liqueurs Grand Marnier, yellow and green Chartreuse,
Dam Benedictine, and the rest. These incongruous beverages in the
desert reminded the guests that their host was wealthy beyond the
normal concept of wealth, the lord of vast estates and, under the
Emperor, the master of many thousands of human beings.
The Ras sat at the head of the feast, with a war bonnet of lion's mane
covering his bald pate. It made a startling, but rather moth-eaten wig
for it was forty years since the Ras had slain the lion, and the
ravages of time were apparent.
Now the Ras cackled with laughter as he rolled a sheet of the
unleavened bread, filled with steaming wat, into the shape and size of
a Havana cigar and thrust it, dripping juice, into Gareth Swales's
unprepared mouth.
You must swallow it without using your hands," Lij Mikhael explained
hastily. "It is a game my father enjoys." Gareth's eyes bulged, his
face turned crimson with lack of air and the bite of chilli sauce.
Gulping and gasping and chewing manfully, he struggled to ingest the
huge offering.
The Ras hooted merrily, drooling a little saliva from the toothless
mouth, his entire face a network of moving wrinkles as he encouraged
Gareth with cries of "How do you do? How do you do?" At last with his
dignity in shreds, red-faced, sweating and panting laboriously, the
roll of bread disappeared down Gareth's straining throat. The Ras
folded him once more in that brotherly embrace, and
Lij Mikhael poured another goblet full of Bollinger for him.
However, Gareth, who did not enjoy being the butt of anyone's joke,
freed himself from the Ras, pushed the glass" aside and waved one of
the servants to him. From the reeking bloody platter he selected a
strip of raw beef almost as thick as his wrist and as long as his
forearm. Without warning, he thrust one end of it into the Ras's
gaping toothless mouth.
"Suck on that, you old bastard," he shouted, and the Ras stared at him
with startled rheumy bloodshot eyes. Then, although he was unable to
smile because of the long red strip that hung from his lips like some
huge swollen tongue, the Ras's eyes turned to slits in a mask of happy
wrinkles.
His jaw seemed to unhinge like a python swallowing a goat.
He gulped and an inch of the meat shot into his M(Uthl he gulped again
and another inch disappeared. Gareth stared at him as gulp succeeded
gulp and swiftly the morsel dwindled in size. Within seconds the Ras's
mouth was empty, and he snatched up a bowl of tej and drank half a pint
of the heady liquor, wiped blood and tej from his chin with the skirt
of his sham ma belched like an air-locked geyser, then with a falsetto
cackle-of merriment hit Gareth a resounding crack between the shoulder
blades. In the Ras's view, they were now comrades of the soul both
English aristocrats, renowned warriors, and each had eaten from the
other's hand.
Gregorius Maryam had anticipated exactly what his grandfather's
reaction to his white guests would be. He knew that Gareth's
nationality and undoubted aristocratic background would overshadow all
else in the Ras's estimation.
However, the young prince's feelings for Jake Barton had become close
to adulation and he did not intend that his hero should be ignored. He
chose the one subject which he knew would engage his grandfather's full
attention. He slipped unnoticed from the din of the overcrowded cave,
and when he returned, he carried Jake's stiff crackling lion skin that
had by now completely dried out in the hot, dry desert wind.
Although he held it high above his head, the tail brushed the ground on
one side and the nose on the other. The Ras, one arm still around
Gareth's shoulder, looked up with interest and fired a string of
questions at his grandson, as the boy spread the huge tawny skin before
him.
The replies made the old man so excited that he leaped to his feet and
grabbed his grandson by one arm, shaking him agitatedly as he demanded
details and Gregorius replied with as much animation, his eyes shining
as he mimed the charge of the lion, and the act of hurling the bottle
and the crushing of its skull.
hundreds of guests craned forward to hear the details of the hunt. In
that silence, the Ras walked down to where Jake sat. Stepping, without
looking, into various bowls of food and kicking over a jug of tea, he
reached the big curly-headed American and lifted him to his feet.
"How do you do?" he asked, with great emotion, tears of admiration in
his eyes for the man who could kill a lion with his bare hands.
Forty years before, the Ras had broken four broad-bladed spears before
he had put a blade in the heart of his own lion.
"Never better, friend," Jake grunted, clumsy with embarrassment,
and the Ras embraced him fiercely before leading him back to the head
of the board.
Irritably the Ras kicked one of his younger sons in the ribs,
forcing him to vacate the seat on his right hand where he now placed
Jake.
Jake looked across at Vicky and rolled his eyes helplessly as the
Ras began to ladle steaming wat on to a huge white round of bread and
roll it into a torpedo that would have daunted a battle cruiser. Jake
took a deep breath and opened his mouth wide, as the Ras lifted the
dainty morsel the way an executioner lifts his sword.
"How do you do?" he said, and with another hoot of glee thrust it in
to the her.
The Colonel and all the officers of the Third Battalion were exhausted
from long hours of forced march and, by the time they reached the Wells
of Chaldi, were anxious only to see their tents erected and their cots
made up after that they were quite content that the Major be left to
use his own initiative.
Castelani sited his twelve machine guns in the sides of the valley
where they commanded a full arc of fire, and below them he placed his
rifle trenches. The men sank the earthworks swiftly and with little
noise in the loose sandy soil, and they buttressed their trenches and
machine-gun nests with sandbags.
The mortar company he held well back, protected by both rifle trenches
and machine-gun nests, from where they could drop their mortar bombs
across the whole area of the wells with complete impunity.
While his men worked, Castelani personally paced out distances in front
of his de fences and supervised the placing of the painted metal
markers, so that his gunners would be able to fire over accurately
ranged sights. Then he hurried back to chivvy along the ammunition
parties who staggered up in the darkness, slipping in the sandy soil
and cursing softly, but with feeling, under the burden of the heavy
wooden cases.
All that night he was tireless, and any man who laid down his shovel
for a few minutes of rest took the risk of being pounced upon by that
looming figure, the stentorian voice restrained to a husky but
ferocious whisper, and the rol
ling swagger tense with suppressed
outrage.
At last, the squat machine guns with their thick water jacketed barrels
were lowered down into the new excavaWm and set up on their tripods.
Only after Castelani had checked the traverse of each and sighted down
through the high sliding rear-sight into the moonlit valley was he
satisfied. The men flung themselves down to rest and the
Major allowed the kitchen parties to come up with canteens of hot soup
and bags of hard black bread.
Gareth Swales felt bloated with food and slightly bleary with the large
quantities of lukewarm champagne which Lij Mikhael had pressed upon
him.
On one side, the Ras and Jake had established a rapport that overcame
the language barrier. The Ras had convinced himself that as
Americans spoke English they were English, and that Jake as a
lion-killer was clearly a member of the upper stratum of society in
short a kind of honorary aristocrat. Every time the Ras drained
another pint of tej, Jake became more socially acceptable and the Ras
had drained many pints of tej by this stage.
The atmosphere was indeed so jovial and aflame with bonhomie and
camaraderie that Gareth felt emboldened to ask, on behalf of the
partnership, the question that had been burning his tongue for the last
many hours.
"Toffee, (old lad, have you got the money ready for us?" The Prince
seemed not to have heard, but refilled Gareth's glass with champagne,
and leaned across to translate one of Jake's remarks for his father,
and Gareth had to take his arm firmly.
"If it's all right by you, we'll take our wages and trouble you no
more. Ride off into the sunset with violins playing, and all that
rot."
"I'm glad you raised the point." Toffee nodded thoughtfully,
looking anything but glad. "There are some things we have to
discuss."
"Listen, Toffee old son, there is absolutely nothing to discuss. All
the discussing was done long ago."
"Now, don't upset yourself, my dear fellow." It was, however, in
Gareth's nature to become very agitated when someone who owed him money
wanted to discuss things.
The usual subject of discussion was how to avoid making payment,
and Gareth was about to protest volubly and loudly when the Ras chose
that moment to rise to his feet and make a speech.
This caused a certain amount of consternation, for the Ras's legs had
been turned by large quantities of tej to the consistency of rubber,
and it required the efforts of two of his guardsmen to get him to his
feet and keep him there.
However, once up, he spoke with clarity and force while Lij
Mikhael translated for the benefit of the white guests.
At first, the Ras seemed to wander. He spoke of the first rays of the
sun touching the peaks of the mountains, and the feel of the desert
wind in a man's face at noon, he reminded them of the sound of the
birth cry of a man's firstborn child and the smell of the earth turning
under the plough. Gradually an attentive silence fell upon his unruly
audience, for the old man had still a power and force that demanded
complete respect.
As he went on, so a greater dignity invested him; he shrugged off the
supporting hands of his guard and seemed to grow in stature. His voice
lost the querulous tremor of age and took on a more compelling ring.
Jake did not need the Prince's translation to know that he was speaking
of mans pride, and the rights of a free man. The duty of a man to
defend that freedom with life itself, to preserve it for his sons and
their children.
"And now there comes a powerful enemy to challenge our rights as free
men. An enemy so powerful, armed with such terrible weapons, that even
the hearts of the warriors of Tigre and Shoo shrivelled in their
breasts like diseased fruit." The old Ras was panting now, and a
scanty sweat trickled from under the tall lion headdress and ran down
the wrinkled black cheeks.
"But now, my children, powerful friends have come to stand beside us.
They have brought to us weapons as powerful as those of our enemies. No
longer must we fear." Jake realized suddenly what pathetic store the
Ras had placed in the worn and obsolete war materials they had brought
him. He talked now of meeting the mighty armies of Italy on even
terms.
Abruptly, Jake felt a choking sense of guilt. He knew that a week
after he left, the four armoured cars would be piles of junk. There
was no man in all the Ras's following who could keep their elderly and
temperamental engines running.
Even if they were brought into action before the engines expired,
they would present a threat only to unsupported infantry. The moment
they engaged with Italian armour they would be instantly and hopelessly
out-classed. Even the light Italian CV.3 tanks would be immune to the
fire of the Vickers guns that the cars mounted, while in return the
thin steel of the cars would offer no protection from the 50 men.
armour-piercing shell that the enemy fired. There would be no one to
explain all this to the Ras and teach him how to achieve the best from
the puny weapons he commanded.
Jake visualized the first and probably the last battle that Ras
Golam would fight. Scorning manoeuvre and strategy, he would certainly
throw in all his force armoured cars, Vickers machine guns, obsolete
rifles and swords in a single frontal attack. This was the way he had
fought all his battles and the way he would fight the last.
Jake Barton felt his heart go out to the gallant ancient, who stood now
shouting a challenge to a modern military power, prepared to defend to
the death what was his and Jake felt a curious sense of recklessness.
It was a reaction that he knew well and usually it led him into
positions of acute discomfort and danger.
"Forget it," he told himself firmly. "It's their war. Take the money
and run. "Then suddenly he looked across the dimly lit cave to where
Vicky Camberwell sat. She listened to the old Ras with misty eyes, and
her expression was enchanted as she leaned her golden head close to the
dark curly head of Sara Sagud, not wanting to miss a word of the
translation.
Now she saw Jake watching her, and she smiled and nodded vehemently
almost as though she had read his doubts.
"Leave Vicky also?" Jake wondered. "Leave them all and run with the
gold?" He knew that nothing would induce Vicky to leave with them.
For her the story was here, her involvement was complete, and she would
stay to the end the inevitable end.
The smart thing was to go, the dumb thin to stay and fight another
man's war that was already lost before it had begun; the dumb thing was
to stake twenty thousand dollars which was his share of the profits,
and all his future plans, the Barton engine, and the factory to build
it, against the remote chance of winning a lady who promised to be a
lifetime of trouble once she was won.
never was a dab hand at doing the smart thing," Jake thought ruefully,
and smiled back at Vicky.
The Ras was suddenly silent, panting with the force of his feelings and
the effort of voicing them. His listeners were mesmerized also,
staring at the thin-robed figure with its wild lion wig.
The Ras made a commanding gesture and one of his guards handed him the
broad two-handed sword, its blade long and naked. The Ras leaned his
weight upon it and commanded again, and they carried in the war drums.
The Ras's ceremonial drums, passed down to him by his father and his
father before him, drums that had beaten at Magdala against
Napier, at Adowa against the Italians and at a hundred other battles.
They were as tall as a man's shoulder, elaborately carved of hardwood
and covered with rawhide, and the drummers took up their stance with
the barrels of their drums held between their knees.
The drum with the deepest bass tone set the rhythm and the lesser drums
joined in with the variations and counterpoints, a chorus that arred a
man's gut and loosened his brain in his skull.
The old Ras listened to it with his head bowed over the sword,
until the rhythm took a hold on him and his shoulders began to jerk and
his head came up. With a leap like a white bird taking flight, he
landed in the open space before the drummers. The great sword whirled
high above his head, and he began to dance.
Gareth took Mikhael Sagud by the sleeve and lifted his voice in
competition with the drums, and resumed at the point where he had been
interrupted.
"Toffee, you were telling me about the money." Jake heard him and
leaned across to catch the Prince's reply, but the Prince was silent,
watching his father leap and twirl in the intricate and acrobatic
dance.
"We have delivered the goods, old chap. And a deal is a deal."
"fifteen thousand sovereigns," said the Prince thoughtfully.
"That's the exact figure, "Gareth agreed.
"A dangerous sum of money," murmured the PPrince.
"Men have been killed for much less." And they made no reply.
"I think of your safety, of course," the Prince went on.
"Your safety, and my country's chances of survival. Without an
engineer to maintain the cars, and a soldier to teach my men to use the
new weapons we will have wasted fifteen thousand sovereigns."
"I feel very badly for you," Gareth assured him. "I'll eat my heart