Assegai полностью

The sky was bright and clear except for a single silver cloud that seemed not much larger than his hand. He put the Bumble Bee into a climb and banked towards it. It seemed almost solid as the earth and he flew close over the top. Then he turned and came back, and this time he touched the top of the silver billows with his wheels as though he was landing upon them. ‘Playing with clouds,’ he exulted. ‘Is this how the angels and the gods pass their time?’ He dropped down through the cloud bank and was blinded for a few seconds in the silver mists, then burst out through them into the sunlight, laughing with the joy of it. Down and down he plummeted and the great brown land rushed up to meet him. He levelled out, his wheels skimming the treetops. The wide expanse of the Athi plains opened ahead and he dropped even lower. Thirty feet above the earth and at a hundred miles an hour he charged across the treeless wilderness. The game herds scattered in pandemonium under his wheels. He was so low that he had to lift his port wing-tip to avoid collision with the outstretched neck of a galloping bull giraffe.

He climbed again and turned towards the line of the Ngong Hills. From two miles out he picked out the thatched roofs of Tandala Camp. He flew over it so low that he could recognize the faces of the camp staff who stared up at him in amazement. There were Manyoro and Loikot. He leaned over the side of the cockpit and waved, and they danced and cavorted, waving back in wild exuberance.

He looked for a white face among them, not just any white face but that special one, and felt a throb of disappointment that she was not there. He turned back towards the airstrip, and was skimming the tops of the Ngong Hills when he saw the horse. It was on the skyline directly ahead, the grey mare she always favoured. Then he saw her standing at its head. She wore a bright yellow blouse and a wide-brimmed straw hat. She looked up at the approaching aircraft but showed no animation.

Of course, she doesn’t know it’s me. She thinks it’s Graf Otto. Leon smiled to himself and dropped towards her. He pushed back his goggles and leaned over the side of the cockpit. He was so close to her that he saw the moment she recognized him. She threw back her head and he saw the flash of her teeth as she laughed. She snatched off her hat and waved it as he thundered over her, so close that the mare pranced and tossed her head with alarm. He fancied he could even make out the colour of Eva’s eyes.

As he climbed away he twisted in the seat to look back at her. She was still waving. He wanted her in the cockpit beside him. He wanted to be able to reach out and touch her. Then he remembered the signal pad in the locker beside him. Graf Otto had used a page of it to illustrate a point of instruction. A pencil was attached to it on a length of twine. He held the pad between his knees and scribbled quickly, keeping his other hand on the controls. ‘Fly away with me to Lonsonyo Mountain. Badger.’ He ripped the page out and folded it into a tiny square. In the locker where he had found the pad there was a ball of scarlet message ribbons, each six feet long. He pulled one out. One end was weighted with a lead slug the size of a musket ball and at the other there was a small, buttoned pocket. He slipped the folded page into it and closed it, then turned the Bumble Bee back.

She was still on the hilltop, but now she was mounted on the grey. She saw the Bumble Bee coming back and rose in the stirrups. He made a hasty calculation of height and speed, then dropped the signal ribbon over the side of the cockpit. It unrolled in the slipstream and fluttered down.

Eva turned the mare and galloped after the falling scrap of scarlet. When he turned the machine in a tight circle back towards her, he saw her swing down from the saddle as she found the ribbon. She opened the pocket, and pulled out his note, read it and waved both hands above her head, nodding vigorously. Her teeth flashed as she laughed.

Graf Otto von Meerbach’s open day at the airfield gradually grew in status until it seemed to overshadow almost any other event in the history of the colony, including the arrival of the first train from the coast or even the visit of Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States of America.

As one of the wags at the long bar of the Muthaiga Country Club remarked, the Colonel Teddy had not been dishing out free rides in an aeroplane.

By sunrise of the great day a small city of tents surrounded the polo ground. Most housed the settler families who had come in from the surrounding countryside, but the others were refreshment booths from which Lord Delamere dispensed free beer and lemonade, and the Women’s Institute handed out chocolate cakes and apple pies.