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 buttocks 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 lustrous 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 hell 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 passed 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 space 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 anticipation 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
