the least. It was no valid excuse that exhaustion and heat had clouded
his judgement that he had not recognized the treacherous smooth white
surface of the pan for Gregorius had warned him specifically of this
hazard. He worked with the axe from an hour before sunrise until the
heat had climbed with the sun and a small mountain of cut branches
stood beside the car.
Then Gareth helped him build a firm foundation of flat stones and
thicker branches under the engine compartment of the car. They had to
lie on their sides and grovel in the dust to get the big screw jack set
up on the base and they slowly lifted the front of the car, turning the
handle between them.
As the front wheels rose an inch at a time, Vicky and Gregorius packed
the wiry scrub branches under them. It was slow and laborious work
which had to be repeated at the rear of the car.
it was past noon before Priscilla the Pig stood forlornly balanced on
four piles of compacted branches but her belly was clear of the surface
"What do we do now?" Gareth asked. "Drive her back?"
"One spin of the wheels will kick that trash out and she'll bog down
again," Jake grunted, and wiped his sweat glistening chest on the
bundled shirt in his hand. He looked at Gareth and felt a flare of
irritation that after five hours" work in the sun, after grovelling on
his belly in the dust, and heaving on the jack handle, the man had
barely raised a/
sweat, his clothes were unmarked and final provocation his hair was
still neatly combed.
Working under Jake's direction, they cut and laid a corduroy of
branches back to the hard ground at the edge of the pan. This would
distribute the weight of the vehicle and prevent it breaking through
the crust again.
Then Vicky manoeuvred and reversed Miss Wobbly down to the edge of the
pan and lined her up with the causeway of branches. The men joined
three coils of the thick manila line and carried it out to the stranded
vehicle, unrolling it behind them as they went, until at last the two
cars were joined by that fragile thread.
Gareth climbed in and took the wheel of Priscilla while Jake and
Gregorius, armed with two of the thickest branches, stood ready to
lever the wheels.
"You any good at praying, Gary? "Jake shouted.
"Not my strong suit, old son."
"Well, stiffen the old upper lip then. "Jake mimicked him, and then
let out a bellow at Vicky who acknowledged with a wave before her
golden head disappeared into the driver's hatch of Miss Wobbly. The
engine beat accelerated and the line came up taut as Miss Wobbly rolled
forward up the incline above the pan.
"Keep the wheels straight," shouted Jake, and he and Gregorius threw
their weight on the branches, giving just that ounce of leverage
sufficient to transfer part of the vehicle's weight on to the
corduroyed pathway.
Slowly, ponderously, the cumbersome vehicle rolled back across the pan,
until she reached the hard ground and the four of them shouted with
relief and triumph.
Jake retrieved two celebratory bottles of Tusker beer from his secret
hoard, but the liquid was so warm that half of it exploded in a fizzing
gush from the mouth of each bottle as it was opened, and there was only
a mouthful for each of them.
"Can we reach the lower Awash by nightfall?" Jake demanded, and
Gregorius looked up and judged the angle of the sun before replying.
"If we don't waste any more time," he said.
Still on a compass heading, and giving the salt-white pans a wide
berth, the column ground on steadily into the west.
In the mid afternoon they reached the sand desert, with its towering
whale-backed dunes throwing lovely lyrical shadows in the hollows
between. The colour of the sand varied from dark purple to the softest
pinks and talcum white, and was so fine and soft that the wind blew
long smoke-like plumes from the crest of each dune.
Under Gregorius's direction they turned northwards, and within half an
hour they had found the long narrow ridge of ironstone that bisected
the sand desert and formed a narrow causeway through the shifting
dunes. They crept following its winding course slowly across this
rocky bridge, for twelve miles, while the dunes rose on each side of
them.
Vicky thought that this was much like the passage of the Red Sea by the
fleeing Israelites. Even the dunes seemed like frozen waves that might
at each moment come crashing down to swamp them and she despaired that
she could ever adequately describe the wild and disordered beauty of
this multicoloured sea of sand.
They emerged at last and with startling suddenness into the dry flat
grasslands of the Ethiopian lowlands. The desert proper was at last
behind them and although this was a harsh and and savannah,
there was, at least, the occasional thorn tree and an almost unbroken
carpet of se red grass the grass was so amongst the low thorny scrub.
Altho fine and dry that all colour had been bleached from it by the
sun, it shone silver and stiff as though coated with hoar frost.
Most cheering of all was the distant but discernible blue outline of
the far mountains. Now they hovered at the edge of their awareness,
