Cry Wolf Part 9

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 unb.u.t.ton 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 b.u.t.tocks. 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 ash.o.r.e 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 d.a.m.ned 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 compa.s.sion 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 ash.o.r.e, 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 ma.s.sif 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 compa.s.s-bearing slightly southerly of that which he would have chosen without Gregorius's advice. They aimed to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage, 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 cha.s.sis 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 b.u.t.ton 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 cha.s.sis 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.