Текст книги "Cry Wolf"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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activity and the gleaming white canvas disappeared as swiftly as a wild

goose furls its wings when it settles on the lake surface.

Jake looked back at the destroyer and searched for seconds before he

found her. He wondered what they would make of the disappearance of

the sails. They might believe the Hirondelle had obeyed the order to

heave to, not guessing that she was under propeller power as well.

Certainly she would have disappeared from their view, her low dark hull

no longer beaconed by the towering white pyramid of canvas. He waited

impatiently for the last few minutes until the warship itself was no

longer visible from the masthead before bellowing down to the Greek the

orders that sent Hirondelle swinging away into the wind and pounding

back into the head sea along her original track, side-stepping the

headlong charge of the destroyer.

Jake held that course while the tropical night fell over the Gulf like

a warm thick blanket, pricked only by the cold white stars. He

strained his eyes into the impenetrable blackness, chilled by "the fear

that the destroyer Captain might have double-guessed him and

anticipated his turn. At any moment, he expected to see the towering

steel hull emerge at close range from the night and flood the schooner

with the brilliant white beams of her battle lights and hear the

squawking peremptory challenge of her bull horn.

Then suddenly, with a violent lift of relief, he saw the cold white

fingers of the lights far behind at least six miles away at the spot

where the destroyer had seen him taking in sail. The Captain had

bought the dummy, believing that Hirondelle had heaved to and waited

for him to come up.

Jake threw back his head and laughed with relief before he caught

himself and began shouting new orders down to the deck, swinging the

schooner once again across the wind on the reciprocal of the warship's

course, and beginning the long delicate contest of skill in which the

Hirondelle ducked and weaved on to her old course, while the warship

plunged blindly back and forth across the darkened Gulf, searching

desperately with the mile-long beams of the battle lights for the dark

and stinking hull of the slaver or switching them off and running under

full power with all her ports darkened in the hope of taking

HirondeUe unawares.

Once the destroyer Captain almost succeeded, but Jake caught the

flashing phosphorescence of her bow-wave a mile off. Desperately he

yelled at the Greek to heave to and they lay silent and unseen while

the low greyhound-wasted warship slid swiftly across their bows, her

engines beating like a gigantic pulse, and was swallowed once again by

the night. The nervous sweat that bathed Jake's shirt dried icy cold

in the night wind as he put HirondeUe cautiously on course again.

Two hours later he saw the lights of the destroyer again, a glow of

white light far astern, that pulsed like summer sheet lightning as the

arc lamps traversed back and forth.

Then there was only the stars and many hours later the first steely

light of dawn growing steadily and expanding the circle of the dark sea

around the schooner.

Chilled to the bone by the night wind and the long hours of inactivity,

Jake swept the horizon back and forth as the light strengthened, and

only when he knew that it was empty of any trace of the warship did he

close the telescope, climb stiffly from the crows-nest and begin the

long slow journey down the rigging to the deck below.

Papadopoulos greeted him like a brother, reaching up to hug him and

breathe garlic in his face, and Vicky had the chop-box open and the

primus stove hissing. She brought him an enamel mug of steaming black

coffee and looked at him with a new respect tinged with admiration.

Gareth opened the hatch of the turret from which during the whole night

he had commanded the crew with a loaded Vickers machine gun and came to

fetch the other mug of coffee from Vicky and gave Jake a cheroot as

they moved to the rail together.

"I keep underestimating you," he grinned, as he cupped his hands around

the flaring match he offered Jake. "Just because you are big I keep

thinking you are stupid."

"You'll get over it, "Jake promised him. Instinctively they both

glanced across the deck at where Vicky was breaking eggs into the pan

and they understood each other very clearly.

She shook them both awake a little before noon. They were sprawled on

their blankets in the shade under one of the cars trying to catch up on

the sleep they had missed that night. However, they followed Vicky

without protest to the bows and the three of them peered ahead at the

low lioncoloured coast line, upon which the surf creamed softly and

over which the hard aching blue shield of the sky blazed with an

intensity that hurt the eyes.

There was no clear dividing line between earth and sky.

It was blurred by the low mist of dust and heat that wavered and

rippled like the yellow mane of the lion. Vicky wondered whether she

had ever seen such an uninviting scene, and decided she had not. She

began to compose the words with which she would describe it to her tens

of thousands of readers.

Gregorius came up to join the group. He had discarded the western

dress and donned instead the traditional sham ma and tight breeches.

He had become the man of Africa once again, and the smooth

chocolate-brown face, with its halo of dark thick curls, was lit by the

passion of the returning exile.

"You cannot see the mountains the haze is too thick," he explained.

"But sometimes in the dawn when the air is cooler-" and he stared into

the west, with his longing expressed clearly in the liquid flashing

eyes and upon the full sculptured lips.

The schooner crept inshore, gliding over the shallows where the water

was like that of a mountain stream, so clear that they could make out

every detail of the reef thirty feet down and watch the shoals of coral

fish below like bejewelled clouds through the crystal waters.

Papadopoulos turned the HirondeUe to approach the shore at an oblique

angle so that the details of the coast resolved themselves gradually

and they saw the golden red beaches broken by headlands and points of

jagged rock, and beyond it the land rose gradually, barren and awful,

speckled only with the low scrubby spino Cristi and car riel grass.

For an hour they ran parallel with the shore, a thousand yards off, and

the group by the rail stood and stared at it with fascination.

Only Jake had left the group and was making the preparations to begin

unloading, but he also came back to the rail when abruptly a deep bay

opened ahead of them.

"The Bay of Chains," said Gregorius, and it was clear how it had got

its name, for, huddled under the cliffs of one headland and protected

from the prevailing winds and the run of the surf by the horn of land,

were the ruins of the ancient slave city of Month.

Gregorius pointed it out to them, for it did not look like a city.

It was merely an area of broken rock and stone blocks running down to

the water's edge. They were close enough now to make out the roughly

geometrical layout of smothered streets and roofless buildings.

Hirondeue dropped anchor and snubbed up gently. Jake finished his

final preparations for unloading and crossed to where Gareth stood by

the rail.

"One of us will have to swim a line ashore."

"Spin you for it,"

suggested Gareth, and before Jake could protest he had the coin in his

hand.

"Heads!" jake looked resigned.

"Bad luck, old son. Give the sharks my love." Gareth smiled and

stroked his mustache.

Jake balanced on the clumsy pontoon raft as it was lifted by the donkey

engine and lowered over the side, dangling on the heavy lines. and

floated alongside as It settled on to the surface un-gracefully as a

pregnant hippo.

Jake grinned up at Vicky who was leaning over the rail, watching with

interest.

"Unless you want to be blinded with splendour, you'd better close your

eyes." For a moment she did not understand, but then as he started to

strip off his shirt and unbutton his pants, she turned modestly away.

With the end of a coil of light line tied about his waist Jake plunged

naked into the sea and struck out for the shore. Vicky's curiosity got

the better of her at this stage, and she glanced slyly overboard. There

was something so childlike and defenceless about a man with his

trousers off, she thought, as she considered Jake's bobbing white

buttocks. She might develop that as a theme in one of her columns, she

thought, and then realized that Gareth Swales was watching her with one

mockingly raised eyebrow, as he paid out the coil of line that snaked

after Jake. She blushed pinkly under her tan and hurried away to make

sure her typewriter and personal duffel bag were packed away into Miss

Wobbly.

Jake touched bottom and waded ashore to secure the line to one of the

stone blocks, and already the first car was on on its wooden blocks,

and, with the winch clattering, was being lifted over the side.

With each man performing his own task skilfully, one at a time the cars

were lowered on to the bobbing raft. There its wheels were hastily

lashed and it was hauled carefully towards the beach by the land

line.

As soon as the raft ran aground on the sloping yellow sand, Jake

started the engine while Gregorius clamped the footboards into place.

Then with the engine revving noisily and the raft swaying dangerously,

it rolled over the footboards and up the slope to park well above the

high-water mark. Then the raft was hauled back alongside the schooner

for its next load.

Although they worked as swiftly as safety would allow, the hours sped

away just as swiftly, and it was late afternoon when the last load of

fuel drums and wooden cases, with Vicky Camberwell sitting on top of

the precarious load, made the short crossing to the beach.

Almost the instant it left the ship's side, the diesel thumped into

life, the anchor chain rattled in over the bows and Papadopoulos gave

the order to cast off the line of the raft.

By the time Vicky jumped down on the crunchy sand, the Hirondelle was

moving steadily out between the horns of the bay, and spreading her

wings of white canvas to the evening breeze. The four of them stood

upon the beach in the lowering dusk and watched her go. None of them

waved, and yet they all felt a loss at her going. Stinking slaver,

with a crew of pirates, yet she had been their link with the outer

world. HirondeUe cleared the cliffs and caught the full drive of the

wind, heeled eagerly and went away, with her wake leaving a long oily

slick across the surface long after she had disappeared into the

Gulf.

Jake broke the spell of silence and loneliness that held them.

"All right, my children. Let's make camp." They had landed on the

open beach between the ruined city and the headland, and now the

evening wind was sweeping dust and grit across their exposed

position.

Jake selected a sheltered hollow under the lee of the ruins, and they

moved the cars up and parked them in the protective hollow square of

the laager.

The ancient buildings were choked with piled sand and thick with the

spiny camel-thorn growth that blocked the narrow streets. While

Jake and Gregorius checked the fuelling and lubrication of the

vehicles, and Gareth scraped a fireplace against a shielding stone

wall, Vicky wandered off to explore the ruins in the dusk.

She did not go far. A tangible sense of menace and human suffering

seemed to emanate from the rubble of buildings that had been burned

over a century before. It made her skin crawl, but she picked her way

cautiously along a narrow alleyway that opened at last into an open

square.

She knew instinctively that this had been the trading square of the

slave city and she imagined the long chained lines of human beings.

The pervading aura of their misery still persisted. She wondered if

she could capture it on paper, and make her readers see that it had not

changed. Once again, a consuming greed was to place a nation in

chains, once again hundreds of thousands of human beings would be

forced to learn the same misery that this city had engendered. She

must write that, she decided, she must capture the sense of outrage and

despair she felt now and convey it to the civilized peoples of the

world.

A small scuffling sound distracted her and she looked down, then drew

back with a shudder from the finger-length purple scorpion, with its

lobster claws and the high curved tail bearing a single-hooked fang

that scuttled towards the toe of her boot. She turned and hurried back

along the alleyway.

The chill of horror stayed with her, so that she crossed gratefully to

the bright fire of thorn twigs that blazed under the ruined wall.

Gareth looked up as she knelt beside him and held out her hands to the

blaze.

"I was just coming to look for you. Better not wander off on your

own."

"I can look after myself," she told him quickly, with an edge to her

voice which was becoming familiar.

"I agree." He smiled placatingly at her. "A bit too damned well

I sometimes think, "and he dug in his pocket.

"I found something in the sand as I was digging the fireplace." He

held out a broken circle of metal which gleamed yellow in the

firelight. It was fashioned as a snake bangle, with a serpent's forged

head and coiled body.

Vicky felt her irritation evaporate magically. "Oh, Gary," she lifted

it in both hands, "it's beautiful. Is it gold?"

"I suspect it is." She slipped the heavy bangle over her wrist and

admired it with a glowing expression, twisting it to catch the light.

"Not one of them can resist a gift," Gareth thought comfortably,

watching her face in the dancing firelight.

"it belonged to a princess, who was famous for her beauty and her

compassion to besotted suitors," said Gareth lightly.

"So I thought how fitting that you should have it."

"Oh!" she gasped. "For me." And impulsively she leaned forward to

kiss his cheek, and was startled when he turned his head quickly and

her lips pressed full against his. For a moment she tried to pull away

and then it did not seem worth the effort. After all, it was a truly

magnificent bracelet.

In the light of the single hurricane lamp, Jake and Gregorius were

studying the large-scale map spread on the engine bonnet of Priscilla

the Pig. Gregorius was tracing the route they must take to the shed of

the Awash River and lamenting the map's many inaccuracies and

omissions.

"If you had tried to follow this, you'd have got into serious trouble,

Jake." Jake looked up suddenly from the map, and thirty paces away he

saw the two figures in the firelight come together and stay that way.

He felt his pulse begin to pound and the blood come up his neck,

scalding hot.

"Let's get some coffee, "he grunted.

"In a minute," Gregorius protested. "First I want to show you where we

have to cross the sand desert-" He pointed at the map, tracing a route

and not realizing that he was talking to himself alone. Jake had left

him to interrupt the action at the fireside.

Vicky awoke in the first uncertain light of dawn to the realization

that the wind had dropped. It had whistled dismally all night, so that

now when she pulled back her blanket, it was thickly powdered with

golden grit and she could feel it stiff in her hair and crunchy between

her teeth. One of the men was snoring loudly, but they were three long

blanket-wrapped bundles close together, so she was not sure which of

them it was. She fetched her toilet bag, towel and a change of

underwear, then slipped out of the " laager, climbed the slope of the

dune and ran down to the beach.

The dawn was absolutely still, the surface of the bay as smooth as a

sheet of pink satin as the glow of the hidden sun touched it. The

silence was the complete silence of the desert, unbroken by bird or

beast, wind or surf and the dismay she had felt the previous day

evaporated.

She stripped off her clothing and walked down the wet sand that the

tide had smoothed during the night and waded out into the pink waters,

sticking in her belly against the sudden chill of it, and gasping with

pleasure as she squatted suddenly neck deep and began to scrub her body

of the night's grit and dirt.

When she waded ashore, the sun was cresting the sweeping watery horizon

of the Gulf. The tone of light had altered drastically.

Already the soft hues of dawn were giving way to the harsher brilliance

of Africa to which she had become accustomed.

She dressed quickly, bundling her used underwear in the towel and

combing her wet hair as she climbed the dune.

At the crest, she halted abruptly with the comb still caught in the

tangle of her hair and she gasped again as she stared out into the

west.

As Gregorius had told them, the still cool air and the peculiar light

of the rising sun created a stage effect, foreshortening the hundred

miles of flat featureless desert and throwing up into the sky the sheer

massif of the highlands, so that it seemed she might stretch out her

hand and touch it.

It was dark purplish blue in the early light, but as Vicky watched in

awe, it changed colour like some gargantuan chameleon, becoming gilded

with bright sun colours and beginning at the same time to recede

swiftly, until it was a pale wraith that dissolved into the first

dancing heat mirages of the desert -day, and she felt the sultry puff

of the rising wind.

She roused herself and hurried down the dune into the laager.

Jake looked up from the pan of beans and bacon that was spluttering

over the fire and grinned at her.

"Five minutes for breakfast." He spooned a mess of food into her

pannikin and offered it to her. "I thought about night travel to avoid

the heat but the chances of smashing up the cars on rough going was too

great." Vicky took the food and ate with high relish, pausing only to

stare at Gareth Swales as he came to the fire freshly shaven and

perfectly groomed, wearing a spotless open-neck shirt and a baggy pair

of plus-four trousers in an expensive thorn-proof tweed. His brogues

gleamed with polish, and he smoothed his golden moustaches and raised

an eyebrow when Jake exploded with delighted laughter.

"Jesus,"he laughed. "Anyone for golf?"

"I say, old son, "Gareth admonished him, amiably running an eye over

Jake's faded moleskins,

scuffed Chukka boots and plaid shirt with a tear in the sleeve. "Your

breeding is showing. just because we are in Africa, there is no need

to go native, what?" Then he glanced at Gregorius and flashed that

brilliant smile. "No offence, of course. I must say you look jolly

dashing in that get-up." Gregorius swathed in his sham ma looked up

from his breakfast and returned the smile. "East is east, and west is

west," he said.

"Old Wordsworth certainly knew his stuff," Gareth agreed, and dipped a

spoon into the pan.

The four vehicles, grotesquely burdened and strung out at intervals of

two hundred yards to avoid each other's dust, crawled out of the

coastal dunes into the vast littoral where the wind rustled endlessly

but brought no relief from the steadily rising heat.

Jake was pointing the column on a compass-bearing slightly southerly of

that which he would have chosen without Gregorius's advice. They aimed

to pass below the sprawling salt pans which

Gregorius warned were treacherous going.

For the first two hours, the fluffy yellow earth offered no serious

obstacle to their passage, except that the narrow solid tyres cut in

deeply and created a wearying drag that kept the speed down below ten

miles an hour and the old engines grinding in the lower gears.

Then the earth firmed, but was strewn with black stone that had been

rounded and polished by the grit-laden wind and varied in size from

acorns to ostrich eggs. Their speed dropped away a little more as the

cars bounced and jolted over this murderous surface, and the black rock

threw the heat back at them, so they rode with all hatches and

engine-louvres wide open. Though all of them, including Vicky, had

stripped to their underwear, still they ran with sweat that dried

almost immediately it oozed from their pores. The exposed metal of the

cars, although it was painted white, would blister the hand that

touched it, and the engine heat and stench of hot oil and fuel in the

driver's compartments was swiftly becoming unbearable as the sun

climbed to its zenith.

An hour before noon, Priscilla the Pig blew the safety valve on her

radiator and sent a shrieking plume of steam high into the air.

Jake earthed the magneto and stopped her immediately. He climbed,

half-naked and shiny with sweat, from the turret and shaded his eyes to

peer out across the wavering heat-distorted plain. There was no

horizon in this haze and visibility was uncertain after a few hundred

yards.

Even the other vehicles lumbering far behind him seemed monstrous and

unreal.

He waited for the others to come up before calling, "Switch off.

We can't go on in this. the engine oil will be thin as water, and

we'll ruin all the bearings if we try.

We'll wait for it to cool a little." Thankfully, they climbed from the

cars and crawled into the shade of the chassis where they lay panting

like dogs. Jake went down the line with a five-gallon tin of

blood-warm. water and gave them each as much as they could drink

before collapsing on the blanket beside Vicky.

"It's too hot to walk back to my own car," he explained, and she took

it with good grace, merely nodding and closing one more button of her

half-open blouse.

Jake wet his handkerchief from the water can and offered it to her.

Gratefully, she wiped her neck and face and sighed with pleasure.

"It's too hot to sleep," she murmured. "Entertain me, Jake."

"Well now!" he grinned, and she laughed.

"I said it's too hot. Let's talk."

"About "About you. Tell me about you what part of Texas are you

from?"

"All of it. Wherever my pa could find work."

"What did he do?

"Wrangled cattle, and rode rodeo."

"Sounds fun." Jake shrugged.

"I preferred machines to horses."

"Then?"

"There was this war, and they needed mechanics to drive tanks."

"Afterwards? Why didn't you go home?"

"Pa was dead a steer fell on him, and it wasn't worth the journey to go

collect his old saddle and blanket." They were silent for a while,

just lying and riding the solid waves of heat that came off the

earth.

"Tell me about your dream, Jake," she said at last.

"My dream?"

"Everybody has a dream." He smiled ruefully.. "I've got a dream-" he

hesitated, "there is this idea of mine. It's an engine, the Barton

engine.

It's all there." He tapped his forehead. "All I need is the money to

build it. For ten years, I've tried to get it together.

Nearly had it a couple of times."

"After this trip, you will have it," she suggested.

"Perhaps." He shook his head. "I've been too sure too many times to

make any bets, though."

"Tell me about the engine," she said and he talked quietly but eagerly

for ten minutes.

It was a new design, a lightweight, economical design. "It would drive

anything, water pump, saw mill, motorcycle, that sort of thing."

He was intent, happy, she saw. "I'd only need a small workshop to

begin with, some place back west I've thought about Fort Worth-" he

stopped himself, and glanced at her. "Sorry, I was running on a

bit."

"No," she said quickly. "I enjoyed listening. I hope it works out for

you, Jake." He nodded. "Thanks. And they rode the heat for a few

more minutes in companionable silence.

"What's your dream?" he asked at last, and she laughed lightly.

"No, tell me,"he insisted.

"There is this book. It's a novel I have thought about it for years. I

have written it in my head a hundred times all I have to do is find the

time and the place to write it on paper–2 she broke off,

and then laughed again. "And then, of course, it sounds corny but I

think about kids and a home. I have been travelling too long."

"I know what you mean." Jake nodded. "That's a good dream you've got,

"he said thoughtfully. "Better than mine." Gareth Swales heard the

murmur of their voices and raised himself on one elbow. For a while he

thought seriously about crossing the dozen yards of sunbaked black

stones to where they lay but the effort required was just too much and

he fell back. A fist-sized rock jarred his kidneys and he cursed

quietly.

It was five o'clock before Jake judged they could start the engines

again. They refuelled from the cans strapped on the sponsons,

and once more they set off in column at an agonized walking pace over

the rough surface, each jolt shaking driver and vehicle cruelly.

Two hours later, the plain of black boulders ended abruptly, and beyond

it stretched an area of low red sand hills. Thankfully Jake increased

speed and the column sped towards a sunset that was inflamed by the

dust-laden sky until it filled half the heavens with great swirls of

purple and pink and flaming scar lets The desert wind dropped and the

air was still and heavy with memory of the day's heat.

Each vehicle drew a long dark shadow behind it and threw up a fat

rolling sausage of red dust into the air above it.

The night fell with the tropical suddenness that is alarming to those

who have known only the gentle dusks of the northern continents.

Jake calculated that they had covered less than twenty miles in a day

of travel and he was reluctant to call a halt, now that they had hit

this level going and were bowling along with engine temperatures

dropping in the cool of night and the drivers" tempers cooling in

sympathy. Jake took a bearing off Orion's belt as the easiest

constellation, then he switched on the headlights and looked back to

see that the others had followed his example. The lights threw a

brilliant path a hundred yards ahead of Jake's car, giving him plenty

of time to avoid the odd thick clump of thorn scrub, and occasionally

trapping a large grey desert hare, dazzling it so that its eyes blazed

diamond bright before it turned and loped, long-legged, ahead of the

car, seemingly unable to break out of the path of light, dodging and

doubling with its long floppy ears laid along its back, until at the

last instant it ducked out from under the wheels and dived into the

darkness.

He was just deciding to call a halt for food and drink, with a possible

further march later that night, when the sand hills dropped away

gradually and in the headlights he saw ahead of him a glistening white

expanse of perfectly level sand, as smooth and as inviting as the

Brooklands motor-racing circuit.

Jake changed up into high gear for the first time that day, and the car

plunged forward eagerly for a hundred yards before the thick hard crust

of the salt pan collapsed and the heavy chassis fell through, belly

deep, floundering instantly so that Jake was thrown violently forward

at the abrupt halt, striking his shoulder and forehead painfully on the

steel visor.

The engine shrieked in the frenzy of high revolutions and lifting

valves before Jake recovered himself, then slammed the throttle

closed.

He dragged himself from the turret to signal a halt to the following

vehicles, and then mournfully clambered down to inspect the heavily

bogged vehicle. Gareth walked out across the snowy surface of the

pan,

and stood beside him surveying the damage silently.

"Let him make one crack " Jake thought through the mists of his anger

and frustration. He felt his hands curling into big bony hammers.

"Cheroot?" Gareth offered him the case, and Jake felt his anger

deflate slightly.

"Good place to camp tonight," Gareth went on. "We'll see about hauling

her out in the morning." He clapped Jake's shoulder. "Come on,

I'll buy you a warm beer."

"I was waiting for you to say something,

anything but that and I would have swung on you. "Jake shook his

head

grinning with surprise at Gareth's perception.

"You think I didn't know that, old son?" Gareth grinned back at him.

Vicky woke in the hours immediately after midnight when human vitality

is at its lowest, and the night was utterly silent except for the

gentle sound of one of the men snoring. She recognized the sound from

the previous evening, and wondered which of them it was.

something like that could influence a girl's decision, she thought,

imagine sleeping every night of your life in a saw mill.

It was not that which had woken her, however. Perhaps it was the cold.

The temperature had plunged in that phenomenal temperature range of the

desert, and she drew her blankets tighter over her shoulder and settled

to sleep ,again when the sound came again and she shot upright into a

rigid sitting position.

It was a long-drawn rolling, rattling sound, quite unlike anything she

had ever heard before. The sound rose to a pitch which clawed her

nerves, and then ended in a series of deep gut-shaking grunts. It was

so fierce and menacing a sound that she felt the slow ice of terror

spreading through her body. She wanted to shout to the others, to wake

them, but she was afraid to draw attention to herself and she sat

frozen and wide-eyed in the next silence waiting for it to happen

again.

"It's all right, Miss Camberwell." Vicky started at the quiet voice.

"It's miles away. Nothing to worry about." And she looked round to

see the young Ethiopian, still wrapped in his blankets watching her.

"My God, Greg what on earth is it?"

"A lion, Miss Camberwell,"

Gregorius . explained, obviously surprised that she did not recognize

such a commonplace sound.

"A lion? That is a lion roaring?" She had not expected it to sound

anything like that.

"My people say that even a brave man is frightened three times by a

lion and the first time is when he hears it roar."

"I believe it,"

she whispered. "I truly do." And she picked up her blankets and went

to where Jake and Gareth slept on, undisturbed. She lay down carefully

between them, and felt a little easier that the lion had now a wider

choice, but still she did not sleep, Count Aldo Belli had retired to

his tent with the sincerest and firmest resolve that in the morning he

would press forward to the Wells of Chaldi. The General's pleas had

touched him. Nothing would check him now, he decided, as he composed

himself to sleep.

He woke in the utter dark of the dog hours to find that the