Текст книги "Cry Wolf"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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"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."