Текст книги "The Seventh Scroll"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

was marked as a secondary road "not passable in all weather'. To

compound matters, it seemed that most of the heavy traffic that had torn

up the main road had followed this same track. They came to a place

where some huge vehicle had become bogged down in the rain-saturated

earth, and the efforts to free it had left areas of ploughed land and an

excavation like a bomb crater that resembled an old photograph of the

battlefields of First World War Flanders.

Twice during the day the Toyota too became stuck in this foul ground.

Each time this happened, the big truck that was following them came up

and all the servants swarmed down from the cargo body to push and heave

the Toyota through. Even Nicholas stripped to the waist to work with

them in the mud to free it.

"If you had only listened to my advice," Boris grumbled, "we would not

be here. There is no game where you want to go, and there are no roads

worth the name either."

In the early afternoon they stopped beside the river for an alfresco

lunch. Nicholas went down to the pool beside the road to wash off the

mud and filth of the morning's labours. He had been in the forefront of

the efforts to keep the truck moving. Royan followed him down the slope

and perched on a rock above the pool while he stripped off his shirt and

knelt, at the verge to splash himself with the cold mountain water. The

river was muddy yellow and swollen from the rainstorms.

"I don't think Boris believes your story about the striped dik-dik," she

warned him. "Tessay tells me that he is suspicious of what we are up

to." She watched with interest as he sluiced his chest and upper arms.

'"ere the sun had not touched it, his skin was very white and

unblemished.

His chest hair was thick and dark. She decided that his body was good to

look at.

"He is the type that would go through our luggage if he gets a chance,'

Nicholas agreed. "You didn't bring anything with you that has any clues

for him? No papers or notes?"

"Only the satellite photograph, and my notebooks are all in my own

shorthand. He won't be able to make anything of them."

"Be very careful of what you discuss with Tessay."

"She is a dear. There is nothing underhand about her." Heatedly Royan

came to the defence of her new friend.

"She may be all right, but she's married to my chum Boris. Her first

allegiance lies there. No matter what your feelings towards her, don't

trust either of them." He dried himself on his shirt, slipped it on and

then buttoned it over his chest. "Let's go and get something to eat."

Back at the parked truck Boris was pulling the cork from a bottle of

South African white wine. He poured a tumbler full for Nicholas. Chilled

in the river, it was crisp and fruity. Tessay offered them cold roast

chicken and injera bread, the flat, thin sheets of stone-ground

unleavened bread of the country. The trials and labours of the morning's

travels faded into insignificance as Royan lay beside Nicholas in the

grass and they watched a bearded vulture sailing high against the blue.

It saw them and drifted overhead curiously, twisting its head to look

down at them. Its eyes were masked in black like those of a highwayman,

and the distinctive wedge-shaped tail feathers flirted with the wind the

way the fingers of a concert pianist would stroke the ivories of the

keyboard.

When it was time to go on, Nicholas gave her his hand to lift her to her

feet. It was one of their rare moments of physical contact, and she held

on to his fingers for just a second or two longer than was strictly

necessary.

There was no improvement in the surface of the trac as they drew nearer

to the rim of the gorge, and the hours passed in this bone-jarring,

teeth-rattling progress. The track snaked over a rise and then

dog-legged down the far slope. Halfway down Boris swore in Russian as

they came round the hairpin bend of a high earthen bank to find a huge

diesel truck slewed across the track, almost blocking it.

Even though they had been following the tracks of this convoy of

vehicles since the previous day, this was the first of them that they

had encountered, and it took Boris by surprise. He hit his brakes so

suddenly that his passengers were almost catapulted from their seats,

but on the steep incline in the mud the brakes did not bring them to a

complete halt. Boris was forced to change down into his lowest gear and

steer for the narrow gap between the bank and the truck.

From the back seat Royan looked out of the window I beside her, up the

high side of the diesel truck. There was a company name and logo

emblazoned in scarlet on the green background.

A strong feeling of du vu overcame her as she stared at the image. She

had seen this sign recently, but her memory cheated her: she could not

recall the time or the place. She only knew that it was of vital

importance that she should remember.

The side of the Toyota scraped against the metal of the truck, and then

they were past it. Boris leaned out of his window and shook his fist at

the driver of the larger vehicle.

He was a local man, probably recruited in Addis by the owner of the

truck. Grinning at Boris's antics, he leaned out of his own cab to

return the clenched fist salute, adding a nice little touch by jerking a

raised forefinger upwards.

"Dungeater!" Boris roared with outrage at being bested in the exchange,

but he did not stop. "No use even talking to them. What do they know?

Black chimps!'

For the rest of the wearisome journey Royan remained silent and

withdrawn, shaken and troubled by the conviction that she had seen the

trademark of the winged red horse before, with, set above it in a

pennant, the name of the company: "PEGASUS EXPLORATION'.

As they approached the end of the day's journey at last they passed a

signpost beside the track. The supporting legs of the sign were solidly

set in concrete, and the artwork was of such high quality that it could

only have been that of a professional signwriter.

Across the top of the board an arrow indicated a newly bulldozed road

that headed off to the right, and the directions read:

PEGASUS EXPLORATION

BASE CAMP – ONE KILOMETRE

PRIVATE ROAD

NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORIZED TRAFFIC

The scarlet horse reared in the centre of the board with its wings

spread wide, on the point of flight.

Now she gasped aloud as the elusive memory came upon her with stunning

clarity. She remembered where she had last seen the flying red horse. In

an instant she was transported back into the icy waters of an English

salmon river, flung from the rolling body of the Land Rover, the huge

MAN truck roaring over the bridge above her, and, for a subliminal pulse

of time, the prancing red horse upon its side.

she almost shouted aloud, but controlled herself. The terror of the

moment returned to her with full force, and she found herself breathing

hard and her heart racing as though she had run a long way.

"It cannot be a coincidence," she assured herself silently, "and I am

not mistaken. It is the same company.

Pegasus Exploration."

She was withdrawn and distracted for the last few miles of the journey,

until the track they were following ended abruptly on the brink of the

sheer cliffs of the escarpment, Here Boris pulled on to the grassy verge

and stopped the engine.

"This is as far as we ride. We camp here tonight. My big truck is not

far behind. They will make camp as so on as they arrive. Tomorrow we

will go down into the gorge on foot."

As they dismounted, Royan tugged at Nicholas's arm, "I must speak to

you," she whispered urgently, and she followed him as he led her along

the bank of the river.

He found a place for them to sit side by side, with their legs dangling

over the drop. Beside them the swollen yellow river seemed to sense what

lay ahead of it. The cold mountain waters speeded up, swirled amongst

the rocks, and gathered themselves for that dizzying leap out into empty

space. The cliff below them was a sheer wall of rock almost a thousand

feet deep. It was so high that in the evening light the abyss far below

was a dark, mysterious place, its bottom hidden from them by shadow and

spray from the falls. As Royan looked down into it her sense of balance

swirled with vertigo. She cringed back from the edge and found herself

instinctively leaning against Nicholas's shoulder to steady herself.

Only when they touched did she realize what she was doing, and she

pulled away from him self-consciously.

The muddied waters of the Dandera. river leaped from the brink, and were

miraculously transformed into curtains of ethereal lacework as they

fell. Like the skirts of waltzing bride they shimmered and swirled, and

rainbows of light played through them as though from an embroidery of

seed pearls. Still falling, the columns of white spray twisted and

changed into lovely but ephemeral shapes, until they struck the lower

ledges of glistening black rock and exploded outwards into fresh clouds

of white that at last screened the dark depths of the abyss with " an

opalescent veil.

It was with a conscious effort that Royan pulled her mind away from the

awe-inspiring scene and back to the troubled present.

"Nicky, do you remember I told you about the truck that forced my mother

and me over the bridge in the Land Rover?"

"Of course." His expression was mystified as he studied her face. "You

are upset. "What is it, Royan?"

"The truck had signwriting down the sides of the trailers that it was

towing."

"You told me, yes. Green and red. You told me that you didn't get a good

enough look to read the sign."

"It was the same as the truck we passed this afternoon.

I saw the sign at the same angle as before and it came back to me. The

red Pegasus, the flying horse."

He studied her face for a while, "Are you absolutely certain?"

"Absolutely!" She nodded vehemently.

Nicholas stared out over the magnificent panorama of the gorge spread

below them. It was forty miles to the far wall of the canyon, but in the

brilliant rain-washed air it seemed so close that he could reach across

and touch it.

"A coincidence?"he wondered at last.

"Do you think so? A very strange and wonderful coincidence, then.

Pegasus in both Yorkshire and Gojam?

Do you accept that?"

"It doesn't make sense. The truck that hit you was stolen-'

"Was it?" she demanded. "Are we sure of that?"

"If it wasn't, then let's hear your ideas."

"If you were planning an assassination, would you rely on stealing a

truck conveniently left at a Little Chef for you?"

He shook his head, "Go on."

"Suppose you arranged for your own truck to be placed there for you, and

for your driver to report it stolen only after you had a good head start

on the police."

"It's possible," he agreed without enthusiasm.

"Whoever murdered Duraid, and made two further attempts to kill me,

obviously has considerable resources at his disposal. He is able to make

arrangements in Egypt and England. On top of that, he has the seventh

scroll in his possession. He has our notes and all our workings and

translations which point him clearly to this spot on the Abbay river.

Just suppose that he has control of a company like Pegasus – is there

any reason why he can't be here in Ethiopia, just as we are, right at

this moment?"

Nicholas was silent for a while. He picked up a stone from the ledge

beside him and tossed it out over the cliff.

They both watched it drop away, dwindling in size until it vanished in

the veils of spray far below where they sat.

Abruptly Nicholas stood up and reached for her hand to pull her to her

feet beside him. "Come on," he said.

"Where are we going?"

"Pegasus base camp. Let's go and have a chat to the site foreman."

Boris protested angrily and hurried to intervene when Nicholas climbed

into the Toyota and started the engine, "Where the hell do you think you

are going?, "Sight-seeing." Nicholas let in the clutch. "Back in an

hour."

"Hey, English, my truck!" He ran to catch up with them, but Nicholas

accelerated away.

"Charge me for the hire." fie grinned back at Boris in the rear-view

mirror. -off and followed the They reached the signposted turn side

track over the ridge. The Pegasus camp lay on the far side. Nicholas

braked to a halt on the crest of the rise and they studied it in

silence.

An area of about ten acres had been cleared and levelled. It was

surrounded by a barbed-wire security fence, with a single closed gate.

Three of the massive diesel trucks in their green and red livery were

parked in a rank inside the fence. There were also several smaller

vehicles and a tall mobile drilling rig in the line. The rest of the

yard was filled with prospecting equipment and stores. There were stacks

of drilling rods and steel core boxes, wooden crates of spares, and

several hundred forty-four-gallon drums of diesel and oil and drilling

mud. The drums and the stores were stacked with a neatness and sense of

good order that was startling in this wild and rocky landscape. just

inside the gate stood a small village of a dozen buildings made of

corrugated sheet sections, of the Quonset type. They too were set out in

a street of military precision.

"A big, well-organized outfit," Nicholas commented.

"Let's go down and see who is in charge."

There were two armed guards on the gate, dressed in the camouflage

uniform of the Ethiopian army. They were clearly surprised by the

arrival at the gate of the strange Land Cruiser, and when Nicholas

sounded his horn one of them came forward suspiciously with his AK,47

rifle at the ready.

"I want to speak to the manager here," Nicholas told him in Arabic, with

enough haughty authority to make the entry uncertain and uneasy.

The soldier grunted, went back and consulted his colleague, then lifted

the handset of the two-way radio and spoke earnestly into the

mouthpiece. There was a five minute delay after he finished speaking,

and then the door of the nearest Quonset building opened and a white man

came out.

He was dressed in khaki coveralls and a soft bush cap.

His eyes, covered by mirrored sunglasses, were set in a deeply tanned,

leathery face. His physique was short and chunky, and his sleeves were

rolled up over hairy, work thickened arms. After speaking a few words to

the guards at the gate he came out to the Toyota

"Yeah? What's going down here?" he demanded in Texan drawl, speaking

around the stub of an unlit cigar.

"The name is Quenton-Harper." Nicholas dismounted from the truck to

greet him, and held out his hand.

"Nicholas Quenton-Harper. How do you do?"

The American hesitated, and then took the hand as though he had been

offered an electric eel to squeeze.

"Helm," he said. "Jake Helm, from Abilene, Texas. I am the foreman

here." His hand was that of an artisan, with calloused palms and lumpy

scar tissue over the knuckles, and half moons of black grease under the

fingernails.

"Terribly sorry to worry you. I am having some trouble with my truck. I

wondered if you had a mechanic who could have a look at it for

me."Nicholas smiled winningly, but received no encouragement from the

man.

"Not company policy." He shook his head.

"I am prepared to pay for any-'

"Listen, buddy, I said no." Jake removed the cigar from his mouth and

examined it minutely.

"Your company – Pegasus. Can you tell me where your head office is

situated? Who is your managing director?"

"I am a busy man. You are wasting my time." Helm ,,returned the cigar to

his mouth and began to turn away.

"I will be hunting in this area over the next few weeks.

I would not like to endanger any of your employees with a stray shot.

Can you give me some idea of where you will be working?"

outfit here, mister. I don't

"I am running a prospecting give out news flashes on my movements. Beat

id'

He turned and walked to the gate and gave brusque orders to the guards

before marching back to his office building.

"Satellite disc on the roof," Nicholas remarked. "I wonder who our lad

Jake is speaking to at this very moment."

"Somebody in Texas?" Royan hazarded.

"Doesn't follow, necessarily, Nicholas demurred. Tega, is probably a

multinational. Just because Jake is one, doesn't mean his boss is Texan

also. Not a very instructive conversation, I am afraid." He started the

engine and Uturned the Toyota. "But if someone at Pegasus is the ugly

mixed up in this, he will recognize my name. We have given them notice

of our arrival. Let's see what we have flushed out of the bushes."

When they got back to the Dandera river falls, they found that Boris's

truck had arrived, the tents had been erected, and the chef had brewed

tea for them. Boris was less welcoming than his chef, and maintained a

sullen silence while Nicholas tried to placate him for commandeering his

truck.

It was only after his first vodka of the evening that he mellowed

sufficiently to speak again.

"The mules were supposed to be waiting for us here.

Time means nothing to these people. We cannot start down into the gorge

until they arrive."

"Well, at least while we are waiting for them I will have a chance to

sight in my rifle,'Nicholas remarked with resignation. "In Africa it

never pays to be in a hurry. Too wearing on the nerves."

After a leisurely breakfast the next morning, when there was still no

sign of the mules, Nicholas fetched his rifle case.

When Nicholas lifted the weapon out of its nest of green baize, Boris

took it from him and examined it minutely.

"An old rifle?"

"Made in 1926,'Nicholas nodded. "My grandfather had it made for

himself."

"They knew how to make them in those days. Not like the mass-produced

crap they turn out today." Boris pursed his lips critically. "Short

Mauser Oberndorf double square, bridge action, beautiful! But it has

been rebarrelled, no?

The original barrel was shot out. I had it replaced with a Shilen match

barrel. It will shoot the wings off a mosquito at a hundred paces."

"Calibre 7  57, is it?" Boris asked.

'275 Rigby, as a matter of fact," Nicholas corrected him, but Boris

snorted.

"It is exactly the same cartridge – just your English bloodiness must

call it something else." He grinned. "It wilt push a 150 grain bullet

out there at 2800 feet per second.

It is a good rifle, one of the best."

"You will never know, my dear fellow, how much your approval means to

me,'Nicholas murmured in English, and Boris chuckled as he handed the

rifle back to him.

"English jokes! I love your English jokes."

When Nicholas left camp carrying the little rifle in its slip case,

Royan followed him down to the river and helped him fill two small

canvas bags with white river sand. He laid them on top of a convenient

rock and they formed a firm but malleable rest for the rifle as he

settled it over them.

Using the open hillside as a safe back'stop, he "stepped out two hundred

yards and at that range set up a cardboard carton on which he had taped

a Bisley'type target. He came back to where Royan waited and then

settled down behind the rock on which the weapon lay.

Royan was unprepared for the report of the first shot from the dainty,

almost feminine-looking rifle. She jumped involuntarily, and her ears

sang.

"What a horrible, vicious thing!" she exclaimed. "How can you bring

yourself to kill lovely animals with a highpowered gun like that?" she

demanded.

"Rifle," he corrected her, as he noted the strike of the shot through

his binoculars. "Would it make you feel better if I used a low-powered

rifle, or beat them to death with a stick?"

The shot had struck three inches right and two inches low. As he

adjusted the telescopic sight he attempted to explain. "An ethical

hunter does everything in his power to kill as swiftly and as cleanly as

is possible, and that means stalking in as close as he is able to do,

using a weapon of adequate power and sighting it the best way he knows

how."

His next shot struck exactly on line but only an inch above the

bull's-eye. He wanted it to shoot three inches high at that range. He

worked on the sight again.

"Gun or rifle, but I don't understand why you would want to deliberately

kill any of God's creatures," she protested.

"That I can never explain to you." He aimed deliberately and fired once.

Even through the lower magnification of the sight lens he could see that

the bullet had struck exactly three inches high.

"It is something to do with an atavistic urge that few men, no matter

how Cultured and civilized they deem themselves, can deny completely."

He fired a second time.

"Some of them work it out in the board room, others on the golf course

or the tennis court, and some of us on a salmon river, in the ocean

deeps or in the hunting field."

He fired a third shot, merely to confirm the previous two, and then went

on, "As for God's creatures, he gave them to us. You are the believer.

Quote me Acts 10, verses 12 and 13."

"Sorry." She shook her head. "You tell me.

... all manner Of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and

creeping things, and fowL of the air,"'

Nicholas obliged her. "'And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter;

kill, and eat., "You should have been a lawyer," she moaned in mock

despair.

"Or a priest," he suggested, and went forward to retrieve the target. He

found that his last three shots had punched a tiny symmetrical rosette

three inches above the bull, all three bullet holes just touching each

other.

He patted the butt stock of the little rifle, "That's my lovely darling,

Lucrezia Borgia." He had named the rifle for her beauty and for her

murderous potential.

He slid the rifle back into its leather slip case and they walked back

together. As they came in sight of the camp, Nicholas pulled up short.

"Visitors," he said, and raised his binoculars. "Aha! We have flushed

something out of the undergrowth. That is a Pegasus truck parked there

and, unless I am much mistaken, one of our visitors is the charming

laddie from Abilene.

Let's go down and find out what is going on."

As they drew closer to camp, they realized that there were a dozen or

more heavily armed, uniformed soldiers clustered around the red and

green Pegasus truck, and that Jake Helm and an Ethiopian army officer

were seated under the awning of the dining tent in serious and intent

conversation with Boris, A

s soon as Nicholas entered the tent, Boris introduced him to the

bespectacled Ethiopian officer. "This is Colonel Tuma Nogo, the military

commander of the southern Goiam region."

"How do you do?" Nicholas greeted him, but the colonel ignored the

pleasantry.

"I want to see your passport, and your firearms licence, he ordered

arrogantly, while Jake Helm chewed complacently on the evil-smelling

butt of an extinguished cigar.

"Yes, of course," Nicholas agreed, and went to his own tent to fetch his

briefcase. He opened it on the dining table, and smiled at the officer.

"I am sure you will also want to see my letter of introduction from the

British Foreign Secretary in London, and this one from the British

Ambassador in Addis Ababa. Here is another from the Ethiopian Ambassador

to the Court of St. James, and this is from your own Minister of

Defence, General Abraha."

The colonel stared in consternation at this fruit salad of ornate

official letterheads and scarlet beribboned seals.

Behind the gold-rimmed glasses his eyes were bemused and confused.

"Sir!" He jumped to his feet and saluted. "You are a friend of General

Abraha? I did not know. Nobody informed me. I beg your pardon for this

intrusion."

He saluted again, and his embarrassment made him awkward and ungainly.

"I came to warn you only that the Pegasus Company is conducting drilling

and blasting operations. There may be some danger. Please be alert. Also

there are many bandits and outlaws, shufta, operating in this area."

Colonel Nogo was flustered and barely coherent.

He stopped and drew a deep breath to steady himself. "You see, I have

been ordered to provide an escort for the employees of the Pegasus

Company. If you yourself experience any trouble while you are here, or

if you need assistance for any reason you have only to call on me, sir."

"That is extremely civil of you, colonel."

"I will detain you no longer, sir." He saluted a third time and backed

off towards the Pegasus truck, taking the Texan foreman along with him.

Jake Helm'had not uttered a word since their arrival, and now he left

without a farewell.

Colonel Nogo gave Nicholas his fourth and final salute through the cab

window as the truck pulled away.

Deuce!" Nicholas told Royan, as he acknowledged the salute with a

nonchalant wave. "I think that point was definitely ours. Now at least

we know that, for whatever reason, Mr Pegasus definitely does not want

us in his hair. I think we can expect his next service fairly promptly.,

They walked back to where Boris sat in the dining tent and Nicholas told

him, "All we need now are your mules."

"I have sent three of my men to the village to find them. They should

have been here yesterday." The mules arrived early the next morning, six

big sturdy animals, each accompanied by a driver dressed in the

ubiquitous-jodhpurs and shawl. By midmorning they were loaded and ready

to begin the descent into the gorge.

Boris paused at the head of the pathway, and looked out over that

valley. For once even he -seemed to be subdued and awed by the immensity

of the drop and the rugged splendour of the gorge.

"You will be Passing into another land in another age," he warned them

in an uncharacteristically philosophical mood. "They say that this trail

is two thousand years old, as old as Christ." He spread his hands in a

deprecating gesture.

"The old black priest in the church at Debra Maryam will tell you that

the Virgin Mary passed this way when she fled from Israel after the

crucifixion." He shook his head. "But then these people will believe

anything." And he "stepped out on to the pathway.

It clung to the cliff, descending at such an angle that each pace was

down a rock step so deep that it stretched the-tendons and the sinews in

their groins and knees, and jarred their spines. They were forced to use

their hands to scramble the rougher and steeper sections, where it was

almost as though they were descending a ladder.

It seemed impossible that the mules under their heavy packs could follow

them down. The plucky beasts lunged down each of the rock steps, landing

heavily on their forelegs, then gathered themselves for the next drop.

The trail was so narrow that the bulky packs scraped against the rock

wall on one hand, while on the other hand the drop sucked at them

giddily.

When the path dog-legged and changed direction, the mules could not make

the turn in one attempt. They were forced to back and fill, edging their

way round the narrow trail, sweating with terror and their eyes rolling

until the whites flashed. The drivers urged them on with wild cries and

busy whips.

At places the pathway entered the body of the mountain, passing behind

butts and needles of rock that time and erosion had prised away from the

cliff face. These rocky gateways were so narrow that the mules had to be

unloaded and the packs carried through by the drivers, and then the

mules were reloaded on the far side.

Look!" Royan cried in astonishment and pointed out into the void. A

black vulture rose up out of the depths on widespread pinions and

floated past them almost within arm's length, turning its gruesome naked

head of pink lappeted skin to stare at them with inscrutable black eyes

before sailing away.

"He is using the thermals of heated air from the valley for lift,'

Nicholas explained to her. He pointed out along the cliff to an

overhanging buttress on the same level as themselves. "There is one of

their nests." It was a shaggy mound of sticks piled on an inaccessible

ledge. The excrement of the birds that had inhabited it over the ages

had painted the cliff face below with streaks of brilliant white, and

even at this distance they could catch whiffs of rotting offal and

decaying flesh.

All that day they clung to the precipitous track as they eased their way

down that terrible wall. It was late afternoon, and they were only

halfway down, when the trail turned back upon itself once more and they

heard  the rumble of the falls ahead. The sound grew louder and became a

thunderous roar as they moved around the corner of another buttress and

came in full sight of the falls.

The wind created by the torrent tugged at them and forced them to clutch

for handholds. The spray blew around them and wetted their upturned

faces, but the i: Ethiopian guide led them straight on until it seemed

that they must be washed away into the valley still hundreds of feet

below.

Then, miraculously, the waters parted and they stepped behind the great

translucent curtain into a deep recess of moss-covered and gleaming wet

rock, carved from the cliff by the force of water over the aeons. The

only light in this gloomy place was filtered through the waterfall,

green and mysterious like some undersea cavern.

"This is where we sleep tonight," Boris announced, obviously enjoying

their astonishment. He pointed to bundles of firewood piled at the rear

of the cave, and the smoke-blackened wall above the stone hearth. The

muleteers carrying food and supplies down to the priests in the

monastery have used this place for centuries."

As they moved deeper into the cavern, the sound of falling water became

muted to a dull background rumble and the rock underfoot was dry. Once

the servants had lit the fire, it became -a warm and comfortable, not to

say romantic, lodging.

With an old soldier's eye for the most comfortable spot, Nicholas laid

out his sleeping bag in a corner at the back of the cave, and quite

naturally Royan unrolled hers beside his. They were both tired out by

the unusual exertion of climbing down the cliff wall, and after supper

they stretched out in their sleeping bags in companionable silence and

watched the firelight playing on the roof of the cave.

"Just think!" Royan whispered. "Tomorrow we will be retracing the

footsteps of old Taita himself."

"To say nothing of the Virgin Mary,'Nicholas smiled.

"You are a horrid old cynic," she sighed. "And what is more, you

probably snore."

"You are about to find out the hard way," he told her, but she was