Long inactivity bored them, and daily small groups of horsemen,
followed by their wives and pack donkeys, drifted away from the big
encampment at the foot of the gorge, and began the steep rocky ascent
to the cooler equable weather of the highlands, and the comforts and
business of home. Each of them assured the Ras before departure of a
speedy return as soon as they were needed but nevertheless it irked
the
Ras to see his army dwindling and dribbling away while his enemy sat
invulnerable and unchallenged upon the sacred soil of Ethiopia.
Tensions in the encampment were running with the strength and passion
of the groundswell of the ocean, when storms are building out beyond
the horizon.
Caught up in the suppressed violence, in the boiling pot of emotion,
were both Gareth and Jake. Each of them had used the lull to set his
own department in order.
Jake had gone out under cover of night behind a screen of
Ethiopian scouts to the deserted battlefield, where he had stripped the
carcass of the Hump. Working by the light of a hooded bull's-eye
lantern, and assisted by Gregorius, he had taken the big Bentley engine
to pieces, small enough for the donkey packs and lugged it all home to
the encampment below the camel-thorn trees. Using the replacements,
he had rebuilt the engine of Tenastefin ruined by the Ras in his first
flush of enthusiasm. Then he had stripped, overhauled and reassembled
the other two cars. The Ethiopian armoured forces were now a squadron
of three, all of them in as fine fettle as they had been for the past
twenty years.
Gareth, in the meantime, had selected and trained Harari crews for the
Vickers guns, and then exercised them with the infantry and cavalry,
teaching the gunners to lay down sheets of covering fire.
Foot soldiers were taught to advance or retreat in concert with the
Vickers.
Gareth had also found time to complete the survey of the retreat route
up the gorge, mark each of his defensive positions, and supervise the
digging of the machine-gun nests and support trenches in the steep
rocky sides of the gorge. An enemy advancing up the twisting hairpin
track would come under fire around each bend of the road, and would be
open to the steam-roller charge of the foot warriors from the concealed
trenches amongst the lichen-covered rocks above the track.
The track itself had been smoothed, and the gradients altered to allow
the escape of the armoured cars once the position on the plains was
forced by the overwhelming build-up of Italian forces. Now all of them
waited, as ready as they could be, and the slow passage of time eroded
all their nerves.
It was, then, with a certain relief that the scouts who were keeping
the Italian fortifications under day and night surveillance reported
back to the Ras's war council that a host of strange vehicles that
moved at great speed without the benefit of either legs or wheels had
arrived to swell the already formidable forces arrayed against them,
and that these vehicles were daily engaged in furious activity, from
sun-up to sun-down, racing in circles and aimless sweeps across the
vast empty spaces of the plains.
"Without wheels," mused Gareth, and cocked an eyebrow at Jake.
"You know what that sounds like, don't you, old son?"
"I'm afraid I
do." Jake nodded. "But we'd better go and take a look." Half a moon
in the sky gave enough light to show up clearly the deeply torn runners
of the steel tracks, like the spoor of gigantic centipedes in the soft
fluffy soil.
Jake squatted on his haunches, and regarded them broodingly. He knew
now that what he had dreaded was about to happen. He was going to have
to take his beloved cars and match them against tracked vehicles with
heavier armour, and revolving turrets, armed with big-bored,
quick-firing guns. Guns that could crash a missile into his frontal
armour, through the engine block, through the hull compartment and any
crew members in its path, then out through the rear armour with
sufficient velocity still on it to do the same again to the car
behind.
"Tanks," he muttered. "Bloody tanks."
"I say, an eagle scout in our midst," murmured Gareth, sitting
comfortably up in the turret of
Priscilla the Pig. "A tenderfoot might have thought those tracks were
made by a dinosaur but you can't fool old hawk-eye Barton, son of the
Texas prairies," and he reached out to stub his cheroot against the"
side of the turret, an action which he knew would annoy Jake
intensely.
Jake grunted and stood up. "I'm going to buy you an ashtray for your
next birthday." His voice was brittle. It did not matter that his
beloved cars might be shot at by rifle, machine gun and now by cannon
that they had been scarred by flying gravel and harsh thorn. The
deliberate crushing of burning tobacco against the fighting steel
annoyed him, as he knew it was meant to.
"Sorry, old son." Gareth grinned easily. "Slipped my mind.
Won't happen again." Jake swung up the side of the car and dropped
into the driver's seat. Keeping the engine noise down to a low murmur,
a sound as sweet and melodious in his ears as a Bach concerto,
he let Priscilla move away across the moon gilded plain.
When Jake and Gareth were alone like this, out on a reconnaissance or
working together in the gorge, the dagger of rivalry was sheathed and
their relationship was relaxed and comforting, spiced only by the mild
needling and jostling for position. It was only in Vicky
Camberwell's physical presence that the knife came out.
Jake thought about it now, thought about the three of them as he did a
great deal each day. He knew that, after that magical night when he
and Vicky had known each other on the hard desert earth, she was his
woman. It was too wonderful an experience to have shared with another
human being for it not to have marked and changed both of them
profoundly.
Yet in the weeks since then there had been little opportunity for
reaffirmation a single stolen afternoon by a tall mist-smoking
waterfall in the gorge, a narrow ledge of black rock, cool with shadow
and green with soft beds of moss, and screened from prying eyes by the
overhang of the precipice. The moss had been as soft as a feather bed,
and afterwards they swam naked together in the swirling cauldron of the
pool, and her body had been slim and pale and lovely through the dark
water.
Then again, he had watched her with Gareth Swales the way she laughed,
or leaned close to him to listen to a whispered comment, and the
mock-modest shock at his outrageous sallies, the laughter in her eyes
and on her lips.
Once she touched his arm, a thoughtless gesture while in conversation
with Gareth, a gesture so intimate and possessive that
Jake had felt the black jealous anger fill his head.
There was no cause for it, Jake knew that. He could not believe she
was fool enough or so naive as to walk into the obvious web
that
Gareth was weaving she was Jake's woman. What they had done together,
their loving was so wonderful, so completely once in a lifetime, that
it was not possible she could turn aside to anyone else.
Yet between Vicky and Gareth there was the laughter and the shared
jokes. Sometimes he had seen them together, standing on a rock
-promontory above the camp or walking in the grove of camel-thorn
trees, leaning towards each other as they talked. Once or twice they
had both been absent from the camp at the same time for as long as a
complete morning. But it meant nothing, he knew that.
Sure, she liked Gareth Swales. He could understand that.
He liked Gareth also more than liked, he realized. It was,
rather, a deep comradely feeling of affection. You could not but be
drawn by his fine looks, his mocking sense of the ridiculous, and the
deep certainty that below that polished exterior and the overplayed
role of the foppish rogue was a different, a real person.
"Yeah. "Jake sardonically grinned in the darkness, steering the car
south and east around the sky glow that marked the Italian
fortifications at the Wells. "I love the guy. I don't trust him,
but
I love him just as long as he keeps the hell away from my woman."
Gareth stooped out of the turret at that moment and tapped his
shoulder.
"There is a ravine ahead and to the left. It should do," he said,
and Jake swung towards it and halted again.
"It's deep enough, "he gave his opinion.
"And we should be able to see across to the ridge and cover all the
ground to the east once the sun comes up." Gareth pointed to the glow
of the Italian searchlights and then swept his arm widely across the
open desert beyond.
"That looks like where they hold their fun and games every day.
We should get a grandstand view from here. We'd better get under cover
now." They intended to spend the whole of that day observing the
activity of the Italian squadron, pulling out again under cover of
darkness, so Jake reversed Priscilla gingerly down the steep slope of
the ravine, backing and filling carefully, until she was in a hull-down
position below the bank with just the top of her turret exposed but
facing back towards the west with her front wheels at a point in the
bank which she could climb handily, if a quick start and a fast escape
were necessary.
He switched off the engine, and the two of them armed themselves with
machetes and wandered about in the open, hacking down the small wiry
desert brush and then piling it over the exposed turret, until from a
hundred yards it blended into the desert landscape.
Jake spilled gasoline from one of the spare cans into a bucket of sand,
then placed the bucket in the bottom of the ravine and put a match to
it. They crouched over the primitive stove, warming themselves against
the desert chill, while the coffee brewed. They were silent, thawing
out slowly, each thinking his own thoughts.
"I think we've got a problem" said Jake at last, as he stared into the
fire.
"With me that condition goes back as far as I can remember,"
Gareth agreed politely. "But apart from the fact that I am stuck in
the middle of a horrible desert, with savages and bleeding hearts for
company, with an army of Eyeties trying to kill me, broke except for a
post-dated cheque of dubious value, not a bottle of the old Charlie
within a hundred miles, and no immediate prospect of escape apart from
that, I'm in very good shape."
"I was thinking of Vicky."
"Ah!
Vicky!"
"You know that I am in love with her."
"You surprise me."
Gareth grinned devilishly in the flickering firelight. "Is that why
you have been mooning around with that soppy look on your face,
bellowing like a bull moose in the mating season? Good Lord, I would
never have guessed, old boy."
"I'm being serious, Gary."
"That, old son, is one of your problems. You take everything too
seriously. I am prepared to offer odds of three to one that your mind
is already set on the ivy-covered cottage, bulging with ghastly
brats."
"That's the picture," Jake cut in sharply. "It's that serious, I'm
afraid. How do we stand?" Gareth drew two cigars from his breast
pocket, placed one between Jake's lips, lit a dry twig from the fire
and held it for him.
The mocking grin dropped from his lips and his voice was suddenly
thoughtful, but the expression in his eyes was hard to read in the
uncertain firelight.
"Down in Cornwall, there's a place I know. A hundred and fifty acres.
Comfortable old farm house, of course. I'd have to do it up a bit, but
the cattle sheds are in good nick.
Always did fancy myself as the country squire, bit of hunting and
shooting in between tilling the earth and squirting the milk out of the
cows. Might even run to three or four brats, at that. With fourteen
thousand quid, and a whacking great mortgage bond, I could just about
swing it." They were both silent then, as Jake poured the coffee and
doused the fire, and squatted again facing Gareth.
"It's that serious," Gareth said at last.
"So there isn't going to be a truce? No gentlemen's agreement? "Jake
murmured into his mug.
"Tooth and claw, I'm afraid," said Gareth. "May the best man win,
silent again, each of them lost in his own thoughts, sipping at the
mugs and sucking on their cheroots.
"One of us could get some sleep, "said Jake at last.
"Spin you for it." Gareth flipped a silver Maria Theresa dollar,
and caught it neatly on his wrist.
"Heads,"said Jake.
"Tough luck, old son." Gareth pocketed the coin and flicked out the
coffee grounds from his mug. Then he went to spread his blanket on the
sandy ravine bottom, under Priscilla the Pig's chassis.
Jake shook him gently in the dawn, and cautioned him with a touch on
the lips. Gareth came swiftly awake, blinking his eyes and smoothing
back his hair with both hands, then rolling to his feet and following
Jake quickly up the side of Priscilla's hull.
The dawn was a silent explosion of red and gold and brilliant apricot
that fanned out across half the eastern sky, touched the high ground
with fire but left the long grey blue shadows smeared across the low
places. The crescent of the sinking moon low on the western horizon
was white as a shark's tooth.
"Listen," said Jake, and Gareth turned his head slightly to catch the
tremble of sound in the silence of the dawn.
"Hear it?" Gareth nodded, and lifted his binoculars. Slowly he swept
the distant sun-touched ridges.
"There," said Jake sharply, and Gareth swung the glasses in the
direction of Jake's arm.
Some miles off, a string of dark indefinite blobs were moving through
one of the depressions in the gently undulating terrain. They looked
like beads on a rosary; even in the magnifying lens of the gla
sses they
were too far off and too dimly lit to afford details.
They watched them, following the almost sinuous line as it snaked
across their front until the leading blob drew the line up the gentle
slope of ground. As it reached the crest, it was struck with startling
suddenness by the low golden sun. In the still cool air there was no
distortion, and the dramatic side-lighting made every detail of its low
profile clear and crisp.
"CV.3 cavalry tanks," said Gareth, without hesitation.
"Fifty-horse-power Alfa engines. Ten centimetres of frontal armour and
a top speed of eighteen miles an hour." It was as though he were
reading the specifications from a catalogue, and Jake remembered that
these were part of his stock-in-trade. "There's a crew of three,
driver, loader gunner and commander and it looks as though they are
mounting the fifty-men. Spandau. They are accurate at a thousand
yards and the rate of fire is fifteen rounds a minute." As he was
speaking the leading tank dropped from sight over the reverse slope of
the ridge, followed in quick succession by the five others and their
engine noise droned away into silence.
Gareth lowered his glasses and grinned ruefully. "Well, we are a
little out of our class. Those Spandaus are in fully revolving
turrets. We are out-gunned all to hell."
"We are faster than they are," said Jake hotly, like a mother whose
children had been scorned.
"And that, old son, is all we are, "grunted Gareth.
"How about a bite of breakfast? It's going to be a long hard day to
sit out before it's dark enough to head for home." They ate tinned
Irish stew, heated over the bucket, and smeared on thick spongy hunks
of unleavened bread, washed down by tea, strong and sweet with
condensed milk and lumpy brown sugar. The sun was well up before they
finished.
Jake belched softly. "My turn to sleep," he said, and he curled up
like a big brown dog in the shade under the hull.
Gareth tried to make himself comfortable against the turret and keep
watch out across the open plain, where the mirage was already starting
to quiver and fume in the rising heat. He congratulated himself
comfortably on his choice of shift; he'd had a good few hours" sleep in
the night, and now he had the comparative cool of the morning. By the
time it was Jake's turn on watch again, the sun would be frizzling, and