondered how she had been so blind as not to have seen him properly
before, not to have seen beneath the boyish freshness the strength and
quiet assurance of a full mature man. It was an ageless face, and she
knew that even when he was an old man the illusion of youth and
freshness would remain with him. Yet there was an intensity in the
eyes, a steely purpose in the heavy line of the jaw that she had never
noticed before. She remembered the
dream of his that he had told her
the factory building his own engine and in a clairvoyant flash she knew
that he had the determination and the strength to make it become
reality. Suddenly she longed to share it with him, and knew that their
two dreams could be placed together, his engine and her book, they
could be created together, each gathering strength from the other,
pooling their determination and their creative reserves. it would be
worth while to share both dreams with a man like Jake Barton.
"Perhaps being in love allows one to see more clearly," she thought, as
she watched him with secret pleasure. "Or perhaps it simply makes it
easy to kid yourself," and she felt annoyance that her natural cynicism
should overtake her now.
"No," she decided. "It's not make believe. He is strong and good and
he'll stay that way," and immediately she thought that perhaps she was
trying too hard to convince herself.
Unbidden, the memory of the night she had spent so recently with
another man flooded back to her, and for a moment she found herself
confused and uncertain. She tried to thrust the memory firmly aside,
but it nagged at her, and she found herself comparing two men,
remembering the wanton and wicked delights she had known,-and doubting
wistfully that she might ever recapture them.
Then she looked closer at the man she thought she loved, and saw that
although his arms were thick and dark with hair, and his hands were
large and heavy-knuckled, yet the thick spatulate fiLigers worked with
an almost sensuous skill and lightness, and she tried to imagine them
moving on her skin and the image was so clear and voluptuous that she
shuddered and drew in her breath sharply.
Immediately Jake looked up at her, the surprise in his eyes changing
instantly to pleasure, and that slow warm smile spreading over his face
as he ran his eyes swiftly from the top of her silken head down to the
silken ankles.
"Hello, haven't I met you somewhere before?" he asked, and she laughed
and pirouetted, flaring the dress.
"Do you like it?" she asked. He nodded silently and then asked,
"Are we going somewhere special?"
"The Ras's feast, didn't you know?"
not sure I can stan another of his feasts, don't know which is more
dangerous an Italian attack or that liquid dynamite he serves."
"You'll have to be there you're one of the heroes of the great victory,
and Jake grunted and returned his attention to Priscilla the Pig's
internal processes.
"Have you found the trouble?"
"No." Jake sighed with resignation.
"I've taken her to pieces and put her together again and I can't find a
thing." He stood back, shaking his head and wiping his greasy hands on
a wad of cotton waste. "I don't know. I just don't know."
"Have you tried starting her again?"
"No point in that not until I find and cure the trouble."
"Try,"said Vicky, and he grinned at her.
"It's no use but to humour you." He stooped to the crank handle,
and Priscilla fired at the first swing, caught and ran smoothly,
purring like a great hump-backed cat in front of the fire.
"My God." Jake stepped back and stared in amazement.
"There's just no logic to it."
"She's a lady," Vicky explained.
"You know that and there isn't necessarily logic in the way a lady
behaves." He turned to face her directly and grinned at her, such a
knowing expression in his eyes that she felt herself flushing.
"I'm beginning to find that out," he said, and stepped towards her, but
she raised both hands protectively.
"You'll put grease on this dress-"
"If I were to bath first?"
"Bath," she ordered. "And then we'll talk again, mister."
In the last few minutes of daylight, a rider had come down the gorge,
clattering and sliding on the rough footing, and then hitting the level
ground and galloping into the Ras's camp on a blown and lathered
horse.
Sara Sagud took the message he carried, came flying up to the cluster
of tents under the flat-topped camel-thorn trees and burst into
Vicky Camberwell's tent waving the folded cablegram, without dreaming
of announcing her entrance.
Vicky was deep in a bearlike enfolding embrace into which Jake
Barton had taken her moments before, and the interruption came just
as
Vicky was abandoning herself to the pleasure of the moment. Jake
towered over her, freshly scrubbed and smelling of carbolic soap, with
his hair still wet and newly combed. Vicky broke out of his arms and
turned furiously to the girl.
"Oh!" exclaimed Sara, with the natural interest and fascination of a
born conspirator discovering a fresh intrigue.
"You are busy."
"Yes, I am, "snapped Vicky, cheeks aflame with embarrassment and
confusion.
"I'm sorry, Miss Camberwell. But I thought this message must be
important-" and Vicky's irritation faded, as she saw the cablegram.
"I
thought you would want it." Vicky snatched it from her, broke the seal
and read avidly. Her anger faded as she read, and she looked up with
shining eyes at Sara.
"You were right thank you, my dear," and she spun back to Jake,
dancing up to him and flinging both arms around his neck, laughing and
gay.
"Hey," Jake laughed with her, holding her awkwardly in front of the
girl, "What's this all about?"
"It's from my editor," she told him.
"My story about the attack at the Wells was an international scoop.
Headlines around the world and there is to be an emergency session of
the League of Nations." Sara snatched the cable form back from her,
and read it as though by right.
"This is what my father believed you could do for us, Miss
Camberwell for our land and our people." Sara was weeping, fat oily
tears breaking from the dark gazelle eyes and clinging in her long
lashes. "Now the world knows. Now they will come to save us from the
tyranny." The girl's faith in the triumph of good over evil was
childlike, and she pulled Vicky from Jake's arms and embraced her
instead.
"Oh, you have given us a chance again. We will always be grateful to
you." Her tears smeared Vicky's cheek, and she drew back, sniffing
wetly, and wiped her own tears from Vicky's face with the palm of her
hand. "We will never forget you," she said, and then smiled through
the tears. "We must go and tell my grandfather." They found it
impossible to convey to the Ras the exact nature of this new
advancement of the Ethiopian cause. He was very hazy in his exact
understanding of the role and importance of the League of Nations, or
the power and influence of the international press. After the first
few pints of tej he had made sure in his own mind that in some
miraculous fashion the great Queen of England had espoused their
cause,
and that the armies of Great Britain would soon join him in the
field.
Both Gregorius and Sara spoke to him at great length, trying to explain
&nb
sp; his error, and he nodded and grinned benevolently at them but remained
completely unshaken in his conviction, and ended by embracing Gareth
Swales, making a long rambling speech in Amharic, hailing him as an
Englishman and a comrade in arms. Then, before the speech ended, the
Ras fell suddenly and dramatically asleep in mid-sentence, falling face
forward into a large bowl of mutton wat. The day's battle, the
excitement of learning of his new and powerful ally, and the large
quantities of tej were too much for him, and four of his bodyguard
lifted him from the bowl and carried him snoring loudly to his
household tent.
"Do not worry," Sara told his guests. "My grandfather will not be gone
for long after a small rest he will return."
"Tell him not to put himself out," murmured Gareth Swales. "I for one
have seen about enough of him for one day." The glow of the bonfires
turned the sky ruddy and paled the moon that sailed above the mountain
peaks. It shone on the steel and polished wood of the huge pile of
captured weapons, rifles and pistols and ammunition bandoliers, that
were heaped triumphantly in the open space before the royal party.
The sparks from the fires rose straight upwards into the still night
and the laughter and voices of the guests became more unrestrained as
the tej gourds circulated.
Farther along the valley, also within the acacia grove, the Gallas of
Ras Kullah were celebrating the victory also, and there was the
occasional faint outburst of drunken shouts and a fusillade of shots
from captured Italian rifles.
Vicky sat between Gareth and Jake. She had not arranged it so,
and if given the choice would have sat alone with Jake, but Gareth
Swales had not been as easily discouraged as she had believed he
might.
Sara came from her place beside Gregorius. Crossing the squatting
circle of feasting guests, she knelt on the pile of leather cushions
beside Vicky, pushing herself in between Gareth and the girl and she
leaned close to Vicky, an arm around her shoulder and her lips touching
her ear.
"You should have told me," she accused her sadly. "I did not know that
you had decided on Jake first. I would have advised you-" At that
instant a sound carried from the camp of the tance and Gallas to where
they sat. It was muted by ths almost obscured by the closer hubbub of
the feasting Harari filling yet the terrible heart-stopping quality of