Together with the magnificent enamelled cross around his neck, they had added immeasurably to his prestige and correct sense of self-importance.
For the first few weeks he never tired of reviewing and manoeuvring his armoured forces. The six speedy machines, with their low rakish lines and Aided turrets, intrigued him. Their speed over the roughest ground, bouncing along on their spinning tracks, delighted him. They made wonderful shooting-brakes, for nothing held them up, and he conceived the master strategy of using them for game drives.
A squadron of light CV.3 tanks, in extended line abreast, could sweep a thirty-mile swathe of desert, driving all game before them, down to where the Count waited with the Mannlicher. It was the greatest sport of his hunting career.
The scope of this activity was such that even in the limitless s.p.a.ces of the Danakil desert, it did not pa.s.s unnoticed.
Like their Ras, the Harari warriors were men of short patience.
Long inactivity bored them, and daily small groups of hors.e.m.e.n, 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sion 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 carca.s.s of the Hump. Working by the light of a hooded bull"s-eye lantern, and a.s.sisted 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 rea.s.sembled 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.p.a.ces of the plains.
"Without wheels," mused Gareth, and c.o.c.ked 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. "b.l.o.o.d.y 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 h.e.l.l 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, and we"ll name the first brat after you. That"s a promise." They were 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 cha.s.sis.
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 gla.s.ses 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.s.ses 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 gla.s.ses and grinned ruefully. "Well, we are a little out of our cla.s.s. Those Spandaus are in fully revolving turrets. We are out-gunned all to h.e.l.l."
"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 Priscilla"s hull hot as a wood stove.
"Look out for Number One," he murmured, and took a leisurely sweep of the land with the gla.s.ses. There was no way that an Italian patrol could surprise them here. He had selected the stake-out with a soldier"s eye for ground, and he congratulated himself again, as he slumped in relaxation against the turret and lit a cheroot.
"Now," he thought. "Just how do you take on a squadron of cavalry tanks, without artillery, mine-fields or armour-piercing guns ?" and he let his mind tease and worry the problem. A couple of hours later he had decided that there were ways, but all of them depended on having the tanks come in at the right place, from the right direction at the right time. "Which, of course, is an animal of a completely different breed," and that took a lot more thought. Another hour later he knew there was only one way the Italian armoured squadron could be made to co-operate in its own destruction. "The jolly old donkey and the carrot trick again," he thought. "Now all we need is a carrot."
Instinctively he looked down at where Jake lay curled. Jake had not moved once in all the hours, only the deep soft rumble of his breathing showed he was still alive. Gareth felt a p.r.i.c.kle of irritation that he should be enjoying such undisturbed rest.
The heat was a heavy oppressive pall, pressing down upon the earth, beating like a gong upon Gareth"s head.
The sweat dried almost instantly upon his skin, leaving a rime of salt crystals, and he screwed up his eyes as he swept the horizon with the gla.s.ses.
The glare and the mirage had obscured the horizon, blotted out even the nearest ridges behind a shifting throbbing curtain of hot air that seemed thick as water, swirling and spiralling in wavering columns and sluggish eddies.
Gareth blinked his eyes, and shook the drops of sweat from his eyebrows. He glanced at his watch. It was still another hour until Jake"s shift, and he contemplated putting his watch forward. It was distinctly uncomfortable up on the hull in the sun, and he glanced again at the sleeping form in the shade.
Just then he caught a sound on the thick heated air, a soft quiver of sound, like the hive murmur of bees. There was no way in which to tell the direction of the sound, and Gareth crouched attentively, straining for it. It faded and returned, faded and returned again, but this time stronger and more definite. The configuration of the land and the flawed and heat-faulted air were playing tricks on the ear.
Suddenly the volume of sound climbed swiftly, becoming a humming growl that shook in the. heat.
Gareth swung the gla.s.ses to the east; it seemed to emanate from the whole curve of the eastern horizon, like the animal growl of the surf.
For an instant the glare and swirling mirage opened enough for him to see a huge darkly distorted shape, a grotesque lumbering monster on four stilt-like legs, seeming as tall as a double-storey building.
Then the mirage closed down again swiftly, leaving Gareth blinking with doubt and alarm at what he had seen. But now the growl of sound beat steadily in the air.
Jake," he called urgently, and was answered by a snort and a changed volume of snore. Gareth broke off a branch from the layer of camouflage and tossed it at the reclining figure. It caught Jake in the back of the neck and he came angrily awake, one fist bunched and ready to punch.
"What the h.e.l.l-"he snarled.
"Come up here, "called Gareth.
"I can"t see a d.a.m.ned thing," muttered Jake, standing high on the turret and peering eastwards through his gla.s.ses. The sound was now a deep drumming growl, but the wall of glare and mirage was close and impenetrable.
"There!" shouted Gareth.
"Oh my G.o.d!" cried Jake.
The huge shape leaped out at them suddenly. Very close, very black and tall, blown up by distortion and mirage to gargantuan proportions. Its shape changed constantly, so at one moment it looked like a four-masted ship under a full suit of black sails then it altered swiftly into a towering black tadpole shape that wriggled and swam through the soupy air.
"What the h.e.l.l is it? "Gareth demanded.
"I don"t know, but it"s making a noise like a squadron of Italian tanks and it"s coming straight at us."