Part 11 (2/2)
”The sisters at the convent of the Sacred Heart in Berbera taught me,” she explained, and she examined Vicky with frank and unabashed admiration ”You are very beautiful, Miss Carass in the highlands,” and Vicky's usual cohed, but Sara's attention had flicked away to the armoured cars
”Ah, they also are beautiful nobody has spoken of anything else, since they heard these were coht-fitting eilely up on to the steel body of Miss Wobbly ”With these we shall throw the Italians back into the sea Nothing can stand before the courage of our warriors and these fine war esture and then turned
to Jake and Gareth ”I am honoured to be the first of all irl,” Gareth murmured, ”our pleasure, I assure you” He refrained fro the cash with hi for us at the Wells?”
”randfather has couard is with hiether with their worowled Jake ”It sounds like a helluva reception coht of the journey on the bank of the Awash under the spreading u late and talking in the ruddy flickering glow of the fire, secure within the square fort for steel vehicles At last the talk died away into a weary but friendly silence, and Vicky stood up
”A short walk for me, and then bed” Sara stood with her ”I'll come with you” Her fascination with and adly apparent, and she followed her out of the laager like a faithful puppy
Away from the camp, they squatted side by side in coht sky splendid with star shot, and Sara told Vicky seriously, ”They both desire you greatly Jake and Gareth” Vicky laughed aardly again, once irl's direct manner
”Oh, come now”
”Oh yes, when you co around each other as though they will sniff each other up the tail” Sara giggled, and Vicky had to smile with her
”Which one will you choose, Miss Camberwell?” Sara de
”Oh no,” Sara reassured her ”You can make love with both of them I would do so”
”You would? ”Vicky asked
”Yes, I would What other way can you tell which one you like best?”
”That's true” Vicky was becohter, but fascinated by this bit of logic The idea had a certain appeal, she admitted to herself
”I will orius That way I will be sure I have ret it when I airl
”Why twenty, Sara?” Vicky tried to keep her voice as serious as the girl's ”Why not twenty-three or twenty-six?” Oh no,” said Sara primly ”I would not want people to think er
”But you-” Sara returned to the immediate problem
”Which of them will you try first?”
”You pick for me,” Vicky invited
”It is difficult,” Sara ad and has much warmth in his heart, the other is very beautiful and will have hed ”It is very difficult
No, I cannot choose for you I can only wish you much joy” The conversation had disturbed Vicky h-she was exhausted by the long hard driven day, she could not sleep, but lay restlessly under a single blanket on the hard sun-warhts that the girl had sown in her mind So it was that she was still ahen Sara rose froer to where Gregorius lay The girl had discarded the robe and wore only the skintight velvet breeches, encrusted with silver eht of the stars and the new h breasts and a narrow orius and instantly he rose, and hand in hand, carrying their blankets, the pair slipped out of the laager, leaving Vicky more disturbed than ever She is of the desert Once she lay and listened to the night sound thought she heard the soft cry of a human voice in the darkness, but it may have been only the plaintive yelp of a Jackal The two young Ethiopians had not returned by the tie that Count Aldo Belli received fro Ase
”The man addresses me as an inferior,” he protested to his officers He shook the yellow sheet fro in a choked voice, ”I hereby directly order you”” He shook his head in mock disbelief ”No ”request”, no ”if you please”, you notice” He cruainst the canvas wall of the headquarters tent and began pacing in a isterial manner back and forth, with one hand on the butt of his pistol and the other on the handle of his dagger
”It seees It seeht about this with burgeoning enthusiasreatly reduced by the superb upholstery and suspension designed by Messrs Rolls and Royce and would be more than adequietely offset by the quasi-civilized amenities of the town A s and electric fans, the latest newspapers fro hostesses at the casino all this was suddenly immensely attractive
Further and packaging of the hunting trophies he had so far accumulated He was anxious that the lion skins were correctly handled and the numerous bullet holes were properly patched The further prospect of re and political expendability also had eant dashed into the tent, auto his camera
”Not now! Not now!” The Count waved the ca back to Asmara for conference with the General Inforly” Twenty-four hours later, the Count returned from Asmara in a mood of bile and thunder The intervieith General De Bono had been one of the low points in the Count's entire life He had not believed that the General was serious in his threat to renobly back to Ro the order to his s aide de-ca over the Count's handsome curly head He had just twelve hours to reach and secure the Wells of Chaldi or a second-class cabin on the troopshi+p GaribaLdi, sailing five days later from Massawa for Napoli, had been reserved for hi and eloquent cable to Benito Mussolini, describing the General's atrocious behaviour, and had returned in high pique to his battalion completely unaware that the General had anticipated his cable, intercepted it and quietly suppressed it
Major Castelani did not take the order to advance seriously, expecting at any iven, so it ith a sense of disbelief and rising jubilation that he found hi the last dustysun and the Wells of Chaldi
The heavy rainfall precipitated by the bulk of the Ethiopian round bydown into the valleys and the lowlands The greater bulk of this surface water found its devious way at last into the great drainage system of the Sudnorthwards into Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea
A smaller portion of the water found its way into blind rivers like the Awash, or simply streamed down and sank Without trace in the soft sandy soils of the savannah and desert
One set of exceptional geological circueneral rule was the impervious sheet of schist that stretched out from the foot of the mountains and ran in a shallow saucer below the red earth of the plain Runoff water frohlands was contained and channelled by this layer, and for out like a finger froe, sixty miles into the dry hot savannah
Closer to the mountains, the water ran deep, hundreds of feet below the earth's surface, but farther out, the slope of the land combined with the raised lip of the schist layer forced the water up to within forty-five feet of the surface
Thousands of years ago the area had been the grazing grounds of large concentrations of wild elephant These indefatigable borers for water had detected the presence of this subterranean lake With tusk and hoof they had dug down and reached the surface of the water
Hunters had long since exterminated the elephant herds, but their wells had been kept open by other animals, wild ass, oryx, camel, and, of course, by man who had annihilated the elephant
Now the wells, a dozen or more in an area of two or three square miles, were deep excavations into the bloodred earth The sides of the wells were tiered by narroorn paths that wound down so steeply that sunlight seldom penetrated to the level of the water
The water itself was highly reen appearance and a rank metallic taste, but nevertheless it had supported vast quantities of life over the centuries And the vegetation in the area, with its developed root systerew reenly than anywhere else on the dry bleak savannah
Beyond the wells, in the direction of the round, steep but shalloadis and square hillocks so low as to be virtually only es, the shepherds and hunters who frequented the wells had burrowed into the sides of ravine and hillock, so that they were now honeycoh nature had declared a peace upon the wells Here ether in wary truce that was seldoreen thorn trees and dense scrub goat and careater kudu
n In the hush of noo', the column of four arines carried at distance to the multitude that awaited their arrival
Jake led, as usual, followed by Vicky, then ca in the turret of his car and the white stallion trailing the lead rein In the rear rode Gareth Suddenly Sara shrieked at such a high pitch that her voice carried over the engine noise and she pointed ahead to the low valley filled with green scrub and taller denser trees Jake halted the coluh his binoculars he studied the open forest, and then