He hurried along the battery, repeating the order to each layer, emphasizing his orders with the cane. "New target. Ma.s.sed hors.e.m.e.n.
Range two thousand five hundred metres, fire at will." The Ethiopian ponies were small s.h.a.ggy beasts, bred for sure-footed ascent of mountain paths, rather than sustained charges across open plains they had, moreover, been pastured for weeks now on the dry sour gra.s.s of the desert, and in consequence their strength was by this time almost expended.
The first shrapnel burst fifty feet above the heads of the leading riders. It popped open like a gigantic pod of the cotton plant, blooming with sudden fearsome splendour the milky blue sky. It bloomed with a crack as though the sky had shattered, and instantly the air was filled with the humming, hissing knives of flying shrapnel.
A dozen of the ponies went down under the first burst, pitching forward abruptly over their own heads and flinging their riders free.
Then the sky was filled with the deadly cotton b.a.l.l.s, and the continuous crack of the bursts sent the ponies wheeling and the riders crouching low on their withers or swinging out of the saddle to hang low under the bellies of their mounts. Here and there a braver soul would kick his feet free of the stirrups and pick up a dismounted comrade on each of the leathers, the gallant little ponies labouring under their triple burdens. Within seconds, the entire Ethiopian army its single remaining armoured vehicle and all its cavalry were in a retreat every bit as headlong as that of the motorized Italian column which was still on its way back to the Wells of Chaldi. The field was left entirely to Castelani"s artillery and the stranded crew of the Hump.
From the shelter of the shattered hull, Gareth Swales watched his hopes of quick rescue fading rapidly in the shape of the dwindling cavalry.
"Don"t blame them, not really," he told the Ras, and then he looked across at the speeding armoured car. Priscilla the Pig was rapidly overhauling the cavalry.
"He saw us, - I know he did." There had "Him I do," he muttered.
been a moment when Priscilla the Pig had pa.s.sed within a quarter of a mile of them, had in fact turned directly towards them for a few moments. "Do you know something, Ra.s.sey old fellow, I do believe we are being set up for a couple of Patsys." He glanced at the Ras, who lay beside him like an old hunting dog that has been worked too hard; his chest laboured like a blacksmith"s bellows, and his breathing whistled shrilly in his throat.
"Better take those choppers out of your mouth, old chap or else you"re going to swallow them. The fighting"s over for the day. Take it nice and easy now. We"ve got a long walk home tonight." And Gareth Swales transferred all his attention back to the disappearing car.
"Big-hearted Jake Barton is leaving us here and going home to spoon up the honey. Who was the chap that David pulled the same trick on? Come on, Ra.s.sey, you are the Old Testament expert wasn"t it Uriah the Hitt.i.te?" He shook his head sadly. Gareth was already ready to believe the worst. "I take it very much amiss, Ra.s.sey, I can tell you.
Probably have done exactly the same myself, mind you but I do take it amiss gaming from a fine upright citizen like Jake Barton." The Ras had not listened to a word of it. He was the only man in the two armies for whom the battle had not ended.
He was just having a short rest, as behave a warrior of his advanced years. Now, with a single bound, he was on his feet again, s.n.a.t.c.hing up his sword and heading directly for the centre of the Italian batteries. Gareth was taken completely off balance, and the Ras had covered fifty yards of the necessary two thousand to the enemy positions before Gareth could overtake him.
It was unfortunate that one of the Italian gun-layers had his binoculars focused on the derelict hull of the Hump at that moment.
The belligerence of the Italian gunners was in inverse proportion to the number and proximity of the enemy and all of them were giddy with elation at the total and unexpected victory that had dropped into their laps.
The first sh.e.l.l dropped close beside the broken hull of the Hump, as Gareth caught up with the Ras. Gareth stooped and picked up a rounded stone, about the size of a cricket ball.
"Frightfully sorry, old chap," he panted, as he cupped the stone in his right hand. "But we really can"t go on like this." He made allowance for the brittle old bone of the Ras"s skull, and with the stone he tapped him carefully, almost tenderly, above the ear, on the polished black bald curve of the Ras"s pate.
As the Ras dropped, Gareth caught him, one arm under his knees and the other around the shoulders, as though he was a sleeping child. The sh.e.l.ls were falling heavily about him as Gareth ran back for cover, carrying the Ras"s unconscious form across his chest.
Jake Barton heard the crumping explosion of the sh.e.l.ls, and shouted up at Gregorius, "What are they shooting at now?" Gregorius climbed higher out of the turret and peered back. The crushed hull of the Hump would have been unnoticed at that range, just another speck like a clump of camel-thorn or an amorphous pile of black rock.
Indeed, both men had looked at it fifty times in the last few minutes without recognizing it, but the sh.e.l.l bursts, which began to leap about it in fleeting graceful ostrich feathers of dust and smoke, drew Gregorius"s eye immediately.
"My grandfather!" he cried . anxiously. "They have been hit, Jake." Jake swung the car and halted it, clambering out of the hatch, blowing dust from the lens of his binoculars and then focusing them. The picture of the destroyed car leaped into close-up and he recognized instantly the two distant figures, one in tailored tweeds, the other in flowing robes and swirling skirts; the two of them were locked together breast to breast and for an unbelieving moment Jake thought they were doing a Strauss waltz in the midst of an artillery barrage. Then he saw Gareth lift the Ras off the ground and stagger with him to the shelter of the overturned car.
"We must rescue them, Jake," Gregorius exclaimed pa.s.sionately.
"They will be killed out there, if we do not." Perhaps it was the telepathic transfer of Gareth Swales"s suspicions, but Jake experienced the sudden guilty p.r.i.c.k of temptation. At that moment he knew he loved Vicky Camberwell, and there was an easy way to clear the field.
"Jake!" Gregorius called again, and suddenly Jake felt himself so sickened by his own treacherous thoughts that there was a hollow nauseous feeling in the centre of his gut, and he felt the swift flow of saliva from under his tongue.
"Let"s go," he said, and dropped down into the driver"s hatch. He swung Priscilla the Pig in a tight skidding turn and ran straight for the forest of sh.e.l.l-bursts.
They drew no fire, the Italians were concentrating on the stationary target and they seemed to be making better practice as they figured the range. It was a matter of seconds before the Hump took a direct hit, and Jake pressed the throttle flat to the floorboards, but Priscilla the Pig chose this moment to show her true nature. He felt her baulk, and the note of her engine changed momentarily, missing and stuttering, power falling off then suddenly she picked up again and roared onwards at full power.
"Good little darling. "Jake peered ahead through the visor, and swung slightly out to the left, to come in under cover of the Italians"
own sh.e.l.l-bursts and the capsized hull of the Hump.
A sh.e.l.l burst directly ahead, and Jake weaved the big car expertly around the gaping smoking crater, pulled in sharply and spun around to a sliding halt, facing back the way he had come, ready for a quick pull-away. He was hard up under cover of the destroyed hull, partially screened from the Italians, and ten paces from where Gareth Swales was sitting holding the Ras"s frail body on his lap.
"Gary!" yelled Jake, sticking his head out of the hatch, and Gareth looked up at him with a startled unbelieving expression. He had been so deafened by sh.e.l.l-bursts that he had not realized that Jake had come back for him. Jake had to shout again.
"Come on, d.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l," and this time Gareth moved with alacrity. He picked up the Ras like a bundle of dirty laundry and ran with him to the car. A sh.e.l.l burst so close that it almost knocked him off his feet, and stones and clouds of earth splattered against the armoured steel.
However, Gareth kept his feet and handed up the Ras to the willing hands and loving care of his grandson.
"Is he all right?" Greg demanded anxiously.
"Hit by a stone, he"ll be all right," Gareth grunted, and leaned for an instant against the side of the car, his breathing sobbing painfully in his throat, his hair and mustache thick with white dust, and the sweat cutting deep wet runners down his filth-caked cheeks.
He looked up at Jake. "I thought you weren"t coming back," he croaked.
"It crossed my mind." Jake reached down and took his hand. He boosted him up the side of the car, and Gareth held his hand for a second longer than was necessary, squeezing slightly.
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 sh.e.l.l-bursts.
Her engine spluttered, surged, farted despairingly, and then fell silent. "Oh, you son of a b.i.t.c.h!" said Jake with great and pa.s.sionate 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 b.l.o.o.d.y battlefield, the Italian guns and the bursting sh.e.l.ls.
"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 sh.e.l.lfire, "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 l.u.s.ting hordes of a modern Caesar intent on Empire? A miracle happened here today on the plains of Danakil, but the age of miracles is pa.s.sing 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 swiftly, crossing out a word and inking in another before she was 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 pa.s.sion, 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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.surance 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.
"h.e.l.lo, 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 G.o.d." 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?"