and
Jake moved smoothly, swinging his weight across and swivelling a
quarter of a turn. It was so swift that the Galla could not avoid the
blow; even if he had seen it, he was hemmed in and constrained by the
press of his comrades" bodies.
Jake hit him with a forearm chop, and the barrel of the pistol caught
him in the mouth, snapping off his front teeth cleanly from the upper
gum, and the shock of the blow was transferred directly through the
frontal sinuses to the brain.
The man dropped without a sound and was immediately hidden from view by
the men who stumbled over him as they followed. But they did not press
so hard now, and Jake switched the pistol back to Ras
Kullah's head. The entire incident was over before Kullah could cry
out or squirm in the punishing grip that had bruised and twisted his
upper arm.
Jake shifted his grip again, forcing the man farther off balance,
and hustled him on more urgently. Ahead of them, through the trees, he
could make out the ugly humped shapes of the cars, silver grey in the
moonlight and silhouetted by the dying ash heaps of the camp fires.
"Vicky, we'll use Miss Wobbly. I'm not taking a chance on
Priscilla starting first kick," he grated. "Use the driver's hatch.
Don't worry about anything else but getting behind that wheel."
"What about the prisoners?"
"Do what you're told, don't argue, damn it." They were within twenty
feet of the car now, and he told her, "Now, go, fast as you can." She
darted away, reaching the high side of Miss Wobbly before any of the
Gallas could intervene and she went up it with a single agile bound.
"Close down," Jake shouted after her, and felt a quick lift of relief
as the hatch clanged shut. The ( gal las growled like the wolf-pack
denied its prey and they swarmed forward, pressing hard and surrounding
the car.
Jake fired a single shot in the air, and Ras Kullah screamed a command.
The Gallas drew back fractionally and fell into a sullen silence.
"Vicky, can you hear me?" Jake called, as he shepherded the
Italian prisoners close in against the hull.
Her voice was muffled and remote from behind the steel plate as she
acknowledged.
"The rear doors," he told her urgently. "Get them open but not before
I tell you." He pushed the Italians around towards the rear of the
car, but it was slow work, for they were confused and stupid with
terror.
Now, "Jake shouted and knocked impatiently against the hull with the
pistol. The lock grated and the doors swung outwards, and came up
against the packed bodies outside.
"Goddamn it," growled Jake, an got his shoulder to one leaf of the
door. He shoved it open, knocking down two Of the closest Gallas and
in the same movement boosted one of the Italians through the opening
into the dark interior of the car. In a panicky scramble, the other
two followed him and Jake swung the door closed on them and put his
back flat against it, and heard the bolts shot closed on the inside,
facing the hating dark faces, and the surging press of their hundreds
of bodies. Voices were raised at the rear of the crowd and violence
was seconds away they had seen most of their prey escape, and it needed
little more to trigger the mob reflex.
Jake found he was panting as though he had run a long way, and his
heart pounded, so that he could feel it jump against his rib cage but
he held Ras Kullah, changing his grip from the pudgy upper arm to the
thick wiry bush of his hair, twining his fingers deeply into the
stiff,
dark halo at the back of his skull and twisting the head so that Ras
Kullah faced his men. With the other hand Jake thrust the pistol
deeply into the aperture of the man's ear hole
"Speak to them, sweet lips He made his voice vicious and menacing.
"Otherwise I'm going to push this piece right out through the other
ear." Ras Kullah understood the tone, if not the words, and he gabbled
out a few hysterical words Of Amharic; the front warriors drew back a
pace and Jake slid slowly along the hull, keeping his back to the steel
and Ras Kullah pinned helplessly by his hair to cover his front. The
crowd moved with them, keeping station with them, their faces glowering
in the moonlight, cruel and angry, balancing critically on the pinnacle
of violence. A voice rang out from the darkness, an authoritative
voice urging action, the crowd growled, and Ras Kullah whimpered in
Jake's grip.
The sound of Ras Kullah's terror warned Jake that they would be
frustrated no longer, the moment was upon them.
"Vicky, are you ready to start?" he called urgently, and her voice was
just audible.
"Ready to start." He felt the fixed crank handle catch him in the back
of the legs, and at that instant a woman's voice shrilled and echoed
through the grove of camel-thorn trees. In that heart-stopping
ululation of the blood trill, the invocation to violence that the heart
of the African warrior cannot resist, the sound struck the jostling
press of Gallas like a whip, stroke and their bodies convulsed and
their voices rose in an answering blood roar.
"Oh Jesus, here they come," thought Jake, and put all his strength into
the arm and shoulder that took Ras Kullah between the shoulder blades
and hurled him forward into the front rank of his own men. He crashed
into them, bringing down half a dozen of them in a sprawling tangle
over which the next rank tumbled and fell.
Jake turned swiftly and stooped to the crank handle. He had chosen
Miss Wobbly for this moment, knowing that she was the most gentle and
well-intentioned of all the cars.
He would have trembled to put the same trust in Priscilla and as it
was, even she coughed and hesitated at the first swing.
"Please, my darling, please, "Jake pleaded desperately, and at the next
swing of the handle she hacked, choked and fired then suddenly she was
running sweetly. Jake jumped for the sponson, just as a great
two-handed sword swung down at him from on high.
He heard the hiss of the blade, passing like the flight of a bat in the
darkness, and he ducked under it. The sword struck the steel hull of
the car and sprayed a fiery burst of sparks, and Jake rolled and fired
the Beretta as the Galla raised the sword to swing again.
He heard the bullet slog into flesh, a meaty thump, and the man
collapsed backwards, the sword spinning from his hand as he went down
but from every direction, robed figures were swarming up the hull of
the car, like safari ants over the carcass of a helpless scarab
beetle,
and the roar of voices was a storm surf of anger.
Drive, Vicky for God's sake, drive," he yelled and slammed the pistol
over the woolly head of a Galla as it rose beside him. The man fell
away and the engine bellowed, the car bounded forward with a jerk that
threw most of the Gallas from the hull, and Jake was himself thrown
half clear, snatching at one of the welded brackets as he went over and
saving himself from
falling into the swarming pack of Gallas but the
pistol dropped out of his hand as he clung grimly to his precarious
hold.
Miss Wobbly, under Vicky's thrusting foot, roared into the thick wall
of men ahead of her and few of them had a chance to avoid her charge.
Their bodies went down before her, thudding against the frontal plate
of the car, their blood roar changing swiftly to yells and shrieks of
consternation as they scattered away into the darkness and the car
burst free of the press and tore on down the slope.
Jake draiwed himself back on board and steadied himself against the
turret, as he rose to his knees. Beside him a Galla clung like a tick
to the back of an ox, wailing in terror while his sham ma swirled over
his head in the stream of racing air. Jake put one foot against the
man's raised buttocks and thrust hard. The man shot head first over
the side of the speeding car, and hit the earth with a crunch that was
audible even above the roaring engine.
Jake crawled back along the heaving, violently rocking hull and with
fist and foot he threw over side one at a time her deck cargo of
terrified Gallas. Vicky took the car down the slope under full
throttle, weaving wildly through the trees of the grove and at last out
on to the open moonlit plain.
Here at last, by pounding with his fist on the driver's hatch,
Jake managed to arrest Vicky's wild drive, and she braked the car to a
cautious halt.
She came out through the hatch and embraced him with both arms wound
tightly around his neck. Jake made no attempt to avoid the circle of
her arms, and a silence settled over them disturbed only by their
breathing. They had both almost forgotten about their prisoners in the
pleasure of the moment, but were reminded by the scuffling and
muttering in the depths of the car. Slowly they drew apart, and
Vicky's eyes were soft and lustrous in the moonlight.
"The poor things," she whispered. "You saved them from that-" and
words failed her as she remembered the one they had been too late to
save.
Yes, "Jake agreed. "But what the hell do we do with them now!"
"We could take them up to the Harari Camp the Ras would treat them
fairly."
"Don't bet money on it." Jake shook his head. "They are all
Ethiopians and their rules of the game are different from ours. I
wouldn't like to take a chance on it."
"Oh Jake, I'm sure he wouldn't allow them to be-, "Anyway," Jake
interrupted, "if we handed them over to the Hararil Ras Kullah would be
there the next minute demanding them back for his fun and if they
didn't agree, we'd all be in the middle of a tribal war. No, it won't
do."
"We'll have to turn them loose, "said Vicky at last.
"They'd never make it back to the Wells of Chaldi." Jake looked to the
east, across the brooding midnight plain. "The ground out there is
crawling with Ethiopian scouts. They would have their throats slit
before they'd gone a mile."
"We'll have to take them," said Vicky,
and Jake looked sharply at her.
"Take them?"
"In the car drive out to the Wells of Chaldi."
"The
Eyeties would love that," he grunted. "Have you forgotten those
flaming great cannons of theirs?"
"Under a flag of truce," said Vicky.
"There is no other way, Jake. Truly there isn't." Jake thought about
it silently for a full minute and then he -sighed wearily.
"It's a long drive. Let's get going." They drove without headlights,
not wanting to attract the attention of the Ethiopian scouts or the
Italians, but the moon was bright enough to light their way and define
the ravines and rougher ground with crisp black shadows,
although occasionally the wheels would crash painfully into one of the
deep round holes dug by the aardvarks, the nocturnal long-nosed beasts
which burrowed for the subterranean colonies of termites.
The three half-naked Italian survivors huddled down in the rear
compartment of the car, so exhausted by fear and the day's adventures
that they passed swiftly into sleep, a sleep so deep that neither the
noisy roar of the engine within the metal hull nor the bouncing over
rough ground could disturb them. They lay like dead men in an untidy
heap.
Vicky Camberwell climbed down out of the turret to escape the flow of
cool night air, and squeezed into the space beside the driver's seat.
For a while she spoke quietly with Jake, but soon her voice became
drowsy and finally dried up. Then slowly she toppled sideways against
him, and he smiled tenderly and eased her golden head down on to his
shoulder and held her like that, warm against him in the noisy hull, as
he drove on into the eastern night.
The Italian sentries were sweeping the perimeter of their camp at
regular intervals with a pair of powerful anti-aircraft searchlights,
probably in anticipation of a night attack by the Ethiopians, and the
glow of the beams burned up in a tall white cone of light into the
desert sky. Jake homed in upon it, gradually reducing his throttle
setting as he closed in. He knew that the engine beat would carry many
miles in the stillness, but that at lower revs it would be diffused and
impossible to pinpoint.
He guessed he was within two or three miles of the Italian camp when in
their recent experiences they were highly sensitive to the sound of a
Bentley engine, a star shell sailed upwards a thousand feet into the
sky and burst with a fierce blue-white light that lit the desert like a
stage for miles beneath it. Jake hit the brakes hard, and waited for
the shell to sink slowly to earth. He did not want movement to attract
attention. The light died away and left the night blacker than before,
but beside him the abrupt change of motion had woken Vicky and she sat
up groggily, pushing the hair out of her eyes and muttering sleepily.
"What is it?"
"We are here," he said, and another star shell rose in a high arc and
burst in brilliance that paled the moon.
"There." Jake pointed out the ridge above the Wells of Chaldi.
The dark shapes of the Italian vehicles were laagered in orderly
lines,
clearly silhouetted by the star shell. They hall let were two miles
ahead. Suddenly there was the distant ripping sound of a machine gun,
a sentry firing at shadows, and immediately after, a scattered
fusillade of rifle shots which petered out into a sheepish silence.
"It seems that everybody is awake, and jumpy as hell," Jake remarked
drily. "This is about as close as we can go." He crawled out of the
driver's seat and went back to where the prisoners were still piled
upon each other like a litter of sleeping puppies. One of them was
snoring like an asthmatic lion, and Jake had to put his boot amongst
them to stir them back to consciousness. They came awake slowly and
resentfully, and Jake swung open the rear doors and pushed them out
into the darkness. They stood dejectedly
, clasping their naked trunks
against the chill of the night and peering about them fearfully to
discover what new unpleasantness awaited them. At that instant another
star shell burst almost overhead, and they exclaimed and blinked
owlishly without immediate comprehension as Jake made shooing gestures,
trying to drive them like a flock of chickens towards the ridge.
Finally Jake grabbed one of them by the scruff of the neck,
pointed his face at the ridge and gave him a shove that sent him
tottering the first few paces. Suddenly the man recognized his own
camp and the lines of big Fiat trucks in the light of the star shell.
He let out a heartfelt cry of relief and broke into a shambling run.
The other two stared for a moment in disbelief and then set out after
him at the top of their speed. When they had gone twenty yards,
one of them turned back and came to Jake, seized his hand and pumped it
vigorously, a huge smile splitting his face; then he turned to Vicky
and covered both her hands with wet noisy kisses. The man was
weeping,
tears streaming down his cheeks.
"That's enough of that," growled Jake. "On your way, friend," and he
turned the Italian and once more pointed him at the horizon and helped
him on his way.
The unaffected joy of the released Italians was contagious. Jake and
Vicky drove back in a high good mood, laughing together secretly in the
dark and noisy hull of the car. They had covered half of the forty
miles back to the Sardi Gorge, and behind them the lights of the
Italian camp were a mere suggestion of lesser darkness low on the
eastern horizon, but still their mood was light and joyous and at some
fresh sally of Jake's Vicky leaned across to kiss him on the soft pulse
of his throat beneath his ear.
As if of her own accord, Miss Wobbly's speed bled away and she rocked
to a gentle standstill in the centre of a wide open area of soft sandy
soil and low dark scrub.
Jake earthed the magneto, and the engine note died away into silence.
He turned in the seat and took Vicky fully in his arms,
crushing her to him with sudden strength that made her gasp aloud.
"Jake!" she protested, half in pain, but his lips covered hers,
and her protests were forgotten at the taste of his mouth.
His jaw and cheeks were rough with new beard, the same strong wiry
growth of dark hair which curled out of his shirt front, and the man