Cry Wolf

"What are we going to do with them?" Vicky asked breathlessly.

"We can't keep Kullah at gun point much longer." Jake did not answer; he did not want the closely following Gallas to hear the uncertainty in his voice, yet he didn't want the girl to show signs of fear.

She was right, of course, the Gallas followed them now with an implacable malevolence, pressing closely in an avenging throng that filled the darkness.

the cars-" said Jake, as inspiration came to him. "Get them into one of the cars."

"And then?"

"One thing at a time," growled Jake.

"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, damn 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 muffled 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.

"Goddamn 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, passing 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 carcass of a helpless scarab beetle, and the roar of voices was a storm surf of anger.

Drive, Vicky for God'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, snatching 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 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 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 shell 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 shell 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 shell 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 shell. 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 hell," 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 shell 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 shell.

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 passion, 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 cockpit 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 passions; 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 prickled 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 hoarse 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 Kassa and Ras Seyoum were struggling to move the great unwieldy masses of their two armies through the mountain passes to link up with the army of the Emperor on the shores 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 MAJESTY ORDERS ME TO CONVEY HIS FELICITATIONS ON YOUR ELEVATION TO THE RANK OF MARSHAL OF THE ARMY AND TO THANK YOU FOR THE IMPECCABLE EXECUTION OF YOUR DUTY IN RECAPTURING ADO WA STOP WITH THE ATTAINMENT OF THIS OBJECTIVE I CONSIDER THAT YOUR MISSION IN EASTERN AFRICA HAS BEEN COMPLETED STOP YOU HAVE EARNED THE GRATITUDE OF THE NATION BY YOUR OBVIOUS MERITS AS A SOLDIER AND YOUR STEADFAST DISCHARGE OF YOUR DUTY AS A COMMANDER STOP YOU ARE REQUESTED TO HAND OVER YOUR COMMAND TO GENERAL PIE TRO BADOGLIO ON HIS IMMINENT ARRIVAL IN AFRICA..

Marshal De Bono accepted both his promotion and his recall with such good grace that it could have been mistaken, by an uninformed observer, for profound relief. His departure for Rome was completed with such despatch as to avoid by a hair's breadth the semblance of indecorous haste.

General Pietro Badoglio was a fighting soldier. He had staffed the headquarters before Adowa, although he had played no part in that debacle, and he was a veteran of Caporetto and Vittorio Veneto. He believed that the purpose of war was to crush the enemy as swiftly and as ruthlessly as was possible, with the use of any weapon at his disposal.

He came ashore at Massawa with a furious impatience, angry with everything he found, and impatient of the policies and concepts of his predecessor, although in truth seldom had an incoming commander been handed such an enviable strategic situation.

He inherited a huge, well-equipped army with a buoyant morale, in a commanding tactical position and backed by a magnificent network of communications and a logistics inventory that was alpine in proportions.

The small but magnificently equipped airforce of the expedition was flying unopposed over the Ambo mountains, observing all troop movements and pouncing immediately on any Ethiopian concentrations.

During one of the first dinners at the new headquarters, Lieutenant Vittorio Mussolini, the younger of the Duce's two sons, one of the dashing Regia Aeronautica aces, regaled his new commander with accounts of his sorties over the enemy highlands and Badoglio, who had not had close aerial support in any of his previous campaigns, was delighted with this new and deadly weapon. He listened transfixed to the young flier's descriptions of the effect of aerial bombardment particularly an account of an attack on a group of three hundred or more enemy horsemen led by a tall, dark-robed figure. The young Mussolini told him, "I released a single hundred-kilo bomb from an altitude of less than a hundred metres, and it fell precisely in the centre of the galloping horsemen. They opened like the petals of a flowering rose, and the dark-robed leader was thrown so high by the blast that he seemed to almost touch my wing-tip as I passed. It was a spectacle of great beauty and magnificence." Badoglio was happy that his new command included young men with such fire in their veins, and he leaned forward in his seat at the head of the table to peer down over the glittering silver and sparkling leaded crystal at the flier in his handsome blue uniform. The classical features and dark curly head of hair were the artist's conception of young Mars. Then he turned to the airforce Colonel who sat beside him.

"Colonel, what is the opinion of your young men in the Regia Aeronautica? I have heard much argument for and against but I would be interested to have your opinion.

Should we use the nitrogen mustard?"

"I think I speak for all my young men." The Colonel sipped his wine and glanced for confirmation at the young ace who was not yet twenty years of age. "I think the answer must be yes, we must use every weapon available to us." Badoglio nodded. The thinking agreed with his own, and the next morning he ordered the canisters of mustard gas shipped from the warehouses of Massawa, where De Bono had been content to let them lie, and despatched them to every airfield where flights of the Regia Aeronautica were based. Thousands upon thousands of the wild tribesmen of Ethiopia would come to know the corrosive dew when later they endured bombardment by artillery and aerial attack with a stoicism greater than most European troops were able to muster yet they could never come to terms with this terrible substance that turned the open pastures of their mountain fastness to fields of terror. Barefoot, as most of them were, they were pathetically vulnerable to the silent insidious weapon that flayed the skin from their bodies, and then stripped the living flesh from the bone.

This single decision was one of many made that day by the new commander, and signalled the change from De Bono's humbling, but not unkindly civilizing invasion, to the new concept of total war war with only one objective.

MUSSOlini had wanted a hawk, and he had chosen well.

The hawk stood in the centre of the lofty second-storey headquarters office at Asmara, He was too consumed with furious impatience to sit at the wide desk, and when he paced the tiled floor, his heels cracked on the ceramic like drum beats. The elasticity of his stride was that of a man far younger than sixty-five.

He carried his head low on boxer's shoulders, thrusting his chin forward a heavy chin below a big shapeless round nose, a short-cropped grey mustache and a wide hard mouth.

His eyes were deep sunken into dark cavities, like those of a corpse, but their glitter was alive and aware as he worked swiftly through the lists of his divisional and regimental commanders, assessing each by one criterion only, "Is he a fighting man?" Too often the answer was "no,", or at the least uncertain, so it was with a fierce pleasure that he recognized one who was without question a hard-fighting man on whom he could rely.

"Yes," he nodded vehemently. "He is the only field commander who has displayed any initiative, who has made any attempt to come to grips with the enemy." He paused to lift his reading glasses to his eyes and glance again at the reports he held in his other hand. "He has fought one decisive action, inflicting almost thirty thousand casualties without loss himself. That in itself is an achievement that seems to have gone without suitable recognition. The man should have had a decoration, the order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus at the least.

Good men must be singled out and rewarded. Look at this this is typical!

When he was aware that the enemy had armoured resources, he was soldier enough to lure that armour into a baited trap, to lead it skilfully and with cool courage on to his entrenched artillery. It was a bold and resourceful stroke for an infantry commander to make and it deserved to succeed. If only his artillery commander had been a man of equally steely nerves, he would have succeeded in luring the entire enemy armoured column to its total destruction. It was no fault of his that the artillery lost their nerve and opened fire prematurely." The General paused to focus his reading glasses on the large glossy photographic print which depicted Colonel Count Aldo Belli standing like a successful big game hunter on the carcass of the Hump. The shattered hull was pierced by shot and in the background lay half a dozen corpses in tattered shammas. These had been collected from the battlefield and tastefully arranged by Gino to give the photograph authenticity. Against his better judgement and his strong instincts of survival, Count Aldo Belli had returned to make these photographic records only after Major Castelani had assured him that the enemy had deserted the field. The Count had not wasted too much time about it, but had his photographs taken, urging Gino to haste, and when it had been done he had returned swiftly to his fortified position above the Wells of Chaldi and had not moved from there since. However, the photographs were an impressive addendum to his official report of the action.

Now Badoglic, growled like an angry old lion. "Despite the incompetence of his junior officers, and there my heart aches for him, this man has wiped out half the enemy armour as well as half the opposing army." He hit the report fiercely with his reading glasses.

"The man's a fire eater no question about it. I know one when I see one. A fire-eater. This kind of example must be encouraged good work must be rewarded. Send for him. Radio him to come in to headquarters immediately." As far as Count Aldo Belli was concerned, the campaign had come upon a not unpleasant hiatus.

The camp at the Wells of Chaldi had been transformed by his engineers from an outpost of hell into a rather pleasant refuge, with functional amenities, such as ice making machines and a water-borne sewerage system. The de fences were now of sufficient strength to give him a feeling of security. The engineering as always was of the highest quality with extensive covered earthworks, and Castelani had laid out carefully over-lapping fields of fire, and barbed-wire de fences in depth.

The hunting in the area was excellent by any standards, with game drawn to the water in the Wells from miles around. The sand-grouse in the evenings filled the heavens with the whistle of their wings, and wheeled in great dark flocks across the setting sun, affording magnificent sport.

The bag was measured in grain bags of dead birds.

In the midst of this pleasantly relaxed atmosphere, the new commanding officer's summons exploded like a 100 kilo aerial bomb.

General Badoglio's reputation had preceded him. He was a notorious martinet, a man who could not be sidetracked from single-minded purpose by excuse or fabrication. He was insensitive to political influence or power considerations so much so that it was rumoured that he would have crushed the very Fascist movement itself with force if the issue had been put into his hands back in 1922. He had an almost psychic power to detect subterfuge, and to place a finger squarely on malingerers or lack-guts.

They said his justice was swift and merciless.

The shock to the Count's system was considerable. He had been singled out from thousands of brother officers to face this ogre's wrath for he could not convince himself that the small deviations from reality, the small artistic licences contained in his long, illustrated reports to De Bono had not been instantly discovered. He felt like a guilty schoolboy summoned to dire retribution behind the closed doors of the headmaster's study. The shock hit him squarely in the bowels, always his weak spot, bringing on a fresh onslaught of the malady first caused by the waters of Chaldi Wells, from which he had believed himself completely cured.

It was twelve hours before he could summon the strength to be helped by his concerned underlings into the RollsRoyce and to lie wan and palely resigned upon the soft leather seat.

"Drive on, Giuseppe," he murmured, like an aristocrat giving the order to the driver of the tumbril.

On the long hot dusty drive into Asmara, the Count lay without interest in his surroundings, without even attempting to marshal his defence against the charges he knew he must soon face. He was resigned, abject his only solace was the considerable damage he would do this upstart, ill bred peasant, once he returned to Rome, as he was certain he was about to. He knew that he could ruin the man politically and it gave him a jot of sour pleasure.

Giuseppe, the driver, knowing his man as he did, made the first stop outside the casino in Asmara's main street.

Here, at least, Count Aldo Belli was treated as a hero, and he perked up visibly as the young hostesses rushed out on to the sidewalk to welcome him.

Some hours later, freshly shaven, his uniform sponged and pressed, his hair pomaded, and buoyed UP on a fragrant cloud of expensive eau de cologne, the Count was ready to face his tormentor. He kissed the girls, tossed back a last glass of cognac, laughed that gay reckless laugh, snapped his fingers once to show what he thought of the peasant who now ran this army, clenched his buttocks tightly together to control his fear and marched out of the casino into the sunlight and across the street into the military headquarters.

His appointment to meet General Badoglio was for four o'clock and the town hall clock struck the hour as he marched resolutely down the long gloomy corridor, following a young aide-de-camp. They reached the end of the corridor and the aide-de-camp threw open the big double mahogany doors and stood aside for the Count to enter.

His knees felt like boiled macaroni, his stomach gurgled and seethed, the palms of his hands were hot and moist, and tears were not far behind his quivering eyelids as he stepped forward into the huge room with its lofty moulded ceiling.

He saw that it was filled with officers from both the army and the airforce. His disgrace was to be made public, then, and he quailed.

Seeming to shrivel, his shoulders slumping, his chest caving and the big handsome head drooping, the Count stood in the doorway. He could not bear to look at them, and miserably he studied his gleaming toe caps Suddenly, he was assailed by a strange, a completely alien sound and he looked up startled, ready to defend himself against physical attack.

The roomful of officers were applauding, beaming and grinning, slapping palm to palm and the Count gaped at them, then glanced quickly over his shoulder to be certain there was no one standing behind him, and that this completely unexpected welcome was being directed at him.

When he looked back he found a stocky, broad, shouldered figure in the uniform of a general advancing upon him. His face was hard and unforgiving, with a fierce grey mustache over the grim trap of his mouth and glittering eyes in deep dark sockets.

If the Count had been in command of his legs and his voice, he might have run screaming from the room, but before he could move the General seized him in a grip of iron, and the mustache raking his cheeks was as rank and rough as the foliage of the trees of the Danakil desert.

"Colonel, I am always honoured to embrace a brave man," growled the General, hugging him close, his breath smelling pleasantly of garlic and sesame seed, an aroma that blended in an interesting fashion with the fragrant clouds of the Count's perfume. The Count's legs could no longer stand the strain, they almost collapsed under him. He had to grab wildly at the General to prevent himself falling. This threw both of them off balance, and they reeled across the ceramic floor, locked in each other's arms, in a kind of elephantine waltz, while the General struggled to free himself.

He succeeded at last, and backed away warily from the Count, straightening his medals and reassembling his dignity while one of his officers began to read out a citation from a scroll of parchment and the applause faded into an attentive silence.

The citation was long and wordy, and it gave the Count time to pull his scattered wits together. The first half of the citation was lost to him in his dreamlike state of shock, but then suddenly the words began to reach him. His chin came up as he recognized some of his own composition, little verbal gems from his combat reports "Counting only duty dear, scorning all but honour" that was his own stuff, by the Virgin and Peter.

He listened now, with all his attention, and they were talking about him. They were talking of Aldo Belli. His caved chest filled out, the high colour flooded back into his cheeks, the turmoil of his rebellious bowels was stilled, and fire flashed in his eye once more.

By God, the General had realized that every phrase, every word, every comma and exclamation. mark of his report was the literal truth and the aide-de-camp was handing the General a leather-covered jewel box, and the General was advancing on him again albeit with a certain caution and then he was looping the watered silk ribbon over his head so that the big enamelled, white cross with its centre star of emerald green and sparkling diamantine, dangled down the front of the Count's tunic. The order of Irish St. Maurice and St. Lazarus (military division) of the third class.

Keeping well out of his clutches, the General pecked each of the Count's flushed cheeks and then took a hasty step backwards to join in the applause while the Count stood there puffed with pride, feeling that his heart might burst.

You will have that support now," the General assured him, scowling heavily to hear how his predecessor had grudged the Count sufficient force to win his objectives. "I pledge it to you." They were seated now, just the three of them General Badoglio, his political agent and the Count in the smaller private study adjoining the large formal office. Night had fallen outside the shuttered windows and the single lamp was hooded to throw light down on the map spread on the table top, and leave the faces of the three men in shadow.

Cognac glowed in the leaded crystal glasses and the big ship's decanter on its silver tray, and the blue smoke from the cigars spiralled up slow and heavy as treacle in the lamplight.

"will need armour," said the Count without hesitation.

The thought of thick steel plate had always attracted him strongly.

"will give you a squadron of the light CV.3s," said the General, and made a note on the pad at his elbow.

"And I will need air support."

"Can your engineers build a landing-strip for you at the Wells?" The General touched the map to illustrate the question.

"The land is flat and open. It will present no difficulty," said the Count eagerly. Planes and tanks and guns, he was being given them all.

He was a real commander at last.

"Radio to me when the strip is ready for use. I will send in a flight of Capronis. In the meantime, I will have the transport section convoy in the fuel and armaments I shall consult the staff at airforce, but I think the 100-kilo bombs will be most effective. High explosive, and fragmentation."

"Yes, yes," agreed the Count eagerly.

"And nitrogen mustard will you have use for the gas?"

"Yes, oh yes, indeed, said the Count. It was not in his nature to refuse bounty, he would take anything he was offered.

"Good." The General made another note, laid aside his pencil, and then looked up at the Count. He glowered so ferociously that the Count was startled and he felt the first nervous stir in his belly again. He found the General terrifying, like living on the slopes of a temperamental Vesuvius.

"The iron fist, Belli," he said, and the Count realized with relief that the scowl was directed not at him, but at the enemy.

Immediately the Count assumed an expression every bit as bellicose and menacing. He curled his lip and he spoke, just below a snarl.

"Put the blade at the enemy's throat, and drive it home."

"Without mercy, said the General.

"To the death," agreed the Count. He was on his home ground now, and only just hitting his stride; a hundred bloodthirsty slogans sprang to mind but, recognizing his master, the General changed the snowballing conversation adroitly.

"You are wondering why I have put such importance on your objectives.

You are wondering why I have given you such powerful forces, and why I have set such store on you forcing the passage of the Sardi Gorge and the road to the highlands." The Count was wondering no such thing, right now he was busy coming a phrase about wading through blood, and he accepted the change of theme reluctantly, and arranged his features in a politely enquiring frame.

The General waved his cigar expansively at the political agent who sat opposite him.

"Signor Antolino." He made the gesture and the agent sat forward obediently so that the lamplight caught his face.

"Gentlemen." He cleared his throat, and looked from one to the other with mild brown eyes behind steel-framed spectacles. He was a thin, almost skeletal figure, in a rumpled white linen suit. The wings of his shirt collar were off-centre of his prominent Adam's apple and the knot of the knitted silk tie had slid down and hung at the level of the first button. His head was almost bald, but he had grown the remaining hairs long and greased them down over the shiny freckled plover-egg scalp.

His mustache was waxed into points, but stained yellow with tobacco, and he was of indefinite age over forty and under sixty with the dark malarial yellow tan of a man who has lived all his life in the tropics.

"For some time we have been concerned to design an appropriate form of government for the captured ah the liberated territories of Ethiopia."

"Come to the point," said the General abruptly.

"It has been decided to replace the present Emperor, Baile Selassie, with a man sympathetic to the Italian Empire, and acceptable to the people-" "Come on, man," Badoglic, cut in again. Verbal backing and filling were repugnant to him. He was a man of action rather than words.

"Arrangements have been completed after lengthy negotiation, and I might add the promise of several millions of lire, that at the politically opportune moment a powerful chieftain will declare for us, bringing all his warriors and his influence across to us. This man will in due course be declared Emperor of Ethiopia and will administer the territory under Italy."

"Yes, yes. I understand, "said the Count.

"The man governs part of the area which is the direct objective of your column. As soon as you have seized the Sardi Gorge and entered the town of Sardi itself, this Chief will join you with his men and, with appropriate international publicity, be declared King of Ethiopia."

"The man's name?" asked the Count, but the agent would not be hurried.

"It will be your duty to meet with this Chief, and to synchronize your efforts. You will also make the promised payment in gold coin."

"Yes."

"The man is an hereditary Ras by rank. He is presently commanding part of the army that opposes you at Sardi.

However, that will change-" said the agent, and produced a thick envelope from the briefcase beside his chair. It was sealed with the wax tablet and the embossed eagles of the Department of Colonial Affairs. "Here are your written orders. You will sign for them, please." He inspected the Count's signature suspiciously, then, at last satisfied, went on in the same dry disinterested voice.

"One other matter. We have identified one of the white mercenaries fighting with the Ethiopians those mentioned by you as being reported by the three of your men captured by the enemy and subsequently released." The agent paused and drew on his almost dead cigar, puffing up the tip to a bright healthy glow.

"The woman is a notorious agent provocateur, a Bolshevik with radical and revolutionary sympathies. She poses as a journalist, employed by an American newspaper whose sentiments have always been strongly anti-Empire. Already some of this woman's biased inflammatory, writings have reached the outside world. They have been a severe embarrassment to us at the Department-" He drew again on the cigar, and spoke again through the billowing cloud of smoke.

"If she is taken, and I hope that you will place priority on her capture, she is to be handed over immediately to the new Ethiopian Emperor-designate, you understand? You are not to be involved, but you will not interfere with the Ras's execution of the woman."

"I see." The Count was becoming bored. This political nitpicking was not the type of thing which would hold his attention. He wanted to show the young lady hostesses at the Casino the great cross which now hung around his neck and thumped on his chest each time he moved.

"As for the white man, the Englishman, the one responsible for the brutal shooting of an Italian prisoner of war in front of witnesses, he has been declared a murderer and a Political terrorist. When you capture him, he is to be shot out of hand. That order goes for all other foreigners serving under arms with the enemy troops. This type of thing must be put down sternly."

"You can rely on me," said the Count. "There will be no quarter for the terrorists."

General Pietro Badoglic, moved forward to Ambo Aradam, there were some minor brushes. while the Italian General deployed his men for the major stroke. At Abi Addi and Tembien he received advance warning of the fighting qualities of his enemy, barefoot and armed with spear and muzzle-loading gun. As he wrote himself, "They have fought with courage and determination.

Against our attacks, methodically carried out and covered by heavy machine-gun fire and artillery barrage, their troops have stood firm, and then engaged in furious hand-to-hand fighting; or they have moved boldly to counter-attack, regardless of the avalanche of fire that had immediately fallen upon them. Against the organized fire of our defending troops, their soldiers many of them armed only with Cold steel attacked again and again, pushing right up to our wire entanglements and trying to beat them down with their great swords."

Brave men, perhaps, but they were brushed aside by the huge Italian war machine. Then at last Badoglio could come at Ras Muguletu, the war minister of Ethiopia, with his entire army waiting like an old lion in the caves and precipitous heights of the natural mountain fortress of Ambo Aradam.

He loosed his full might against the old chieftain, the big three-engined Capronis roared in, wave after wave, to drop four hundred tons of bombs upon the mountain in five days of continuous raids, while his artillery hurled fifty thousand heavy shells, arcing them up from the valley into the ravines and deep gorges until the outline of the mountain was shrouded in the red mist of dust and cordite fumes.

Up to now, the time of waiting had passed pleasantly enough for Count Aldo Belli at the Wells of Chaldi. The addition to his forces had altered his entire way of life.

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 spaces of the Danakil desert, it did not pass unnoticed.

Like their Ras, the Harari warriors were men of short patience.

Long inactivity bored them, and daily small groups of horsemen, 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 assured 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 passion 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 carcass of the Hump. Working by the light of a hooded bull's-eye lantern, and assisted 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 reassembled 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 passage 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 spaces of the plains.

"Without wheels," mused Gareth, and cocked 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. "Bloody 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 hell 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 chassis.

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 glasses 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 glasses 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 glasses and grinned ruefully. "Well, we are a little out of our class. Those Spandaus are in fully revolving turrets. We are out-gunned all to hell."

"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 glasses. 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 prickle 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 glasses.

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 glasses 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 hell-'he snarled.

"Come up here, "called Gareth.

"I can't see a damned thing," muttered Jake, standing high on the turret and peering eastwards through his glasses. The sound was now a deep drumming growl, but the wall of glare and mirage was close and impenetrable.

"There!" shouted Gareth.

"Oh my God!" 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 hell 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."

The Captain who commanded the Italian tank squadron was an angry, disgruntled and horribly disillusioned man a man burdened by a soul corroding grudge.

Like so many officers of the cavalry tradition, the anne blanche of the army, he was a romantic, obsessed by the image of himself as a dashing, reckless warrior. The dress uniform of his regiment still included skin-tight breeches with a scarlet silk stripe down the outside of the leg, soft black riding boots and silver spurs, a tightly fitting bum freezer jacket encrusted with thick gold lace and heavy epaulets, a short cloak worn carelessly over one shoulder and a tall black shako.

This was the picture he cherished of himself all Man and swagger.

Here he was in some devil-conceived, god-cursed desert, where day after day he and his beloved fighting machines were sent out to find wild animals and drive them in on a set point, where a mad megalomaniac waited to shoot them down.

The damage it was doing his tanks, the grinding wear on tracks running hard over rough terrain and through diamond-hard abrasive sand, was as nothing compared to the damage his pride was suffering.

He had been reduced to nothing but a gamekeeper, a beater, a peasant beater. The Captain spent much of each day at the very edge of tears, the tears of deep humiliation.

Every evening he protested to the mad Count in the strongest possible terms and the following day found him once more pursuing wild animals over the desert.

So far the bag had consisted of a dozen lions and wild dogs, and many scores of large antelope. By the time these were delivered to where the Count waited, they were almost exhausted, lathered with sweat, and with a froth of saliva drooling from their jaws, barely able to trot after the long chase across the plains.

The condition of the game detracted not at all from the Count's pleasure. Indeed, the Captain had been given specific orders to run the game hard so that it came to the guns docile and winded. After his alarming experience with the beisa oryx, the Count was not eager to take foolhardy risks. An easy shot and a good photograph were his yardsticks of the day's sport.

The greater the bag, the greater the pleasure and the Count had enjoyed himself immensely since the arrival of the tanks. However, the wastes of the Danakil desert could not support endless quantities of animal life, and the bag had fallen off sharply in the last few days as the herds were scattered and annihilated. The Count was displeased.

He told the Captain of tanks so forcibly, adding to the man's discontent and sense of grudge.

The Captain of tanks found the old bull elephant standing alone, like a tall granite monument, upon the open plain. He was enormous, with tattered ears like the sails of an ancient schooner, and tiny hating eyes in their webs of deep wrinkles. One of his tusks was broken off near the lip, but the other was thick and long and yellow, worn to a blunt-rounded tip at the end of its curve.

The Captain stopped his tank a quarter of a mile from where the elephant stood, and examined him through his binoculars while he got over the shock of his size then the Captain began to smile, a wicked twist of the mouth under his handsome mustache, and his dark eyes sparkled.

"So, my dear Colonel, you want game, much game," he whispered.

"You will have it. I assure you." He approached the elephant carefully from the east, crawling the tank in gingerly towards the animal, and the old bull turned and watched them come. His ears were spread wide and his long trunk sucked and coiled into his mouth as he tested the air, breathing it onto the olfactory glands in his top lip as he groped for the scent of this strange creature.

He was a bad-tempered old bull, who had been harried and hunted for thousands of miles across the African continent, and beneath his scarred and creased old hide were the spear-heads, the pot legs fired from mule-loading guns, and the jacketed slugs from modern rifled firearms. All he wanted now in his great age was to be left alone he wanted neither the demanding company of the breeding cows, the importunate noisy play of the calves, nor the single-minded pursuit of the men who hunted him. He had come into the desert, to the burning days and coarse vegetation to find that solitude, and now he was moving slowly down to the Wells of Chaldi, water which he had last tasted as a young breeding bull twenty-five years before.

He watched the buzzing growling things creeping in towards him, and he tasted their rank oily smell, and he did not like it. He shook his head, flapping his ears like the crash of canvas taking the wind on a new tack, and he squealed a warning.

The growling humming things crept closer and he rolled his trunk up against his chest, he cocked his ears half back and curled the tips but the tank Captain did not recognize the danger signals and he kept on coming.

Then the elephant charged, fast and massive, the fall of his huge pads thumping against the earth like the beat of a bass drum, and he was so fast, so quick off the mark that he almost caught the tank. If he had he would have flicked it over on its back without having to exert all his mountainous strength. But the driver was as quick as he, and he swung away right under the outstretched trunk, and held his best speed for half a mile before the bull gave up the pursuit.

"My Captain, I could shoot it with the Spandau," urged the gunner anxiously. He had not enjoyed the chase.

"No! No!" The Captain was delighted.

"He is a very angry, dangerous and ferocious animal," the gunner pointed out.

"SO" the Captain laughed happily, rubbing his hands together with glee.

"He is my very special gift to the Count." After the fifth approach by the tanks, the old bull grew bored with the unrewarding effort of chasing after them.

With his belly rumbling protestingly, his stubby tail twitching irritably, and the musk from the glands behind his eyes weeping in a long, wet smear down his dusty cheeks, he allowed himself to be shepherded towards the west by the following line of cavalry tanks but he was still a very angry elephant.

You're not going to believe this," said Gareth Swales softly. "I'm not even sure I believe it myself. But it's an elephant, and it's leading a full squadron of Eyetie tanks straight to us."

"I don't believe it," said Jake. "I can see it happening but I don't believe it. They must have trained it like a bloodhound. Is that possible, or am I going crazy?"

"Both," said Gareth. "May I suggest we get ready to move.

They are getting frightfully close, old son." Jake jumped down to the crank handle, while Gareth dropped into the driver's hatch and swiftly adjusted the ignition and throttle setting.

"All set," he said, glancing anxiously over his shoulder.

The great elephant was less than a thousand yards away.

Coming on steadily, in that long driving stride, a pace between a walk and a trot that an elephant can keep up for thirty miles without check or rest.

"You might hurry it up, at that," he added, and Jake spun the crank.

Priscilla made no response, not even a cough to encourage Jake as he wound the crank frantically.

After a full minute, Jake staggered back gasping, and doubled over with hands on his knees as he sucked for air.

"This bloody infernal machine-" Gareth began, but Jake straightened up with genuine alarm.

"Don't start swearing at her, or she'll never start," he cautioned Gareth, and he stooped to the crank handle again. "Come along now, my darling," he whispered, and threw his weight on the crank.

Gareth took another quick glance over his shoulder. The bizarre procession was closer, much closer. He leaned out of the driver's hatch and patted Priscilla's engine-cowling tenderly.

"There's my love," he crooned. "Come along, my beauty." The Count's hunting party sat out in collapsible camp chairs under the screens, double canvas to protect them from the cruel sun. The mess servants served iced drinks and light refreshments, and a random breeze that flapped the canvas occasionally was sufficient to keep the temperature bearable.

The Count was in an expansive mood, host to half a dozen of his officers, all of them dressed in casual hunting clothes, armed with a selection of sporting rifles and the occasional service rifle.

"I think we can rely on better sport today. I believe that our beaters will be trying harder, after my gentle admonitions." He smiled and winked, and his officers laughed dutifully. "Indeed, I am hoping-" "My Count. My Count." Gino rushed breathlessly into the tent like a frenzied gnome. "They are coming. We have seen them from the ridge."

"Ah!" said the Count with deep satisfaction. "Shall we go down and see what our gallant Captain of tanks has for us this time?" And he drained the glass of white Wine in his hand, while Gino rushed over to help him to his feet, and then backed away in front of him, leading him to where Giuseppe was hastily removing the dust covers from the Rolls.

The small procession, headed by the Count's Rolls, Royce, wound down the slope of the low ridge to where the blinds had been sited in a line across the width of the shallow valley. The blinds had been built by the battalion engineers, dug into the red earth so as not to stand too high above the low desert scrub. They were neatly thatched, covered against the sun, with loopholes from which to fire upon the driven game. There were comfortable camp chairs for those long waits between drives, a small but well-stocked bar, ice in insulated buckets, a separate screened latrine in fact all the comforts to make the day's sport more enjoyable.

The Count's blind was in the centre of the line. It was the largest and most luxuriously appointed, situated so that the great majority of driven game would bunch upon this point. His junior officers had earlier learned the folly of exceeding the Colonel's" personal bag or of firing at any animal which was swinging across their front towards the Count. The first offender in this respect had found himself reduced from Captain to Lieutenant, and no longer invited to the hunt, and the second was already back in Massawa writing out requisition forms in the quartermaster's division.

Gino handed the Count from the Rolls, and helped him down the steps into the sunken shelter. Giuseppe saluted and climbed back into the Rolls, swung away and bumped back up the ridge and over the skyline.

The Count settled himself comfortably in the canvas chair. With a sigh, he unbuttoned the front of his jacket, and accepted the damp face cloth that Gino handed him.

While the Count wiped the film of sweat from his forehead with the cool cloth, Gino opened a bottle of Lacrima Cristi from the ice bucket and placed a tall frosted crystal glass of the wine on the folding table at the Count's elbow. Next, he loaded the Marmlicher with shiny new brass cartridges from a freshly opened packet.

The Count tossed the cloth aside and leaned forward in his chair to peer through the loophole in front of him, out across the shimmering plain where the small dark desert scrub danced in the heat.

"I have a feeling we shall have extraordinary sport today, Gino."

I hope so indeed, my Count, said the little sergeant and stood to attention behind his chair with the loaded Mannlicher held at the ready across his chest.

ome on, darling," croaked Jake, sweat dripping from his chin on to his shirt front as he stooped over the crank handle and spun it for the hundredth time.

"Don't let us down now, sweetheart." Gareth scrambled up on to the sponson of Priscilla and took a long despairing glance back over the turret. He felt something freeze in his belly, and his breath caught.

The elephant was a hundred paces away, coming directly down on top of them at a loose shambling walk, the great black ears flapping sullenly and the little piggy eyes alight with malevolence.

Right behind it, fanned out on each side, pressing closely on the great beast's heels, came the full squadron of Italian tanks. The sun glittered on the smoothly rounded frontal armour, and caught the bright festival flutter of their cavalry pennants. From each hatch protruded the black-helmeted head of the tank commander. Through the binoculars Gareth could make out the individual features of each commander, they were that close.

Within minutes they would be overrun, and there was no chance that they could escape detection. The elephant was leading the Italians directly to the ravine, and their scanty camouflage of scrub branches would not stand scrutiny at less than a hundred yards.

They could not even protect themselves, the Vickers machine gun was pointed away from the approaching enemy, and the limited traverse of the ball mounting was not sufficient to bring it to bear. Gareth was engulfed suddenly by a black and burning rage for the stubborn piece of machinery beneath his feet. He took a vicious heartfelt kick at the steel turret.

"You treacherous bitch, he snarled, and at that moment the engine fired and, without preliminary gulping and popping, roared angrily.

Jake bounded up the side of the hull, droplets of sweat flying from his sodden hair, red-faced as he gasped at Gareth.

"You've got the gentle touch."

"With all women there is the psychological moment, old son, "Gareth explained, grinning with relief as he scrambled into the turret and Jake dropped behind the controls.

Jake gunned the motor, and Priscilla threw off her covering, of cut thorn branches. Her wheels spun in the loose sand of the ravine, blowing up a cloud of red dust, and she tore up the steep bank and lunged out into the open directly under the startled outstretched trunk of the elephant.

The old bull had by this stage suffered provocation sufficient to take him to the edge of a blind, black rage. It needed only this new buzzing frightfulness to launch him over the edge. The leisurely pace that he had set up until now left his mountainous strength and endurance untouched, and now he trumpeted, a ringing ear-splitting challenge that rolled across the vast silences of the desert like the trumpet of doom. His ears curled back against his skull and with his trunk coiled against his chest, he crashed forward into a terrible ground-shaking charge.

His speed over the broken ground was greater than that of Priscilla the Pig, and he bore down upon her like a cliff of grey granite huge, menacing and indestructible.

The Captain of tanks had been shepherding the old elephant along gently. He did not want him to tax his strength. He wanted to deliver to his commanding officer an animal in the peak of its anger and destructive capabilities.

He was sitting up in his turret, chuckling and shaking his head with anticipation and growing delight, for the hunter's lines were only a mile or so ahead when suddenly, directly ahead of him, the ground erupted and an armoUred car roared out in a cloud of red dust. It was of a model that the Captain had seen only in illustrated books of military history like an apparition out of the remote past.

It took him some seconds to believe what he was seeing, then with a jarring impact on his already highly strung nerve ends, he recognized the enemy colours that the ancient machine was flying.

"Advance!" he screamed. "Squadron, advance!" and he groped instinctively at his side for his sword. "Engage the enemy." On each side of him his tanks roared forward, and for want of a sword, the Captain tore his helmet off and waved it over his head.

"Charge!" he screamed. "Forward into battle!" Now at last he was not a mere game-beater. Now he was a warrior leading his men into action.

His excitement was So contagious and the dust thrown up by the car, the elephant and the steel tracks so thick, that the first two tanks did not even see the fifteen-foot-deep sheer-sided ravine.

Running side by side, they went into it at the top of their speed and were destroyed effectively as though they had been demolished by a 100 kilo, aerial bomb, the riding wheels ripped away by the impact and the heavy steel tracks flying loose and snaking viciously into the air like living angry cobras. The revolving turrets were torn from their seatings, neatly bisecting the men at the waist, who stood in the hatches, as though with a gigantic pair of scissors.

Clinging to the rim of his own turret and peering backwards, Gareth saw the two machines disappear into the earth, and the great leaping towers of dust that rose high into the air to mark their destruction.

"Two down" he shouted.

"But another four to go," Jake shouted back grimly, fighting Priscilla over the rough earth. "And how about that jumbo?"

"How indeed!" The elephant, goaded on by the roar of engines and crash of steel behind and by the buzzing bouncing car ahead of it, was making incredible speed over the broken scrubby plain.

"He's right here with us," Gareth told Jake anxiously. So close was the great beast that Gareth had to look up at it, and he saw the thick grey. trunk uncoiling from its chest and reaching out to pluck him from the turret.

"As fast as you like, old son, or you'll have him sitting on your head."

"I have told that idiot not to run the game down on the guns so hard," snapped the Count petulantly. "I -have told him a dozen times, have I not, Gino?"

"Indeed, my Count."

"Run them hard at the beginning, then bring them in gently for the last mile or so. "The Count took an angry gulp at his glass. "The man is a fool, an insufferable fool and I can't abide fools around me." "Indeed not, my Count. I shall send him back to Massawa-" the rest of the threat trailed away, and the Count sat suddenly upright, the canvas chair creaking under his weight.

"Gino," he murmured uneasily. "There is something very strange taking place out there." Both of them peered anxiously out through the rifle slots in the thatched wall of the blind at the billowing dust clouds that raced down upon them with quite alarming speed.

"Gino, is it possible?" asked the Count.

"No, my Count," Gino assured him, but without any true conviction.

"It is the mirage. It is not possible."

"Are you certain, Gino?" The Count's voice "took on a strident edge.

"No, my Count."

"Nor am I, Gino. What does it look like to you?"

"It looks like,- Geno's voice choked off. "I do not like to say, my Count," he whispered. "I think I am going mad." At that moment the Captain of tanks, whose efforts to catch up with the fleeing armoured car and stampeding elephant were unavailing, opened fire with the 50 men.

Spandau upon them. More accurately, he opened fire in the general direction of the rolling dust cloud which obscured his forward vision, and through which he caught only occasional glimpses of beast and machine. To confound further the aim of his gunner, the range was rapidly increasing, the manoeuvres with which the armoured car was trying to throw off the close pursuit of the elephant were violent and erratic, and the cavalry tank itself was plunging and leaping wildly over the rough ground.

Fire!" shouted the Captain. "Keep firing," and his gunner sent half a dozen high-explosive shells screeching low over the plain. The other tanks heard the banging of their Captain's cannon and immediately and enthusiastically followed his example.

One of the first shells struck the thatched front wall of the blind in which the Count and Gino cowered in horrified fascination.

The flimsy wall of grass did not trigger the fuse of the shell so there was no explosion, but nevertheless the high-velocity shell passed not eighteen inches from the Count's left ear, with a crack of disrupted air that stunned him, before exiting through the rear wall of the blind and howling onwards to burst a mile out in the empty desert.

"If the Count no longer needs me-" Gino snapped a hasty salute and before the Count had recovered his wits enough to forbid it, he had dived through the shell hole in the rear wall of the blind and hit the ground on the far side, already running.

Gino was not alone. From each of the blinds along the line leapt the figures of the other hunters, the sound of their hysterical cries almost drowned by the roar of engines, the trumpeting of an angry bull elephant and the continuous thudding roar of cannon fire.

The Count tried to rise from his chair, but his legs betrayed him and he managed only a series of convulsive leaps. His mouth gaped wide in his deathly pale face, but no sound came out of it. The Count was beyond speech, almost beyond movement just the strength for one more desperate heave, and the chair toppled forward, throwing the Count face down upon the sunken earth floor of the blind, where he covered his head with both arms.

At that instant, the armoured car, still under full throttle, came in through the front wall. The thatched blind exploded around it, but the impetus of the car's charge was sufficient to carry it in a single leap over the dugout. The spinning wheels hurled inches over the Count's prostrate form, showering him with a stinging barrage of sand and loose gravel. Then it was gone.

The Count struggled to sit up, and had almost succeeded when the huge enraged form of the bull elephant pounded over the blind. One of its great feet struck the Count a glancing blow on the shoulder and he screamed like a hand-saw and once again flung himself flat on the floor of the dugout while the elephant pounded onwards towards the far horizon, still in pursuit of the flying car.

The earth shook beneath the approach of another heavy body, and the Count flattened himself to the floor of the dugout deafened, dazed and paralysed with terror, until the commander of tanks stood over him and asked solicitously, "Was the game to your liking, my Colonel?" Even after Gino returned and Helped the Count to his feet, dusted him down and helped him into the back seat of the Rolls, the threats and insults still poured from the Count's choked throat in a high-pitched stream.

"You are a degenerate and a coward. You are guilty of dereliction of duty, of gross irresponsibility. You allowed them to escape, sir and you placed me in deadly peril-" They eased the Count down on the cushions of the Rolls, but as the car pulled away he jumped up to hurl a parting salvo at the Captain of tanks.

"You are an irresponsible degenerate, sir! - a coward and a Bolshevik and I shall personally command your firing squad-" His voice faded into the distance as the Rolls drew away up the ridge in the direction of the camp, but the Count's good arm was still waving and gesticulating as they crossed the skyline.

The elephant followed them far out across the desert, long after the pursuing tank squadron had been left behind and abandoned the chase.

The old bull lost ground steadily over the last mile or so, until at last he also gave up and stood swaying with exhaustion but still shaking out his ears and throwing up his trunk in that truculent, almost human gesture of challenge and defiance.

Gareth saluted him with respect as they drew away and left him, like a tall black monolith, out on the dry pale plains. Then he lit two cheroots, crouching down into the turret out of the wind, and passed one down to Jake in the driver's compartment.

"A good day's work, (old son. We pronged two of the godless ones, and we have put the others in the right frame of mind."

"How's that again? "Jake puffed gratefully at the cheroot.

"Next time those tank men lay eyes on us, they'll not stop to count consequences, but they'll be after us like a pack of long dogs after a bitch."

"And that's a good thing? "Jake removed the cheroot from his mouth to ask incredulously.

"That's a good thing' Gareth assured him.

"Well, you could have fooled me." He drove on for a few more minutes in silence towards the mountains, then shook his head bemusedly.

Tranged? What the hell kind of word is that?"

"Just thought of it this minute," Gareth said. "Expressive, what?" -" The Count lay face down upon his cot; he wore only a pair of silk shorts, of a pale and delicate blue, embroidered with his family coat of arms.

His body was smooth and pale and plump, with that sleek well-fed sheen which takes a great deal of money, food and drink to nourish. On the pale skin his body hair was dark and curly and crisp as newly picked lettuce leaves. It grew in a light cloud across his shoulders, and then descended his back to disappear at last like a wisp of smoke into the cleft of his milky buttocks that showed coyly above the waistband of his shorts.

Now the smoothness of his body was spoiled by the ugly red abrasions and new purple bruises which flowered upon his ribs and blotched his legs and arms.

He groaned with a mixture of agony and gratification as Gino knelt over him, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and worked the liniment into his shoulder. His dark sinewy fingers sank deeply into the sleek pale flesh, and the stench of liniment stung the eyes and nostrils.

"Not so hard, Gino. Not so hard, I am badly hurt."

"I am sorry, my Colonel," and he worked on in silence while the Count groaned and grunted and wriggled on the bed under him.

"My Colonel, may I speak?"

"No," grunted the Colonel. "Your salary is already liberal.

No, Gino, already I pay you a prince's ransom."

"My Colonel, you do me wrong. I would not speak of such a mundane subject at this time."

"I am delighted to hear it," groaned the Count. "Ah!

There! That spot! That's it!" Gino worked on the spot for a few seconds. "If you study the lives of the great Italian Generals Julius Caesar and-" Gino paused here while he searched his mind and more recent history for another great Italian General; the silence stretched out and Gino repeated, "Take Julius Caesar, as an example."

"Yes?"

"Even Julius Caesar did not himself swing the sword. The truly great commander stands aside from the actual battle.

He directs, plans, commands the lesser mortals."

"That is true, Gino."

"Any peasant can swing a sword or fire a gun, what are they but mere cattle!"

"That is also true."

"Take Napoleon Bonaparte, or the Englishman Wellington." Gino had abandoned his search for the name of a victorious Italian warrior within the last thousand years or SO.

"Very well, Gino, take them?"

"When they fought, they themselves were remote from the actual conflict. Even when they confronted each other at Waterloo, they stood miles apart like two great chess masters, directing, manoeuvring, commanding-" "What are you trying to say, Gino?"

"Forgive me, my coUnt, but have you not perhaps let your courage blind you, have not your warlike instincts, your instinct to tear the jugular from your enemy ... have you not perhaps lost sight of a commander's true role the duty to stand back from the actual fighting and survey the overall battle?" Gino waited with trepidation for the Count's reaction. It had taken him all his courage to speak, but even the Count's wrath could not outweigh the terror he felt at the prospect of being plunged once more into danger. His place was at the Count's side; if the Count continued to expose them both to all the terrors and horrors of this barren and hostile land, then Gino knew that he could no longer continue.

His nerves were trampled, raw, exposed, his nights troubled with dreams from which he woke sweating and trembling.

He had a nerve below his left eye that had recently begun to twitch without control. He was fast reaching the end of his nervous strength.

Soon something within him might snap.

"Please, my Count. For the good of all of us you must all curb your impetuosity." He had touched a responsive chord in his master. He had voiced precisely the Count's own feelings, feelings which had over the last few weeks" desperate adventures, become deep-seated convictions.

He struggled up on one elbow, lifted his noble head with its anguished brow and looked at the little sergeant.

"Gino," he said. "You are a philosopher."

"You do me too much honour, my Count."

"No! No! I mean it. You have a certain gutter wisdom, the perceptions of the streets, a peasant philosopher." Gino would not himself have put it quite that way, but he bowed his head in acquiescence.

"I have been unfair to my brave boys," said the Count, and his whole demeanour changed, becoming radiant and glowing with good will, like that of a reprieved prisoner. "I have thought only of myself my own glory, my own honour, recklessly I have plunged into danger, without reckoning the cost. Ignoring the terrible risk that I might leave my brave boys without a leader orphans without a father." Gino nodded fervently. "Who could ever replace you in their hearts, or at their head?"

"Gino." The Count clapped a fatherly hand to his shoulder.

"I must be less selfish in the future."

"My Count, you cannot know how much pleasure it gives me to hear it," cried Gino, and he trembled with relief as he thought of long, leisurely days spent in peace and security behind the earthworks and fortifications of Chaldi camp.

"Your duty is to command!"

"Plan! said the Count.

"Direct!" said Gino.

"I fear it is my destiny."

"Your God-given duty." Gino backed him up, and as the Count sank down once more upon the cot, he fell with renewed vigour upon the injured shoulder.

"Gino," said the Count at last. "When last did we speak of your wages?"

"Not for many months, my Count."

"Let us discuss it now," said Aldo Belli comfortably. "You are a jewel without price. Say, another hundred lire a month."

"The sum of one hundred and fifty had crossed MY mind, murmured Gino respectfully.

The Count's new military philosophy was received with unbounded enthusiasm by his officers, when he explained it to them that evening in the mess tent, over the liqueurs and cigars. The idea of leading from the rear seemed not only to be practical and sensible, but downright inspired. This enthusiasm lasted only until they learned that the new philosophy applied not to the entire officer cadre of the Third Battalion, but to the Colonel only. The rest of them were to be given every opportunity to make the supreme sacrifice for God, country and Benito Mussolini. At this stage the new philosophy lost much popular support.

In the end, only three persons stood to benefit from the rearrangement the Count, Gino and Major Luigi Castelani.

The Major was so overjoyed to learn that he now had what amounted to unfettered command of the battalion that for the first time in many years he took a bottle of grappa to his tent that evening, and sat shaking his head and chuckling fruitily into his glass.

The following morning's burning, blinding headache that only grappa can produce, combined with his new freedom, made the Major's grip on the battalion all the more ferocious. The new spirit spread like a fire in dry grass. Men cleaned their rifles, burnished their buttons and closed them to the neck, stubbed out their cigarettes and trembled a little while Castelani rampaged through the camp at Chaldi, dealing out duties, ferreting out the malingerers and stiffening spines with the swishing cane in his right hand.

The honour guard that fell in that afternoon to welcome the first aircraft to the newly constructed airfield were so beautifully turned out with polished leather and glittering metal, and their drill was so smartly performed, that even Count Aldo Belli noticed it, and commended them warmly.

The aircraft was a three-engined Caproni bomber. It came lumbering in from the northern skies, circled the long runway of raw earth, and then touched down and raised a long rolling storm of dust with the wash of its propellers.

The first personage to emerge from the doorway in the belly of the silver fuselage was the political agent from Asmara, Signor Antolino, looking more rumpled and seedy than ever in his creased, ill-fitting tropical linen suit. He raised his straw panama. in reply to the Count's flamboyant Fascist salute, and they embraced briefly, the man stood low on the social and political scale before the Count turned to the pilot.

"I wish to ride in your machine." The Count had lost interest in his tanks, in fact he found himself actively hating them and their Captain. In sober mood he had refrained from executing that officer, or even packing him off back to Asmara. He had contented himself with a full page of scathing comment in the man's service report, knowing that this would destroy his career. A complete and satisfying vengeance, but the Count was finished with tanks. Now he had an aircraft. So much more exciting and romantic.

"We will fly over the enemy positions," said the Count, at a respectable height." By which he meant out of rifle shot.

"Later," said the political agent, with such an air of authority that the Count drew himself up in a dignified manner, and gave the man a haughty stare before which he should have quailed.

"I carry personal and urgent orders from General Badogho's own lips," said the agent, completely unaffected by the stare.

The Count's stiffly dignified when altered immediately.

"A glass of wine, then," he said affably, and took the " man's arm leading him to the waiting Rolls.

The General stands now before Ambo Aradam. He has the main concentration of the enemy at bay upon the mountain, and under heavy artillery and aerial bombardment. At the right moment he will fall upon them and the outcome cannot be in doubt."

"Quite right," nodded the Count sagely; the prospect of fighting a hundred miles away to the north filled him with the reflected warmth of the glory of Italian arms.

"Within the next ten days, the broken armies of the Ethiopians will be attempting to withdraw along the road to Dessie and to link up with Baile Selassie at Lake Tona but the Sardi Gorge is like a dagger in their ribs. You know your duty." The Count nodded again, but warily.

This was much closer to home.

"I have come now to make the final contact with the Ethiopian Ras who will declare for us, the Emperor-designate of Ethiopia our secret ally.

It is necessary to coordinate our final plans, so that his defection will cause the greatest possible confusion amongst the ranks of the enemy, and his forces can be best deployed to support your assault up the gorge to Sardi and the Dessie road."

"Ah!" the Count made a sound which signified neither agreement nor dissent.

"My men, working in the mountains, have arranged a meeting with the Emperor-designate. At this meeting we will make the promised payment that secures the Ras's loyalty." The agent made a moue of distaste.

"These people!" and he sighed at the thought of a man who would sell his country for gold. Then he dismissed the thought with a J wave of his hand. "The meeting is fixed for tonight. I have brought one of my men with me who will act as a guide.

The place arranged is approximately eighty kilometres from here and we will move out at sundown which will give us ample time to reach the rendezvous before the appointed hour of midnight."

"Very well, the Count agreed. "I will place transport at your disposal." The agent held up a hand. "My dear Colonel, you will be the leader of the delegation to meet the Ras."

"Impossible." The Count would not so swiftly abandon his new philosophy. "I have my duties here to prepare for the offensive." Who knew what new horrors might lurk out in the midnight wastes of the Danakil?

"Your presence is essential to the success of the negotiations your uniform will impress the-" My shoulder, I am suffering from an injury which makes travel most inconvenient I shall send one of my officers.

A Captain of tanks, the uniform is truly splendid."

"No. "The agent shook his head.

"I have a Major a man of great presence."

"The General expressly instructed that you should lead the delegation.

If you doubt this, your radio operator could establish immediate contact with Asmara."

The Count sighed, opened his mouth, closed it again, and then regretfully abandoned his vow to remain within the perimeter of Chaldi camp for the duration of the campaign.

"Very well," he conceded. "We will leave at sundown." The Count was not about to plunge recklessly into danger again. The convoy which left Chaldi that evening in the fiery afterglow of the sunset was led by two CV.3 cavalry tanks, then followed four truck-loads of infantry, and behind them the remaining two tanks made up a formidable rear guard.

The Rolls was sandwiched neatly in the centre of this column. The political agent sat on the seat beside the Count, with his feet firmly on the heavy wooden case on the floorboards. The guide that the agent had produced from the fuselage of the Caproni was a thin, very dark Galla, with one opaque eyeball of blue jelly caused by tropical ophthalmia which gave him a particularly villainous cast of features.

He was dressed in a once-white sham ma that was now almost black with filth, and he smelled like a goat that had recently fought a polecat.

The Count took one whiff of him and clapped his perfumed handkerchief to his nose.

"Tell the man he is to ride in the leading tank with the Captain," and a malicious expression gleamed in his dark eyes as he turned to the Captain of tanks. "In the tank, do you hear? On the seat beside you in the turret." They drove without lights, jolting slowly across the moon-silver plains under the dark wall of the mountains.

There was a single horseman waiting for them at the rendezvous, a dark shape in the darker shadows of a massive camel-thorn. The agent spoke with him in Amharic and then turned back to the Count.

"The Ras suspects treachery. We are to leave the escort here and go on alone with this man."

"No," cried the Count. "No! No! I refuse - I simply refuse." It took almost ten minutes of coaxing, and the repeated mention of General Badoglio's name, to change the Count's stance. Miserably, the Count climbed back into the Rolls, and Gino looked sadly at him from the front seat as the unescorted, terribly vulnerable car moved out into the moonlight, following the dark wild horseman on his shaggy pony.

In a rocky valley that cut into the towering bulk of the mountains, they had to abandon the Rolls and complete the journey on foot. Gino and Giuseppe carrying the wooden case between them, the Count with a drawn pistol in his hand, they staggered on up the treacherous slope of rocks and scree.

In a hidden saucer of rock, around the rim of which were posted the shadowy, hostile figures of sentries, was a large leather tent.

Around it were tethered scores of the wild, shaggy ponies and the interior was lit by smoky paraffin lamps and crowded with rank upon rank of squatting warriors. Their faces were so black in the dim light that only the whites of their eyes and the gleam of their teeth showed clearly.

The political agent strode ahead of the Count, down the open aisle, to where a robed figure reclined on a pile of cushions under a pair of lanterns. He was flanked by two women, still very young, but full-blown heavy-breasted, and pale-skinned, dressed in brilliant silks, both of them wearing crudely wrought silver jewellery dangling from their ears and strung about their long graceful necks. Their eyes were dark and bold, and at another time and in different circumstances the Count's interest would have been intense.

But now his knees felt rubbery, and his heart thumped like a war drum.

The political agent had to lead him forward by the arm.

"The Emperor-designate," whispered the agent, and the Count looked down on the bloated, effeminate dandy who lolled upon the cushions, his fat fingers covered with rings and his eyelids painted like those of a woman. "Ras Kullah, of the Gallas."

"Make the correct reply,"

instructed the Count, his voice hoarse with strain, and the Ras eyed the Count with apprehension as the agent made a long flowery speech.

The Ras was impressed with the imposing figure in its sinister black uniform. In the lamplight, the insignia glittered and the heavy enamelled cross on its ribbon of watered silk blinked like a beacon.

The Ras's eyes dropped to the jewelled dagger and ivory-handled pistol at the Count's belt, the weapons of a rich and noble warrior and he looked up again into the Count's eyes. They also glittered with an almost feverish fanatical light, the Count's regular features were flushed angrily and a murderous scowl furrowed his brow. He breathed like a fighting bull. The Ras mistook the signs of fatigue and extreme fear for the warlike rage of a berserker. He was impressed and awed.

Then his attention was drawn irresistibly away from the Count, as Gino and Giuseppe staggered into the tent, sweating in the lamplight, and bowed over the heavy chest they carried between them. Ras Kullah hoisted himself into a kneeling position, with his soft paunch bulging forward under the sham ma and his eyes glittering like those of a reptile.

With an abrupt command, he cut short the agent's speech, and beckoned the two Italians to him. With relief they deposited the heavy chest before the Ras, amid a hubbub of voices from the dark mass of watchers.

They pressed forward eagerly, the better to see the contents of the chest, as the Ras prised open the clips with the jewelled dagger from his belt, and lifted the lid with his fat pale hands.

The chest was closely packed with paper-wrapped rolls, like white candles. The Ras lifted one and slit the paper cover with the point of his dagger. There was a silent explosion of flat metal discs from the package. They cascaded into the Ras's ample lap, glittering golden and bright in the lantern light, and he cooed with pleasure, scooping a handful of the coins. Even the Count, with his own vast personal fortune, was impressed by the contents of the chest.

"By Peter and the Virgin," he muttered.

"English sovereigns," the agent affirmed. "But not a high price for a land the size of France." The Ras giggled and tossed a handful of coins to his nearest followers, and they fought and squabbled over the coins on their hands and knees. Then the Ras looked up at the Count and patted the cushions, grinning happily, motioning him to be seated, and the Count responded gratefully. The long walk up the valley and his fevered emotions had weakened his legs. He sank down on the cushions and listened to the long list of further demands that the Ras had prepared.

"He wants modern rifles, and machine guns," translated the agent.

"What is our position?" asked the Count.

"Of course we cannot give them to him. In a month's time, or a year, he may be an enemy not an ally. You cannot be certain with these Gallas."

"Say the correct thing."

"He wants your assurance that the female agent provocateur and the two white brigands in the Harari camp are delivered to him for justice as soon as they are captured."

"There is no reason against this?"

"Indeed, it will save us trouble and embarrassment."

"What will he do with them they are responsible for the torture and massacre of some of my brave lads?" The Count was recovering his confidence, and the sense of outrage returned to him.

"I have eye-witness accounts of the terrible atrocities committed on helpless prisoners of war.

The wanton shooting of bound prisoners justice must be done.

They must meet retribution." The agent grinned without mirth. "I assure you, my dear Count, that in the hands of Ras Kullah they will meet a fate far more terrible than you would imagine in your worst nightmares," and he turned back to the Ras and said in Amharic, "You have our word on it. They are yours to do with as you see fit." The Ras smiled, like a fat golden cat, and the tip of his tongue ran across his swollen purple lips, from one corner of his mouth to the other.

By this time, the Count had recovered his breath, and realized that contrary to all his expectations the Ras was friendly and that he was not in imminent danger of having his throat slit and his personal parts forcibly removed, the Count regained much of his aplomb.

"Tell the Ras that I want from him, in exchange, a full account of the enemy's strength the number of men, guns and armoured vehicles that are guarding the approaches to the gorge. I want to know the enemy's order of battle, the exact location of all his earthworks and strong points and particularly I want to be informed of the positions occupied by the Ras's own Gallas at the present time. I want also the names and ranks of all foreigners serving with the enemy-" He went on ticking off the points one at a time on his fingers, and the Ras listened with growing awe. Here was a warrior, indeed.

We have to bait the trap, said Gareth Swales.

He and Jake Barton squatted side by side in the shade cast by the hull of Priscilla the Pig.

Gareth had a short length of twig in his right hand, and he had been using it to draw out his strategy for receiving the renewed thrust by the Italians.

"It's no good sending horsemen. It worked once, it's not going to work again." Jake said nothing, but frowned heavily at the complicated designs that Gareth had traced on the sandy earth.

"We have conditioned the tank commander. The next look he gets at an armoured car, and he's going to be after it like-" "Like a long dog after a bitch, "said Jake.

"Exactly," Gareth nodded. "I was just going to say that myself" "You already did, "Jake reminded him.

"We'll send out one car one is enough and hold another in reserve here." Gareth touched the sand map. "If anything goes wrong with the first car" "Like a high-explosive shell between the buttocks?" Jake asked.

"Precisely. If that happens the second car pops in like this and keeps them coming on."

"The way you tell it, it sounds great."

"Piece of cake, old son, nothing to it. Trust the celebrated Swales genius."

"Who takes the first car? "Jake asked.

"Spin you for it," Gareth suggested, and a silver Maria Theresa appeared as if by magic in his hand.

"Heads," said Jake.

"Oh, tough luck, old son. Heads it is." Jake's hand was quick as a striking mamba. It snapped closed on Gareth's wrist and held his hand in which the silver coin was cupped.

"I say," protested Gareth. "Surely you don't believe that I might and then he shrugged resignedly.

"No offence," Jake assured him, turned Gareth's hand towards him and examined the coin cupped in his palm.

"Lovely lady, Theresa," murmured Gareth. "Lovely high forehead, very sensual mouth bet she was a real goer, what?" Jake released his wrist, and stood up, dusting his breeches to cover his embarrassment.

"Come on, Greg. We'd better get ready," he called across to where the young Harari was supervising the preparations taking place on the higher ground above where the cars were parked.

"Good luck, old son," Gareth called after them. "Keep your head well down." Jake Barton sat on the edge of Priscilla's turret with his long legs dangling into the hatch, and he looked up at the mountains.

Only their lower slopes were visible, rising steeply into the vast towering mass of cloud that rose sheer into the sky.

The cloud mass bulged, swelling forward and spilling with the slow viscosity of treacle down the harsh ranges of rock. The mountains had disappeared, swallowed by the cloud monster, and the soft mass heaved like a belly digesting its prey.

For the first time since they had entered the Danakil, the sun was obscured. The cold came off the clouds in gusts, touching Jake with icy fingers of air, so that the gooseflesh pimpled his muscular forearms and he shivered briefly.

Gregorius sat beside him on the turret, looking up also at the silver and dark blue of the thunderheads.

"The big rains will begin now."

"Here?"

"No, not down here in the desert, but upon the mountains the rain will fall with great fury." For a few moments longer, Jake stared up at the pinnacles and glaring slopes of grandeur and menace, then he turned his back upon them and swept the rolling tree-dotted plains to the eastward. As yet, there was no) sign of the Italian advance that the scouts had reported, and he turned again and focused his binoculars on the lower slopes of the gorge at the point from which Gareth would signal the enemy's movements to him. There was nothing to be seen but broken rock and the tumbled slopes of scree and rubble.

He dropped his scrutiny lower to where the last small dunes of red sand lapped like wavelets against the great rock reef of the mountains.

There were wrinkles in the surface of the plain, sparsely covered with the pale seared desert grasses, but in their troughs thick coarse bush had taken root. The bush was tall and dense enough to hide the hundreds of patiently waiting Harari under its cover.

Gareth had worked out the method of dealing with the Italian tanks, and it was he who had sent Gregorius up the gorge to the village of Sardi with a gang of a hundred men and fifty camels. Under Greg's direction, they had torn up the rails from the shunting yard of the railway station, packed the heavy steel rails on to the camels and brought them down the perilous path to the desert floor.

Gareth had explained how the rails were to be used, split his force into gangs of twenty men each and exercised them with the rails until they were as efficient as he could hope for. All that was needed now was for Priscilla the Pig to lead the Italian tanks into the low dunes.

Without armour, Gareth estimated they could hold the Italians for a week at the mouth of the gorge. His order of battle placed the Harari on the left and centre, in good positions that interlocked with those of the Galla on the right flank. The Vickers guns had lanes of fire laid down that would make any infantry assault by the Italians suicidal without armoured cover.

They would have to blast their way into the gorge with artillery and aerial bombardment. It would take them a week at the least that is, if they could dissuade Ras Golam from attacking the Italians, a task which promised to be difficult, for the old Ras's fighting blood was coursing through his ancient veins.

Once they forced the mouth of the gorge and drove the Ethiopian forces into its gut, they had another week's hard pounding to reach the top and the town of Sardi provided once again that the Ras could be restrained in the role of defender.

Once the Italians broke out of the head of the gorge, the armoured cars could be flung in to hold them for a day or two more, but when they were expended, it was all over. It was an easy drive for the Italians through the rolling highlands on to the Dessie road, to close the jaws of the trap hopefully after the prey had fled.

Gareth had reported all this to Lij Mikhael, contacting him by telegraph at the Emperor's headquarters on the shores of Lake Tona.

The Prince had telegraphed back the Emperor's gratitude and assurances that within two weeks the destiny of Ethiopia would be decided.

"HOLD THE GORGE FOR TWO WEEKS AND YOUR DUTY WILL BE FULLY DISCHARGED STOP YOU WILL HAVE EARNED THE GRATITUDE OF THE EMPEROR AND ALL THE PEOPLES OF ETHIOPIA." A week here on the plains, but it all depended on this first encounter with the Italian armour. Gareth's and Jake's observations, backed up by those of the scouts, placed the total number of surviving Italian tanks at four. They must take them out at a single stroke, the whole defence of the gorge pivoted on this.

Jake found that he had been day-dreaming, his mind wandering over the problems they faced and the chances they must take. It took Gregorius's hand on his shoulder to rouse him.

"Jake! The signal." Quickly he looked back at the slope of the mountains, and he did not need the binoculars. Gareth was signalling with a primitive heliograph he had contrived with the shaving-mirror from his toilet bag. The bright flashes of light pricked Jake's eyeballs even at that range.

"They are coming in across the valley, line abreast. All four tanks, supported by motorized infantry." Jake read the signal, and jumped into the driver's hatch while Gregorius slid down the side of the hull and ran to the crank handle.

"That's my darling." Jake thanked Priscilla, as the engine spluttered busily into life, and then he called up to Gregorius as he climbed into the turret above him. "I'll warn you every time I tUrn to engage."

"Yes, Jake." The boy's eyes burned with the fire of his anger, and Jake grinned.

"As bad as his grand pappy He let in the clutch. They gathered speed swiftly and flew over the crest of the rise, and behind them rolled a long billow of dust, proclaiming their whereabouts to all the world.

The line of Italian tanks was coming straight in, a mile and a half out on their flank.

"Engaging now, "shouted Jake.

"Ready." Gregorius was crouched over the Vickers in the turret, straining it to the limit of its traverse, ready to fire at the very instant the gun could bear.

Jake put the wheel over hard, and Priscilla swung towards the distant dark beetle shapes of the Italian armour, sailing jauntily right into their teeth.

Above Jake the Vickers roared, and the spent cartridges spewed down into the hull, ringing and pinging against the steel sides, while the sudden acrid stink of burned cordite made Jake's eyes sting and flood with tears.

Through blurred eyes he watched the electric white tracer arc out across the open ground, and fall about the leading tank. Even at that range, Jake made out the tiny spurting fountains of dust and dirt kicked up by the hose of bullets.

"Good lad," grunted Jake; it was accurate shooting from the bouncing, bounding car at extreme range. Of course, it could do no damage to the thick steel armour of the CV.3, but it would certainly startle and anger the crew, goad them into retaliation.

As he thought it, Jake saw the turret of the tank traverse around as the commander called the target. The stubby barrel of the Spandau foreshortened rapidly, and then disappeared. Jake was looking directly down the muzzle.

He counted slowly to three, it would take that long for the gunner to get on to him, then he yelled, "Disengaging!" and flung Priscilla hard over, so that she came up on two wheels, ungainly and awkward as she swung away from the enemy line. From the corner of his eye Jake saw the glow of the muzzle flash, and almost instantly afterwards heard the crack of passing shot.

"Son of a gun that was close!" he muttered, and reached up to throw the hatch and visor open. There was no point in closing down, these Spandaus could penetrate any point of the car's hull as though it were made of paper, and Jake would need a good and unlimited view during the next desperate minutes.

Running parallel to the Italian line, he looked across and saw that all four tanks were firing now, and they were bunching, each tank turning towards him as he raced across their front, losing their rigid pattern of advance in their eagerness to keep Priscilla under fire.

"Come along," muttered Jake. "Three balls for a dollar, gentlemen, every throw a coconut!" It was too close to the truth to be funny, but he grinned nevertheless. "Jake Barton's famous coconut shy." A shell burst close alongside, showering sand and gravel into the open hatch. They were ranging in on him now, it was time to confuse the range again.

He spat sand from his mouth and yelled, "Engaging!" Priscilla spun handily towards the Italian line, and went bounding in towards them with that prim rocking action, her ugly old silhouette grim and uncompromising as the visage of a Victorian matron.

They were close, horribly frighteningly close, so that Jake could hear the Vickers bullets hammering against the black carapace of the leading tank. Gregorius had picked out the formation leader by his command pennant, and was concentrating all his fire upon him.

"Good thinking," grunted Jake. "Get the bastard's blood up." As he spoke, there was a thunderous clank close beside his head, as though a giant had swung a hammer against the steel hull, and the car reeled to the blow.

"We've taken a hit," Jake thought desperately, and his ears buzzed from the impact and there was the hot acrid stench of burned paint and hot metal in his nostrils. He swung the wheel over and Priscilla responded as handsomely as ever, turning sharply away from the Italian line.

Jake stood up in his compartment, sticking his head out into the open and he saw immediately how lucky they had been. The shell had struck one of the brackets he had welded on to the sponson to carry the arms crates. It had torn the bracket away, and dented the hull, leaving the metal glowing with the heat of the strike but the hull was intact, they had not been penetrated.

"Are you all right, Greg?" he yelled as he dropped back into his seat.

"They are following, Jake," the boy called down to him, ignoring the hit. "They are after us all of them."

"Home and mother here we come," Jake said, and turned directly away from them, once again changing the range and aim of the Italian gunners abruptly.

Shot burst close, driving the air in upon their eardrums, and making them both flinch involuntarily.

"We are pulling too far ahead, Jake," called Greg, and Jake glancing up saw that he had his hatch open and his head out.

"Lame bird," Jake decided reluctantly. If they outstripped the Italians too rapidly, there was a danger they would abandon the chase.

Another shell burst close alongside, covering them with a veil of pale dust, and Jake faked a hit, cutting back the throttle so that their seed bled off, and he swung Priscilla into an erratic broken pattern of flight, like a bird with a broken wing.

"They're gaining on us now, "Greg reported gleefully.

"Don't sound so damned happy about it," Jake muttered, but his voice was lost in the whine and crack of passing shot.

"They're still coming," howled Greg. "And they're still shooting."

"I noticed." Jake peered ahead, still flinging the car mercilessly from side to side. The ridge of the first dune was half a mile ahead, but it seemed like an hour later that he felt the earth tilt up under him and they went slithering and skidding up the slip-face of the dune and crashed over the crest into safety.

Jake swung Nscilla into a broadside skid, like a skier performing a christy, bringing her to an abrupt halt in the lee of the dune and then he backed and manoeuvred up until he was in a hull-down position behind the sand, with only the turret exposed.

"That's it, Jake," cried Greg delightedly, as he found his Vickers would bear again. He crouched over it, and fired short crisp bursts at the four black tanks that roared angrily towards them across the plain.

From the stationary position behind the dune, Gregorius made every burst of fire sweep the oncoming hulls, driving the Latin tempers of the crews into frenzy, like the sting of a tsetse fly on the belly of a bull buffalo.

"That's about close enough," decided Jake, judging the charge of enemy armour finely. They were less than five hundred yards off now and already they were dropping shell close around the tiny target afforded by the car's turret.

"Let's get the hell out of here." He swung Priscilla hard and she plunged down the side of the dune into the trough. As she crashed through the dense dark scrub, Jake caught a glimpse of the men lying in wait under the screen of vegetation. They were stripped to loin-Cloths, huddled down over the long steel rails, and two of them had to roll frantically aside to avoid being crushed beneath Priscilla's tall, heavily bossed wheels.

The momentum of her charge down the side of the dune carried her up on the second dune with loose sand pouring out in a cloud from her spinning rear wheels. She reached the crest and went over it at speed, dropping with a gut swooping dive down the far side.

Jake cut the engine before she had come to rest, and he and Gregorius sprang out of the opened hatches and went panting back up the dune, labouring in the heavy loose footing, and panting as they reached the crest and looked down into the trough at almost the same instant as the four Italian tanks came over the crest opposite them.

Their racks boiling in the loose sand, they came crashing over the top of the dune, and roared down into the trough.

They tore into the thick bank of scrub, and immediately the bush was alive with naked black figures. They swarmed around the monstrous wallowing hulls like ants around the bodies of shiny black scarab beetles.

Twenty men to each steel rail, using it like a battering ram, they charged in from each side of every tank, thrusting the end of the rail into the sprocketed jockey wheels of the tracks.

The rail was caught up immediately, and with the screech of metal on metal was whipped out of the hands of the men who wielded it, hurling them effortlessly aside. To an engineer, the sound that the machines made as they tore themselves to pieces was like the anguish of living things, like that terrible death squeal of a horse.

The steel rails tore the jockey wheels out of them, and the tracks sprang out of their seating on the sprockets and whipped into the air, flogging themselves to death in a cloud of dust and torn vegetation.

It was over very swiftly, the four machines lay silent and stalled, crippled beyond hope of repair and around them lay the broken bodies of twenty or more of the Ethiopians who had been caught up by the flailing tracks as they broke loose. The bodies were torn and shredded, as though clawed and mauled by some monstrous predator.

Those who had survived the savage death of the tanks, hundreds of almost naked figures, swarmed over the stranded hulls, loolooing wildly and pounding on the steel turrets with their bare hands.

The Italian gunners still inside the hulls fired their machine guns despairingly, but there was no power on their traversing gear and the turrets were frozen. The guns could not be aimed. They were blinded also for Jake had armed a dozen Ethiopians each with a bucket of engine oil and dirt mixed to a thick paste. This they had slapped in gooey handfuls over the drivers" and gunners" visors. The tank crews were helplessly imprisoned and the attackers pranced and howled like demented things. The din was such that Jake did not even hear the approach of the other car.

It stopped on the crest of the dune opposite where Jake stood.

The hatches were flung open, and Gareth Swales and Ras Golam leaped out of the hull.

The Ras had his sword with him, and he swung it around his head as he charged down the slope to join his men around the crippled tanks.

Across the valley that separated them, Gareth threw Jake a cavalier salute, but beneath the mockery, Jake sensed real respect.

Each of them ran down into the trough and they met where the gallon cans of gasoline were buried under a fine layer of sand and cut branches.

Gareth spared a second to punch Jake lightly on the shoulder.

"Hit the beggars for six, what? Good for you," and then they stooped to drag the cans out of the shallow hole, and with one in each hand staggered through the waist-deep scrub to the tank carcasses.

Jake passed a can up to Gregorius who was already perched on the turret of the nearest tank where his grandfather was trying to prise open the turret hatch with the blade of his broad-sword. His eyes flashed and rolled wildly in his wrinkled black head, and a high-pitched incoherent "Looloo" keened from the mouthful of flashing artificial teeth for the Ras was transported into the fighting mania of the berserker.

Gregorius hefted the gasoline can up on to the tank's sponson, and plunged his dagger through the thin metal of the lid. The clear liquid spurted and hissed from the rent, under pressure of its own volatile gases.

"Wet it down good!" shouted Jake, and Gregorius; grinned and splattered gasoline over the hull. The stink of it was sharp, as it evaporated from the hot metal in a shimmering haze.

Jake ran on to the next tank, unscrewing the cap of the can as he clambered up over the shattered jockey wheels.

Avoiding the stationary barrel of the forward machine gun, he stood tall on the top of the turret and splashed gasoline over the hull, until it shone wetly in the sunlight and little rivulets of the stuff found the joints and gaps in the plating and splattered into the interior.

"Get back," shouted Gareth. "Everybody back." He had doused the other steel carcasses and he stood now on the slope of the dune with an unlit cheroot in the corner of his mouth and a box of Swan Vestas in his left hand.

Jake jumped lightly down from the hull, laying a trail of gasoline from the can he carried as he backed up to where Gareth waited.

"Hurry. Everybody out of the way," Gareth called again.

Gregorius was laying a wet trail of gasoline back to Gareth.

"Somebody go get that old bastard out of the way" Gareth called with exasperation. A single figure pranced and howled and loolooed on the nearest tank, and Jake and Gregorius dropped the empty cans and raced back. Ducking under the swinging arc of the sword, Jake got an arm around the Ras's skinny, bony chest, swung him bodily off his feet and passed him down to his grandson. Between them they carried him away to safety, still how ling and struggling.

Gareth struck one of the Swan Vestas and casually lit the cheroot in his mouth. When it was drawing nicely, he cupped the match to let the game flare brightly.

"Here we go, chaps," he murmured. "Guy Fawkes, Guy.

Stick him in the eye. Hang him on a lamp post' he flicked the burning match on to the gasoline-sodden earth, and leave him there to die." For a moment nothing happened, and then with a thump that concussed the air against their eardrums, the gasoline ignited.

Instantly the belt of scrub turned to atoll roaring red inferno, and the flames boiled and swirled, leaped and drummed high into the desert air, engulfing the four stranded tanks in sheets of fire that obscured their menacing silhouettes.

The Ethiopians watched from the dunes, awed by the terrible pageant of destruction they had created. Only the Ras still danced and howled at the edge of the flames, the blade of his sword reflecting the red leaping flames.

The hatches of the nearest tank were thrown open, and out into the searing air leaped three figures, indistinct and shadowy through the flames. Beating wildly at their burning uniforms, the tank crew came staggering out on to the slope of the dune.

The Ras flew to meet them, the sword hissing and glinting as it swung.

The head of the tank commander seemed to leap from his fire-blackened shoulders, as the blade cut through. The head struck the ground behind him and rolled back down the dune like a ball, while the decapitated trunk dropped to its knees with a fine crimson spray from the neck pumping straight up into the air.

The Ras raced on towards the other survivors, and his men roared angrily and swarmed forward after him. Jake uttered a horrified oath and started forward to restrain them.

"Easy, old son." Gareth caught Jake's arm, and swung him away.

"This is no time for one of your boy scout acts." From below them rose the ugly blood roar of the destroyers, as they fell upon the survivors of the other tanks, and the Italians" screams cut like a whiplash across Jake's nerves.

"Let's leave them to it." Gareth drew Jake away. "Not our business, old boy. The beggars have got to take their own chances.

Rules of the game." Across the crest of the dune they leaned together against the steel hull of Priscilla. Jake was panting heavily from his exertions and his horror. Gareth found him a slightly crumpled cheroot in the inside pocket of his tweed jacket, and straightened it carefully before placing it between Jake's lips.

"Told you before, your sentimental but endearing ways will get us both into trouble. They'd have torn you to pieces also if you'd gone down there." He lit Jake's cheroot.

"Well, old boy-" he changed the subject diplomatically.

"That takes care of our biggest problem. No tanks no worries, that's an old Swales family motto," and he chuckled lightly. "We'll be able to hold them at the mouth of the gorge for another week now. No trouble at all." Abruptly the sunlight was obscured, and instantly the temperature dropped sharply. Both of them glanced up involuntarily at the sky, at the gloom and the sudden chill.

In the last hour, the masses of cloud had come slumping down from the mountains, blotting them out completely, and spreading out on to the fringes of the Danakil desert.

From this thick, dark mattress of swirling cloud, fine pale streamers of rain were already spiralling down towards the plain. Jake felt a droplet splatter against his forehead and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

"I say, we're in for a drop or two," murmured Gareth, and as if in confirmation the deep mutter of thunder echoed down from the cloud-shrouded mountains, and lightning flared sulkily, trapped within the towering cloud masses and lighting them internally with a smouldering infernal glow.

"That's going to make things-" Gareth cut himself off, and both of them cocked their heads.

"Hello, that's decidedly odd." Faintly on the brooding air, carrying above the mutter of thunder, came the popping of musketry and the sound of machine-gun fire, like the sound of tearing silk, made indistinct and un warlike by distance and the muting banks of heavy cloud.

"Deuced odd." Gareth repeated. "There should not be any firing from there." It was in their rear, seeming to come from the very mouth of the gorge itself.

"Come on," snapped Jake, picking his binoculars out of Priscilla's hatch and scrambling through the loose red sand for the crest of the tallest dune.

The cloud and misty streamers of rain obscured the mouth of the gorge, but now the sound of gunfire was continuous.

"That's not just a skirmish," muttered Gareth.

"It's a full-scale fire fight," Jake agreed, peering through the binoculars.

"What is it, Jake?" Gregorius came up the dune to where they stood. He was followed by his grandfather but the old man moved slowly, exhausted and stiff with age and the aftermath of burned-out passions.

"We don't know, Greg. "Jake did not lower the binoculars.

"I don't understand it." Gareth shook his head. "Any Italian probe from the south would have run into our positions in the foothills, and from the north it would have run into the Gallas. Ras Kullah is in a pretty strong spot there. We would have heard the fighting. They can't have gone through there-" "And we are here in the centre, "Jake added, "they didn't come through here."

"It doesn't make sense." At that moment, the Ras reached the crest. He paused wearily and removed the teeth from his mouth, wrapped them carefully in a kerchief and tucked them away in some secret recess of his sham ma The mouth collapsed into a dark empty pit, and immediately he looked his age again.

Quickly Gregorius explained this new phenomenon to the old man, and while he listened he ran the blade of his sword into the dune between his feet, scrubbing it clean of the clotted black blood in the dry friable sand. He spoke suddenly in his tremulou's old man's voice.

"My grandfather says that Ras Kullah is a piece of dried dung of a venereal hyena," Gregorius translated quickly.

"And he says my uncle, Lij Mikhael, was wrong to treat with him, and that you were wrong to trust him."

"Now what the hell does that mean?" Jake demanded fretfully, and lifted the binoculars sweeping again towards the mouth of the Sardi Gorge away across the undulating golden plain then he exclaimed again.

"Damn it to hell, everything is blowing up. That crazy woman! She promised me, she swore on oath that she would keep out of it for once and now here she comes again!"

Emerging through the curtains of rain, indistinct under the dark rolling mass of cloud, throwing no dust column on the rain-dampened earth, the tiny sand-coloured shape of Miss Wobbly came bowling towards them with its distinctive stately gait. Even at this distance, Jake could make out the dark speck of Sara's head in the hatch of the high, old-fashioned turret.

Jake started to run down the slip-face of the dune to meet the oncoming car.

"Jake!" Vicky screeched above the engine beat, before she came to a halt, her head thrust out of the driver's hatch, her golden hair shaking in the wind and her eyes huge in the pale intense face.

"What the hell are you doing? "Jake shouted back angrily.

"The Gallas," Vicky screeched. "They've gone! Every last man of them!

Gone!" She braked hard and tumbled down to the ground so that Jake had to catch and steady her.

"What do you mean gone?" Gareth demanded, coming up at that moment and Sara answered him from Miss Wobbly's turret with her dark eyes sparkling hotly.

"They went, like smoke, like the dirty hill bandits they are."

"The left flank-"Gareth exclaimed.

"Nobody there. The Italians have come through without firing a shot.

Hundreds and hundreds of them. They are at the gorge, they have overrun the camp."

"Jake, they would have cut off all our own Harari, it would have been a massacre Sara gave the order, in her grandfather's name, she ordered them to abandon the right flank."

"Oh, good Christ!"

"They are trying to fight their way back into the gorge now but the Italians are covering the mouth with machine guns. It's terrible, Jake, oh the desert is thick with the dead."

"We've lost it all. Everything we gained, at a single throw, it's all gone. This was a feint, the tanks were sent to draw us off. The main attack was through the left but how did they know the Gallas had deserted?"

"As my grandfather says, never trust either a snake or a Galla."

"Oh Jake, we must hurry." Vicky shook his arm. "They'll cut us off."

"Right," snapped Gareth. "We'll have to get back into the gorge and rally them on the first line of defence in the gorge itself otherwise they'll run straight back to Addis Ababa." He swung around to Gregorius. "If we try and take these men, and he indicated the hundreds of halfnaked, unarmed Harad who were now straggling out of the dunes, "if we try to take them back through the mouth of the gorge, they'll be shot to pieces by the Italian guns. Can they find their own way on foot up the mountain slopes?"

"They are mountain men, Gregorius answered simply.

"Good. Tell them to work their way back and assemble at the first waterfall in the gorge. That's the rallying point the first waterfall." He turned back to the others. "On the other hand, we'll have to use the gorge the only way to save the cars. We'll rush the mouth in a tight formation and pray that the Eyeties haven't had a chance to bring up their artillery yet. Let's go!" He grabbed Ras Golam by the shoulder and dragged him, at an awkward run, back towards where they had left their armoured car parked on the crest of the first dune.

"Get back in the car," Jake instructed Vicky. "Keep the engine running. We'll bring up the two other cars. I want you in the centre of the line, then go like hell. Don't stop for anything until we are into the gorge. Do you hear me?" Vicky nodded grimly.

"Good girl he said, and would have turned away, but Vicky held his arm and pressed herself to him. She reached up and kissed him full on the lips, her mouth open and wet and soft and sweet.

"I love you, "she whispered huskily.

"Oh my darling, what a hell of a time you picked to tell me."

"I only just found out," she explained, and he crushed her fiercely to his chest.

"Oh, that's lovely," cried Sara from the turret above them.

"That's beautiful." She clapped her hands delightedly.

"Until later," whispered Jake. "Now get out of here!" and he turned her away and pushed her towards the car. He turned himself and ran lightly back into the dunes, with his heart singing.

"Oh, Miss Camberwell, I am so pleased for you." Sara reached down to help Vicky up on to the hull. "I knew it was going to be Mr. Barton.

I picked him for you long ago, but I wanted you to find out for yourself."

"Sara, my dear. Please don't say any more." Vicky hugged her briefly before dropping into the driver's hatch. "Or the whole thing will turn upside down again." Ras Golam was so tired and drained that he could move only at a creaking walk up the dune, even though Gareth tried to prod him into a trot. He plodded on up the dune dragging the sword behind him.

Suddenly there was a sound in the sky above them, as though the heavens had been split by all the winds of hell.

A rising, rattling shriek that passed and then erupted in a towering column of sand and yellow swirling fumes against the side of the dune ahead of them, fifty paces below the car that was silhouetted upon the crest.

"Guns,"said Gareth unnecessarily. "Time to go, Grandpa," and he would have prodded the Ras again, but there was no need. The sound of gunfire had rejuvenated the Ras instantly; he leaped high in the air, uttering that dreadful screech of a challenge and hunting frantically for his teeth in the folds of his sham ma "Oh no, you don't." Grimly, Gareth forestalled the next wild suicidal charge by grabbing the Ras and dragging him protestingly towards the car. The Ras had tasted blood now, and he wanted to go in on foot with the sword the way a real warrior fights and he was frantically searching the open horizons for the enemy, as Gareth towed him away backwards.

The next shell burst beyond the crest, out of sight in the trough.

"The first one under, and the second over," muttered Gareth, struggling to control the Ras's wild lunges. "Where does the next one go?" They had almost reached the car when it came in, arcing across the wide lioncoloured plain, through the low grey cloud, howling and rattling the heavens; it plunged down at an acute angle, going in through the thin plating behind the turret of the car, and it burst against the steel floor of the cab.

The car burst like a paper bag. The entire turret was lifted from its seating and went high in the air in a flash of crimson flame and sooty smoke.

Gareth dragged the Ras down on to the sand and held him there while scraps of flying steel and other debris splattered around them.

It lasted only seconds and the Ras tried to rise again, but Gareth held him down while the shattered hull of the car brewed up into a fiery explosion of burning gasoline and the Vickers ammunition in the bins began popping and flying like fireworks.

It lasted a long time, and when at last the crackle of ammunition died away, Gareth lifted his head cautiously; immediately another belt caught and rattled away with white tracer flying and spluttering, forcing them flat again.

"Come on, Rassey," sighed Gareth at last. "Let's see if we can beg a ride home." At that moment, the ugly, well beloved shape of Priscilla the Pig roared abruptly over the crest of the dune and slewed to a halt above them.

"God," Jake shouted from the driver's hatch. "I thought you were in it when she blew. I came to pick up the pieces." Dragging the Ras, Gareth climbed up the side of the tall hull.

"This is becoming a habit," Gareth grunted. "That's two I owe you.

"I'll send you an account," Jake promised, and then ducked instinctively as the next shell came shrieking in to burst so close that dust and smoke blew into their faces.

"I get this strange feeling we should move on now," suggested Gareth mildly. "That is, if you have no other plans." Jake sent the car plunging steeply down the face of the dune, turning hard as he hit the firmer earth of the plain and setting a running course for where the mouth of the gorge was hidden by the smoky writhing curtains of cloud and rain.

Vicky Camberwell saw them coming and swung Miss Wobbly and gunned her on to a parallel course. Wheel to wheel, the two elderly machines bounded across the flat land, and the rain began to crackle against the steel hulls in minute white bursts that blurred their outlines as the next Italian shell burst fifty feet ahead of them, forcing them to swerve to avoid the fuming crater.

"Can you see where the battery is?" yelled Jake, and Gareth answered him, clinging to one of the welded brackets above the hatch, rain streaming down his face and soaking the front of his white shirt.

"They are in the ground that the Gallas deserted, they've probably taken over the trenches I dug with such loving care."

"Could we have a go at them? "Jake suggested.

"No we can't, old son. I sited those positions myself.

They're tight. You just keep going for the gorge. Our only hope is to get into the second line of positions that I have prepared at the first waterfall." Then he shook his head sorrowfully, screwing up his eyes against the stinging raindrops. "You and this crazy old bastard," he turned his head to the Ras beside him, "you'll be the death of me, you two will The Ras grinned happily at him, convinced that they were charging into a battle again, and deliriously happy at the prospect.

"How do you do?" he cackled, and punched Gareth's shoulder gleefully.

"Could be better, old boy," Gareth assured him. "Could be a lot better," and they both ducked as the next shell came howling low over their heads.

"Those fellows are improving Gareth observed mildly.

"God knows they've had plenty of practice recently, "Jake shouted, and Gareth rolled his eyes upwards to the heavy bruised cloud banks.

"Let there be rain," he intoned, and instantly the thunder cracked and the clouds lit internally with a brilliant electric burst of light.

The splattering drops increased their tempo, and the air turned milky with slanting drumming lances of rain.

"Amazing, Major Swales. I would not have believed it," said Gregorius Maryam from the turret above Gareth's head, and his voice was hushed with awe.

"Nothing to it, my lad," Gareth disclaimed. "Just a direct line to the top." Rain filled the air in a white teeming fog, so that Jake had to screw up his eyes against the driving needles, and his black curls clung in a sodden mass to his scalp.

Rain wiped out the mountains and the rocky portals of the gorge, so that Jake steered by instinct alone. It roared against the racing steel hull, and closed down visibility to a circle of twenty yards.

The Italian shellfire stopped abruptly, as the gunners were unsighted.

Rain pounded every inch of exposed skin, striking with a force that stung painfully, snapping against their faces with a jarring impact that made the teeth ache in their jaws, and sent them crouching for what little cover there was on the exposed hull.

"Good Lord, how long does this go on for?" protested Gareth, and he spat the sodden butt of his cheroot over the side.

"Four months," shouted Gregorius. "It rains for four months now."

"Or until you tell it to stop." Jake grinned wryly, and glanced across at the other machine.

Sara waved reassuringly from the turret of Miss Wobbly, her face screwed up against the driving raindrops and the thick mane of hair plastered to her shoulders and face. Icy rain had soaked the silken sharnma she wore and it clung transparently to her body, and her fat little breasts showed through as though they were naked, bouncing to each exaggerated movement of the car.

Suddenly the mist of rain ahead of them was filled with hurrying figures, all of them clad in the long sodden sharnmas of the Harari; carrying their weapons, they were running and staggering forward through the rain towards the mouth of the gorge.

Gregorius shouted encouragement to them as they sped past, and then translated quickly.

"I have told them we will hold the enemy at the first waterfall they are to spread the word." And he turned back to shout again when suddenly with a startled oath Jake braked and swung the car violently to avoid a pile of human bodies strewn in their path.

"This is where the Italian machine-gunners caught them," Sara yelled across the gap, and as if in confirmation there came the tearing ripping sound of the machine guns off in the rain mist.

Jake threaded the car past the piles of bodies and then looked around to make sure Vicky was following.

"Now what the hell!" He realized they were alone. "That woman.

That crazy woman," and he braked, slammed Priscilla into reverse and roared back into the fog until the dark shape of Miss Wobbly loomed up again.

"No," said Gareth. "I can't bear it." Vicky and Sara were out of the parked car, hurrying amongst the piles of bodies, stooping over a wounded warrior and between them dragging him upright and thrusting him through the open rear doors of the cab. Others, less gravely wounded, were limping and crawling towards the machine, and dragging themselves aboard.

"Come on, Vicky, "Jake yelled.

"We can't leave them here, she yelled back.

"We've got to get to the waterfall," he tried to explain.

"We've got to stop the retreat." But he might not have spoken, for the two women turned back to their task.

"Vicky!" Jake shouted again.

"If you help it won't take so long, "she called obstinately, and Jake shrugged helplessly before climbing down out of the hatch.

Both cars were crammed with dreadfully wounded and dying Harari, and the hulls were thick with those who still had strength to hold on, before Vicky was satisfied.

"We've lost fifteen minutes. "Gareth glanced at his pocket watch in the rain that still poured down with unabated fury.

"And that could be enough to get us all killed, and lose us the gorge."

"It was worth it," Vicky told him stubbornly, and ran to her car. Again the heavily burdened machines ground on towards the mountain pass, and now they had to ignore the pitiful appeals of the wounded they passed.

They lay in huddles of rags soaked with rain and diluted pink blood, or they crawled painfully and doggedly on towards the mountain, lifting brown, agonized faces and pleading, clawlike hands, hands as the two machines roared past in the mist.

Once a freak gap in the rain opened visibility to a mile around them, and a pale shaft of watery sunlight slanted down to strike the cars like a stage light, glistening on the wet steel hulls.

Immediately the Italian machine guns opened on them from a range of a mere two hundred yards, and the bullets cut into the clinging mass of humanity, knocking a dozen of them shrieking from their perch before the rain closed in again, hiding them in its soft white protective bosom.

They ran into the main camp below the gorge, and found that it was plunged into terrible confusion. It had been heavily shelled and machine-gunned, and then the rain had turned it all into a deep muddy soup of broken flattened tents, and scattered equipment.

Dead horses and human corpses were half buried in the mud, here and there a terrified dog or a lost child scurried through the rain.

Spasmodic fighting was still taking place in the rocky ground around the camp, and they caught glimpses of Italian uniforms on the slopes and muzzle-flashes in the gloom.

Every few seconds a shell would howl in through the rain and cloud and burst with sullen fury somewhere out of sight.

"Head for the gorge," shouted Gareth. "Don't stop here," and Jake took the path that skirted the grove of camel thorns the direct path that passed below and out of sight of the fighting on the slopes, crossed the Sardi River and plunged into the gaping maw of the gorge.

"My men are holding them," Gregorius shouted proudly.

"They are holding the gorge. We must go to their aid."

"Our place is at the first waterfall. "Gareth raised his voice for the first time.

"They can't hold here not when the Eyetie brings up his guns. We've got to get set at the first waterfall to have a chance." He looked back to where the other car should have been following them, and he groaned.

"No! Oh, please God, no."

"What is it? "jake head popped out of the driver's hatch with alarm.

"They've done it again."

"Who ?" But Jake need not have asked.

The following car had swung off the direct track, and was now storming up through the rain-blurred camel-Thorn trees, heading for the old tented camp in the grove, and only incidentally running directly into the area where the heavy fighting was still rattling and crackling in the rain.

"Catch her," Gareth said. "Head her off." Jake swung off the track and went zigzagging up through the grove with the rear wheels spinning and spraying red mud and slush. But Miss Wobbly had a clear start and a straight run up the secondary track directly into the enemy advance; she disappeared amongst the trees and curtains of rain.

Jake brought the car bellowing out into the camp to find Miss Wobbly parked in the open clearing. The tents had been flattened and the whole area trodden and looted, cases of rations and clothing burst open and soaked with rain; the muddy red canvas of the tents hung flapping in the trees or lay half buried.

From the turret, Sara was firing the Vickers into the trees of the grove, and answering fire whined and crackled around the car. Jake glimpsed running Italian figures, and turned the car so that his own gun would bear.

"Get into them, Greg," he yelled, and the boy crouched down behind the gun and fired a long thunderous burst that tore shreds of bark off the trees and dropped at least one of the running Italians. Jake lifted himself out of the driver's hatch, and then froze and stared in disbelief.

Victoria Camberwell was out of the armoured car, plodding around in the soup of red mud, oblivious to the gunfire that whickered and crackled about her.

"Vicky!" he cried in despair, and she stooped and snatched something out of the mud with a cry of triumph. Now at last she turned and scampered back to Miss Wobbly, crossing a few feet in front of Jake.

"What the hell-" he protested.

"My typewriter and my toilet bag," she explained reasonably, holding her muddy trophies aloft. "One has got my make-up in it, and I can't do my job without the other," and then she smiled like a wet bedraggled puppy.

"We can go now, "she said.

The track up the gorge was crowded with men and "animals, toiling wearily upwards in the icy rain.

The pack animals slipped and slithered in the loose footing.

Gareth's relief was intense when he saw the bulky shapes of the Vickers strapped to the humpy backs of a dozen camels, and the cases of ammunition riding high in the panniers. His men had done their work and saved the guns.

"Go with them, Greg," he ordered. "See them safely up to the first waterfall," and the boy jumped down to take command, while the two cars ploughed on slowly through the sea of humanity.

"There's no fight left in them," said Jake, looking down into the dispirited brown faces, running with rainwater and shivering in the cold.

"They'll fight," answered Gareth, and he nudged the Ras.

"What do you say, Grandpa?" The Ras grinned a weary toothless grin, but his wet clothing clung to the gaunt old frame like the rags of a scarecrow, as Jake brought the car round the slippery, glassy hairpin bend below the first waterfall.

"Pull in here," Gareth told him, and then scrambled down beside the hull, drawing the Ras down with him.

"Thanks, old son." He looked up at Jake. "Take the cars up to Sardi, and get rid of these-" He indicated the sorry cargo of wounded.

"Try and find a suitable building for a hospital. Leave that to Vicky it'll keep her out of mischief.

Either that or we'll have to tie her up--2 he grinned, and then was serious. "Try and contact Lij Mikhael. Tell him the position here.

Tell him the Gallas have deserted and I'll be hard pressed to hold the gorge another week. Tell him we need ammunition, guns, medicine, blankets, food anything he can spare. Ask him to send a train down to Sardi with supplies, and to take out the wounded." He paused, and thought for a moment. "That's it, I think.

Do that and then come back, with all the food you can carry. I think we left most of our supplies down there" he glanced down into the misty depths of the gorge "and these fellows won't fight on an empty stomach." Jake reversed the car and pulled back on to the track.

"Oh, and Jake, try and find a few cheroots. I lost my entire stock down there. Can't fight without a whiff or two." He grinned and waved. "Keep it warm, old son," he called, and turned away to begin stopping the trudging column of refugees, pushing them off the track towards the prepared trenches that had been dug into the rocky sides of the gorge, overlooking the double sweep of the track below them.

"Come along, chaps," Gareth shouted cheerfully. "Who's for a touch of old glory!" ROM GENERAL BADOGLIO, COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE AFRICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE BEFORE AMBA ARA DAM TO COLONEL COUNT ALDO BELLI, OFFICER COMMANDING THE DANAKIL COLUMN AT THE WELLS OF CHALDI.

THE MOMENT FOR WHICH WE HAVE PLANNED IS NOW AT HAND STOP I CONFRONT THE MAIN BODY OF THE ENEMY, AND HAVE HAD THEM UNDER CONTINUOUS BOMBARDMENT FOR FIVE DAYS. AT DAWN TOMORROW I SHALL ATTACK IN FORCE AND DRIVE THEM FROM THE HIGH GROUND BACK ALONG THE DE SSI ROAD. DO YOU NOW ADVANCE WITH ALL DESPATCH TO TAKE UP A POSITION ASTRIDE THE DESSIE ROAD AND STEM THE TIDE OF THE ENEMY's RETREAT, SO THAT WE MAY TAKE THEM ON BOTH TINES OF THE PITCHFORK.

"forty thousand men lay upon Ambo Aradam, cowering in their trenches and caves. They were the heart and spine of the Ethiopian armies, and the man who led them, Ras Muguletu, was the ablest and most experienced of all the warlords. But he was powerless and uncertain in the face of such strength and fury as now broke around him. He had not imagined it could be so, and he lay with his men, quiescent and stoic. There was no enemy to confront, nothing to strike out at, for the huge Caproni bombers droned high overhead and the great guns that fired the shells were miles below in the valley.

All they could do was pull their dusty shammas over their heads and endure the bone-jarring, bowel-shaking detonations and breathe the filthy fume-laden air.

Day after day the storm of explosive roared around them until they were dazed and stupefied, deafened and uncaring, enduring, only enduring not thinking, not feeling, not caring.

On the sixth night the drone of the big three-engined bombers passed overhead, and Ras Muguletu's men, peering up fearfully, saw the sinister shapes pass overhead, dark against the silver pricking of the stars.

They waited for the bombs to tumble down upon them once more, but the bombers circled above the flat-topped mountain for many minutes and there were no bombs. Then the bombers turned away and the drone of the engines died into the lightening dawn sky.

Only then did the soft insidious dew that they had sown come sifting down out of the still night sky. Gently as the fall of snowflakes, it settled upon the upturned brown faces, into the fearfully staring eyes, on to the bare hands that held the ancient firearms at the ready.

It burned into the exposed skin, blistering and eating into the living flesh like some terrible canker; it burned the eyes in their sockets, turning them into cherry-red, glistening orbs from which the yellow mucus poured thickly. The pain it inflicted combined both the seating of concentrated acid and the fierce heat of live coals.

In the dawn, while thousands of Ras Muguletu's men whimpered and cried out in their consuming agony, and their comrades, bemused and bewildered, tried unavailingly to render aid, in that dreadful moment, the first wave of Italian infantry came up over the lip of the mountain, and they were into the Ethiopian trenches before the defenders realized what had happened. The Italian bayonets blurred redly in the first rays of the morning sun.

The cloud lay upon the highlands, blotting out the peaks, and the rain fell in a constant deluge. It had rained without ceasing for the two days and three nights since the disaster of Aruba Aradarn. The rain had saved them, it had saved the thirty thousand survivors of the battle from being overtaken by the same fate as had befallen the ten thousand casualties they had left on the mountain.

High above the cloud, the Italian bombers circled hungrily; Lij Mikhael could hear them clearly, although the thick blanket of cloud muted the sound of the powerful triple engines. They waited for a break in the cloud, to come swooping down upon the retreat. What a target they would enjoy if that happened! The Dessie road was choked for a dozen miles with the slow unwieldy column of the retreat, the ragged files of trudging figures, bowed in the rain, their heads covered with their shammas, their bare feet sliding and slipping in the mud. Hungry, cold and dispirited, they toiled onwards, carrying weapons that grew heavier with every painful step still they kept on.

The rain had hampered the Italian pursuit. Their big troop-carriers were bogged down helplessly in the treacherous mud, and each engorged mountain stream, each ravine raged with the muddy brown rain waters.

They had to be bridged by the Italian engineers before the transports could be manhandled across, and the pursuit continued.

The Italian General Badoglio had been denied a crushing victory and thirty thousand Ethiopian troops had escaped him at Aradam.

It was Lij Mikhael's special charge, placed upon him -personally by the King of Kings, Baile Selassie, to bring out those thirty thousand men.

To extricate them from Badogho's talons, and regroup them with the southern army under the Emperor's personal command upon the shores of Lake Tona. Another thirty-six hours and the task would be accomplished.

He sat on the rear seat of the mud-spattered Ford sedan, huddled into the thick coarse folds of his greatcoat, and although it was worn and lulling in the sedan interior, and although he was exhausted to the point at which his hands and feet felt completely numb and his eyes as though they were filled with sand, yet no thought of sleep entered his mind. There was too much to plan, too many eventualities to meet, too many details to ponder and he was afraid. A terrible black fear pervaded his whole being.

The ease with which the Italian victory had been won at Araoam filled him with fear for the future. It seemed as though nothing could stand against the force of Italian arms against the big guns, and the bombs and the nitrogen Mustard. He feared that another terrible defeat awaited them on the shores of Lake Tona.

He feared also for the safety of the thirty thousand in his charge. He knew that the Danakil column of the Italian expeditionary force had fought its way into the Sardi Gorge and must by now have almost reached the town of Sardi itself. He knew that Ras Golam's small force had been heavily defeated on the plains and had suffered doleful losses in the subsequent defence of the gorge. He feared that they might be swept aside at any moment now and that the Italian column would come roaring like a lion across his rear cutting off his retreat to Dessie.

He must have time, a little more time, a mere thirty-six hours more.

Then again, he feared the Gallas. At the beginning of the Italian offensive they had taken no part in the fighting but had merely disappeared into the mountains, betraying completely the trust that the Harari leaders had placed in them. Now, however, that the Italians had won their first resounding victories, the Gallas had become active, gathering like vultures for the scraps that the lions left. His own retreat from Aradam had been harassed by his erstwhile allies. They hung on his flanks, hiding in the scrub Laid scree slopes along the Dessie road, awaiting each opportunity to fall upon a weak unprotected spot in the unwieldy slow-moving column. It was classical shifta tactics, the age old art of ambush, of hit and run, a few throats slit and a dozen rifles stolen but it slowed the retreat slowed it drastically while close behind them followed the Italian horde, and across their rear lay the mouth of the Sardi Gorge.

Lij Mikhael roused himself and leaned forward in the seat to peer ahead through the windscreen. The wipers flogged sullenly from side to side, keeping two fans of clean glass in the mud-splattered screen, and Lij Mikhael made out the railway crossing ahead of them where it bisected the muddy rutted road.

He grunted with so tis faction and the driver pushed the Ford through the slowly moving mass of miserable humanity which clogged the road. It opened only reluctantly as the sedan butted its way through with the horn blaring angrily, and closed again behind it as it passed.

They reached the railway level crossing and Lij Mikhael ordered the driver to pull off the road beside a group of his officers. He slipped out bareheaded and immediately the rain de wed on his bushy dark hair.

The group of officers surrounded him, each eager to tell his own story, to recite the list of his own requirements, his own misgivings each with news of fresh disaster, new threats to their very existence.

They had no comfort for him, and Lij Mikhael listened with a great weight growing in his chest.

At last he gestured for silence. "Is the telephone line to Sardi still open? "he asked.

"The Gallas have not yet cut it. It does not follow the railway line but crosses the spur of Ambo Sacal. They must have overlooked it."

"Have me connected with the Sardi station I must speak to somebody there. I must know exactly what is happening in the gorge."

He left the group of officers beside the railway tracks and walked a short way along the Sardi spur.

Down there, a few short miles away, the close members of his family his father, his brothers, his daughter were risking their lives to buy him the time he needed. He wondered what price they had already paid, and suddenly, a mental picture of his daughter sprang into his mind Sara, young and lithe and laughing. Firmly he thrust the thought aside and he turned to look back at the endless file of bedraggled figures that shuffled along the Dessie road. They were in no condition to defend themselves, they were helpless as cattle "Until they could be regrouped, fed and re-armed in spirit.

No, if the Italians came now it would be the end.

"Excellency, the line to Sardi is open. Will you speak? Lij Mikhael turned back and went to where a field telephone had been hooked into the Sardi-Dessie telephone line. The copper wires dangled down from the telegraph poles overhead, and Lij Mikhael took the handset that the officer handed him and spoke quietly into the mouthpiece.

Beside the station master's office in the railway yards of Sardi town stood the long cavernous warehouse used for the storage of grain and other goods. The roof and walls were clad with corrugated galvanized iron which had been daubed a dull rusty red with oxide paint.

The floor was of raw concrete, and tire cold mountain wind whistled in through the joints in the corrugated sheets.

At a hundred places, the roof leaked where the galvanizing had rusted away, and the rain dripped steadily forming icy puddles on the bare concrete floor.

There were almost six hundred wounded and dying men crowded into the shed. There was no bedding or blankets, and empty grain bags served the purpose. They lay in long lines on the hard concrete, and the cold came up through the thin jute bags, and the rain dripped down upon them from the high roof.

There was no sanitation, no bed pans, no running water, and most of the men were too weak to hobble out into the slush of the goods yard. The stench was a solid tangible thing that permeated the clothing and clung in a person's hair long after he had left the shed.

There was no antiseptic, no medicine not even a bottle of Lysol or a packet of Aspro. The tiny store of medicines at the missionary hospital had long ago been exhausted. The German doctor worked on into each night with no anaesthetic and nothing to combat the secondary infection.

Already the stink of putrefying wounds was almost as strong as the other stench.

The most hideous injuries were the burns inflicted by the nitrogen mustard. All that could be done was to smear the scalded and blistered flesh with locomotive grease. They had found two drums of this in the loco shed.

Vicky Camberwell had slept for three hours two days ago.

Since then, she had worked without ceasing amongst the long pitiful lines of bodies. Her face was deadly pale in the gloom of the shed, and her eyes had receded into dark bruised craters. Her feet were swollen from standing so long, and her shoulders and her back ached with a dull unremitting agony. Her linen dress was stained with specks of dried blood, and other less savoury secretions and she worked on, in despair that there was so little they could do for the hundreds of casualties.

She could help them to drink the water they cried out for, clean those that lay in their own filth, hold a black pleading hand as the man died, and then pull the coarse jute sacking up over his face and signal one of the over, worked male orderlies to carry him away and bring in another from where they were already piling up on the open stoep of the shed.

One of the orderlies stooped over her now, shaking her shoulder urgently, and it was some seconds before she could understand what he was saying. Then she pushed herself stiffly up off her knees, and stood for a moment holding the small of her back with both hands while the pain there eased, and the dark giddiness in her head abated. Then she followed the orderly out across the muddy fouled yard to the station office.

She lifted the telephone receiver to her ear and her voice was husky and slurred as she said her name.

"Miss Camberwell, this is Lij Mikhael here." His voice was scratchy and remote, and she could hardly catch the words, for the rain still rattled on the iron roof above her head. "I am at the Dessie crossroads."

"The train," she said, her voice firming. Lij Mikhael, where is the train you promised? We must have medicine antiseptic, anaesthetic don't you understand? There are six hundred wounded men here. Their wounds are rotting, they are dying like animals." She recognized the rising hysteria in her voice, and she cut herself off.

"Miss Camberwell. The train I am sorry. I sent it to you.

With supplies. Medicines. Another doctor. It left Dessie yesterday morning, and passed the crossroads here yesterday evening on its way down the gorge to Sardi-" "Where is it, then?" demanded Vicky. "We must have it.

You don't know what it's like here."

"I'm sorry, Miss Camberwell.

The train will not reach you. It was derailed in the mountains fifteen miles north of Sardi. Ras Kullah's men the Gallas were in ambush.

They had torn up the tracks, they have Fired everybody aboard and burned the coaches." There was a long silence between them, only the static hissed and buzzed across the wires.

"Miss Camberwell. Are you there?"

"Yes."

"Do you understand what I am saying?"

"Yes, I understand."

"There will be no train." "No." Ras Kullah has cut the road between here and Sardi."

"Yes."

"Nobody can reach you and there is no escape from Sardi up the railway line.

Ras Kullah has five thousand men to hold it. His position in the mountains is impregnable. He can hold the road against an army."

"We are cut off," said Vicky thickly. "The Italians in front of us.

The Gallas behind us." Again the silence between them, then Lij Mikhael asked, "Where are the Italians now, Miss Camberwell?"

"They are almost at the head of the gorge, where the last waterfall crosses the road-" She paused and listened intently, removing the receiver from her ear.

Then she lifted it again. "You can hear the Italian guns. They are firing all the time now. So very close."

"Miss Camberwell, can you get a message to Major Swales?"

"Yes."

"Tell him I need another eighteen hours. If he can hold the Italians until noon tomorrow, then they cannot reach the crossroads before it is dark tomorrow night. It will give me another day and two nights. If he can hold until noon, he will have discharged with honour all his obligations to me, and you will all have earned the undying gratitude of the Emperor and all the peoples of Ethiopia. You, Mr. Barton and Major Swales."

"Yes," said Vicky. Each word was an effort.

"Tell him that at noon tomorrow I shall have made the best arrangements I can for your evacuation from Sardi. Tell him to hold hard until noon, and then I will spare no effort to get all of you out of there."

"I will tell him."

"Tell him that at noon tomorrow he is to order all the remaining Ethiopian troops to disperse into the mountains, and I will speak to you again on this telephone to tell you what arrangements I have been able to make for your safety." Lij Mikhael, what about the wounded, the ones who cannot disperse into the hills?" The silence again, and then the Prince's voice, quiet but heavy with grief.

"It would be best if they fell into the hands of the Italians rather than the Gallas."

"Yes,"she agreed quietly.

"There is one other thing, Miss Camberwell." The Prince hesitated, and then went on firmly, "Under no circumstances are you to surrender yourselves to the Italians. Even in the most extreme circumstances.

Anything-" he emphasized the word, "anything is preferable to that."

?

"I have learned from our agents that sentence of death has been passed on you, Mr. Barton and Major Swales. You have been declared agents provocateurs and terrorists. You are to be handed over to Ras Kullah for execution of sentence. Anything would be better than that."

"I understand," said Vicky softly, and she shuddered as she thought of Ras Kullah's thick pink lips, and the soft bloated hands.

"If everything else fails, I will send an-" his voice was cut off abruptly, and now there was no hiss of static across the wires, only the dead silence of lost contact.

For another minute Vicky tried to re-establish contact, but the handset was mute and the silence complete. She replaced it on its cradle, and closed her eyes tightly for a moment to steady herself. She had never felt so lonely and tired and afraid in her entire life.

Vicky paused as she crossed the yard to the warehouse, and she looked up at the sky. She had not realized how late it was. There were only a few hours of daylight left but the cloud seemed to be breaking up.

The sombre grey roof was higher, just on the peaks, and there were light patches where the sun tried to penetrate the cloud.

She prayed quietly that it would not happen. Twice during these last desperate days, the cloud had lifted briefly, and each time the Italian bombers had come roaring at low level up the gorge. On both occasions, the terrible damage they had inflicted had forced Gareth to abandon his trenches and pull back to the next prepared position, and a flood of wounded and dying had engulfed them here at the hospital.

"Let it rain," she prayed. "Please God, let it rain and rain."

She bowed her head and hurried on into the shed, into the stench and the low hubbub of groans and wails. She saw that Sara was still assisting at the plain wooden table, inadequately screened by a tattered curtain of canvas, and lit by a pair of Petromax lamps.

The German doctor was removing a shattered limb, cutting below the knee while the young Harari warrior thrashed weakly under the weight of the four orderlies who held him down.

Vicky waited until they carried the patient away and she called to Sara. The two of them went out and stood breathing the sweet mountain air with relief as they leant close together under the overhanging roof of the veranda while Vicky repeated the conversation she had held with Lij Mikhael.

"Then we were cut off. The line just went dead."

"Yes," Sara nodded. "They have cut the wires. It is only a surprise that Ras Kullah did not do so before. The wires cross over the top of Ambo Sacal. Perhaps it has taken this long for them to reach it."

"Will you go down the gorge, Sara, and give the message to Major Swales? I would go down in Miss Wobbly, but there is almost no fuel in the tank, and I have promised Jake not to waste it. We will need every drop later--2 "It will be quicker on horseback anyway," Sara smiled, and I will be able to see Gregorius."

"No, it won't take long," Vicky agreed.

"They are very close." Both of them paused to listen to the Italian guns. The thumping detonations of the high explosive reverberated against the mountains, close enough to make the ground tremble under their feet.

"Don't you want me to give a message to Mr. Bartonr Sara demanded archly. "Shall I tell him that your body crave, "No," Vicky cut her short, her alarm obvious. "For goodness sake don't go giving him one of your salacious inventions."

"What does "salacious" mean, Miss Camberwell?" Sara's interest was aroused immediately.

"It means lecherous, lustful."

"Salacious," Sara repeated, memorizing it. "It's a fine word," and with gusto she tried it out.

"My body craves you with a great salacious yearning."

"Sara, if you tell Jake that I said that, I will murder you with my bare hands," Vicky warned her, laughing for the first time in many days, and her laughter was cut off in mid flight by the single ringing scream of terror, and the wild animal roar that followed it.

Suddenly the goods yard was filled with racing figures; they poured out of the thick stand of cedar trees that flanked the railway line, and they crossed the tracks in a few leaping bounds. There were hundreds of them and they poured into the warehouse and fell like a pack of wolves on the rows of helpless wounded.

"The Gallas," whispered Sara huskily, and for a moment they stood paralysed with horror, staring into the gloomy cavern of the shed.

Vicky saw the old German doctor run to meet the Galla wave, with his arms spread in a gesture of appeal, trying to prevent the slaughter. He took the thrust of a broadsword full in the centre of his chest, and a foot of the blade appeared magically from between his shoulder-blades.

She saw a Galla, armed with a magazine-loaded rifle, run down a line of wounded, pausing to fire a single shot at pointblank range into each head.

She saw another with a long dagger in his hand, not bothering even to slit the throat of the Harari wounded, before he jerked aside the covering of coarse jute bags and his dagger swept in a single cutting stroke across the exposed lower belly.

She saw the shed filled with frenzied figures, their sword-arms rising and falling, their gunfire crashing into the supine bodies, and the screams of their victims ringing against the high roof, blending with the high excited laughter and the wild cries of the Galla.

Sara dragged Vicky away, pulling her back behind the sheltering wall of the shed. It broke the spell of horror which had mesmerized Vicky and she ran beside the girl on flying feet.

The car," she panted. "If we can reach the car." Miss Wobbly was parked beyond the station buildings under the lean-to of the loco shed where it was protected from the rain. Running side by side, Vicky and Sara turned the corner of the shed and ran almost into the arms of a dozen Gallas coming at a run in the opposite direction.

Vicky had a glimpse of their dark faces, shining with rain and sweat, of the open mouths and flashing wolf-like teeth, the mad staring eyes, and she smelt them, the hot excited animal smell of their sweat.

Then she was twisting away, like a hare jinking out of the track of a hound. A hand clutched at her shoulder, and she felt her blouse tear, then she was free and running, but she could hear the pounding of their feet close behind her, and the crazy loolooing of excitement as they chased.

Sara ran with her, drawing slightly ahead as they reached the corner of the station building. There was the flash and the crack of a rifle-shot out on their left, and the bullet slammed into the wall beside them. From the corner of her eye Vicky saw other running Gallas, racing in from the main road of the village, their long shammas flapping about them as they ran to head them off.

Sara was drawing away from her. The girl ran with the grace and speed of a gazelle, and Vicky could not keep pace with her. She rounded the corner of the station building ten paces ahead of Vicky, and stopped abruptly.

Under the lean-to shelter, the angular shape of Miss Wobbly was wreathed in furious petals of crimson flame, and the black oily smoke poured from her hatches. The Gallas had reached her first. She had clearly been one of their first targets, and dozens of them pranced around her as she burned and then scattered as the Vickers ammunition in the bins began exploding.

Sara had halted for only a second, but it was long enough for Vicky to reach her.

"The cedar forest," gasped Sara, a hand on Vicky's arm as they changed direction.

The forest was two hundred yards away across the tracks, but it was dense and dark, covering the broken ground along the river. They raced out into the open, and immediately twenty other Gallas took up the chase, their voices raised in the pack clamour.

The open yard seemed to stretch to eternity as Vicky ran on ahead of the Gallas. The ground was slushy, so that she sank to the ankles with each step, and the clinging red mud sucked one of the shoes off her foot. So she ran on lopsidedly her feet sliding and her knees turning weak under her.

Sara raced on lightly ahead, leaping the steel railway track, and her feet flying lightly over the muddy ground.

The edge of the forest was fifty feet away.

Vicky felt a foot catch as she tried to jump the tracks and she went down sprawling in the mud. She dragged herself to her knees. On the edge of the forest Sara looked back, hesitating, her eyes huge and glistening white in her smooth dark face.

"Run," screamed Vicky. "Run. Tell Jake," and the girl was gone into the dark forest, with only a flicker of her passing like a forest doe.

The butt of a rifle struck Vicky in the side, below the ribs, and she went down with an explosive grunt of pain into the cold red mud.

Then there were hands tearing at her clothing, and she tried to fight, but she was blinded by the clinging wet tresses of her hair, and crippled with the pain of the blow. They hoisted her to her feet, and suddenly a new authoritative voice cracked like a whiplash, and the hands released her.

She lifted her head, hunched up over her bruised belly and side.

Through eyes blurred with tears and mud, she recognized the scarred face of the Galla Captain. He still wore the blue sham ma sodden now with rain, and the scar twisted his grin, making it seem even more cruel and vicious.

The front edge of the trench had been reinforced with sandbags and screened with brush, and through the square observation aperture the view down the gorge was uninterrupted.

Gareth propped one shoulder against the sandbags and peered down into the gathering gloom. Jake Barton squatted on the firing step beside him and studied the Englishman's face. Gareth Swales's usually immaculate turnout was now red with dried mud, and stained with sweat, rainwater and filth.

A thick golden stubble of beard covered his jaw like the pelt of an otter, and his mustache was ragged and untrimmed. There had been no opportunity to change clothing or bathe in the last week. There were new lines etched deeply into the corners of his mouth, his forehead, and around his eyes, lines of pain and worry, but when he glanced up and caught Jake's scrutiny, he grinned and lifted an eyebrow, and the old devilish gleam was in his eyes. He was about to speak when from below them another shell came howling up through the deep shades of the gorge, and both of them ducked instinctively as it burst in close, but neither of them remarked. There had been hundreds of bursts that close in the last days.

"It's breaking for certain," Gareth observed instead, and they both looked up at the strip of sky that showed between the mountains.

"Yes," Jake agreed. "But it's too late. It will be dark in twenty minutes." It would be too late for the bombers, even if the cloud lifted completely. From bitter experience they knew how long it took for the aircraft to reach them from the airfield at Chaldi.

"It will clear again tomorrow Gareth answered.

"Tomorrow is another day," Jake said, but his mind dwelt on the big black machines. The Italian artillery fired smoke markers on to their trenches just as soon as they heard the drone of approaching engines in the open cloudless sky. The Capronis came in very low, their wing-tips seeming to scrape the rocky walls on each side of the gorge. The beat of their engines rose to an unbearable, ear-shattering roar, and they were so close that they could make out the features of the helmeted heads of the airmen in the round glass cockpits.

Then, as they flashed overhead, the black objects detached from under their fuselage. The 100, kilo bombs dropped straight, their flight controlled by the fins, and when they struck, the explosion shocked the mind and numbed the body. In comparison the burst of an artillery shell was a squib.

The canisters of nitrogen mustard were not aerodynamically stable, and they tumbled end over end and burst against the rocky slopes in a splash of yellow, jellylike liquid that sprayed for hundreds of feet in all directions.

Each time the bombers had come one after the other, endlessly hour after hour, they left the defence so broken that the wave of infantry that followed them could not be repelled. Each time they had been driven out of their trenches, to toil back, upwards to the next line of defence.

This was the last line, two miles behind them stood the granite portals that headed the gorge, and beyond them, the town of Sardi and the open way to the Dessie road.

"Why don't you try and get a little sleep, "Jake suggested, and involuntarily glanced down at Gareth's arm. It was swathed in strips of torn shirt, and suspended in a makeshift sling from around his neck.

The discharge of lymph and pus and the coating of engine grease had soaked through the crude bandage. It was an ugly sight covered, but Jake remembered what it looked like without the bandage. The nitrogen mustard had flayed it from shoulder to wrist, as though it had been plunged into a pot of boiling water and Jake wondered how much good the coating of greene was doing it. There was no other treatment, however, and at least it kept the air from the terrible injury.

"I'll wait until dark," Gareth murmured, and with his good hand lifted the binoculars to his eyes. "I've got a funny feeling. It's too quiet down there." They were silent again, the silence of extreme exhaustion.

"It's too quiet, said Gareth again, and winced as he moved the arm.

"They haven't got time to sit around like this. They've got to keep pushing pushing." And then, irrelevantly, "God, I'd give one testicle for a cheroot. A Romeo y Juliette-" He broke off abruptly, and then both of them straightened up.