"Let"s get them into the car first." And they moved steadily up the path, the Gallas pressing them more closely. One of the tall cloaked figures jostled Jake roughly, trying him, beginning to push harder, 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, d.a.m.n 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 m.u.f.fled 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.
"G.o.dd.a.m.n 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, pa.s.sing 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 carca.s.s of a helpless scarab beetle, and the roar of voices was a storm surf of anger.
Drive, Vicky for G.o.d"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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 b.u.t.tocks 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 l.u.s.trous 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 confirmation that the sentries had heard his approach, and that after their recent experiences they were highly sensitive to the sound of a Bentley engine, a star sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 h.e.l.l," 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l.
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 smell of him was like the taste of his mouth. She felt the softness of her own body crave the hardness of his and she pressed herself to him, finding pleasure in the pain of contact, in the bruising pressure of his mouth against her lips.
She knew she was arousing emotions that soon would be beyond either of their control, and the knowledge made her reckless and bold.
The thought occurred to her that she had it in her power to drive him demented with pa.s.sion, and the idea aroused her further, and immediately she wanted to exercise that power.
She heard his breathing roaring in her ears, then realized that it was not his it was her own, and each gust of it seemed to swell her chest until it must burst.
It was so cramped in the c.o.c.kpit of the car, and their movements were becoming wild and unrestrained. Vicky felt restricted and itching with constraint. She had never known this wildness before, and for a fleeting instant she remembered the skilful, gentle minuet of formal movements which had been her loving with Gareth Swales, and she compared it to this stormy meeting of pa.s.sions; then the thought was borne away on the flood, on the need to be free of confinement.
Outside the car, the chill of the desert night p.r.i.c.kled the skin of her back and flanks and thighs, and she felt the fine golden hairs come erect on her forearms. He flapped out the bed-roll and spread it on the earth. Then he returned to get her, and the heat of his body was a physical shock. It seemed to burn with all the pent-up fires of his soul, and she pressed herself to it with complete abandon, delighting in the contrast of his burning flesh and the cool desert breeze upon her bare skin.
Now at last there was nothing to prevent the range of her hands and she knew they were cold as ghost fingers on him, delighting to hear his gasp again at their touch. She laughed then, a hoa.r.s.e throaty chuckle.
"Yes." She laughed again, as he lifted her easily and dropped to his knees on the bed-roll, holding her against his chest.
"Yes, Jake." She let the last restraint fly. "Quickly, quickly my darling: It was a raging, a roaring of all her senses. It was an aching, tumultuous storm that ended at last and afterwards the vast hissing silence of the desert was so frightening that she clung to him like a child and found to her amazement that she was weeping. the tears scalded her eyes and yet were as icy as the touch of frost upon her cheeks.
General De Bono"s first cautious but ponderous thrust across the Mareb River, into Ethiopia, met with a success that left him stunned.
Ras Muguletul the Ethiopian commander in the north, offered only token resistance then withdrew his forty thousand men southwards to the natural mountain fortress of Ambo Aradam. Unopposed, De Bono drove the seventy miles to Adowa and found it deserted. Triumphantly he erected the monument to the fallin Italian warriors and thereby expunged the stain of defeat from the arms of Italy.
The great civilizing mission had begun. The savage was being tamed, and introduced to the miracles of modern man amongst them the aerial bomb.
The Royal Italian Air Force ranged the skies above the towering Ambas, reporting all troop movements and swooping down to bomb and machine-gun any concentrations. The Ethiopian forces were confused and scattered under their tribal commanders. There were half a dozen breaches in their line that a forceful commander could have exploited indeed even General De Bono sensed this and made another convulsive leap forward as far as Makale. However, here he stopped appalled at his own audacity, stunned by his own achievement.
Ras Muguletu was skulking on Ambo Aradam with his forty thousand, while Ras Ka.s.sa and Ras Seyoum were struggling to move the great unwieldy ma.s.ses of their two armies through the mountain pa.s.ses to link up with the army of the Emperor on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Tona.
They were disordered, vulnerable, ripe to be cut down like wheat and General De Bono closed his eyes, covered his brow with one hand and turned his head aside.
History would never accuse him of recklessness and impetuosity.
ROM GENERAL DE BONO COMMANDER OF THE ITALIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE.
AT MA KALE TO BENITO MUSSOLINI PRIME MINISTER OF ITALY HAVING CAPTURED.
ADO WA AND MA KALE I CONSIDER MY IMMEDIATE OBJECTS HAVE BEEN ATTAINED.
STOP IT IS NOW VITALLY NECESSARY TO CONSOLIDATE THESE SUCCESSES" TO.
FORTIFY MY POSITION AGAINST ENEMY COUNTER ATTACK AND TO SECURE MY.
LINES.
OF SUPPLY AND COMMUNICATIONS." ROM BENITO MUSSOLINI PRIME MINISTER.
OF.
ITALY MINISTER OF WAR TO GENERAL DE BONO OFFICER COMMANDING THE.
ITALIAN.
EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN AFRICA HIS MAJESTY WISHES AND I COMMAND YOU TO.
ADVANCE WITHOUT HESITATION ON AMBA ARA DAM AND BRING THE MAIN BODY OF.
THE ENENMY TO BATTLE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE STOP REPLY TO ME." ROM.
GENERAL DE BONO TO THE PRIME MINISTER OF ITALY GREETINGS AND.
FELICITATIONS I WISH TO POINT OUT TO YOUR EXELLENCY THAT THE.
OBJECTIVE.
AMBA ARA DAM IS TACTICALLY UNDESIRABLE ... THE TERRAIN FAVOURS AMBUSH.
CONDITION OF ROADS VERY POOR ... TRUST MY JUDGEMENT ... URGE YOUR.
EXCELLENCY TO RECONSIDER AND TO TAKE COGNIZANCE OF THE FACT THAT THE.
MILITARY SITUATION MUST TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER ALL POLITICAL.
CONSIDERATION." FROM BENITO MUSSOLINI TO MARSHAL DE BONO PREVIOUSLY.
OFFICER COMMANDING THE ITALIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN AFRICA HIS.