There was only one hope left and Shaw had to face it: transport. Perhaps, as he’d said to Gillian, they might get a lift; but Anne Hartog had said the roads were used as little as possible during the rains and were often impassable anyhow. A little later on he saw why, when the rains came down again with increased violence, biting into their bodies, beating up off the muddy road, cold and chill and utterly desolate. The road was three feet under in places, the water lying in the dips and hollows, and the surface was loose and crumbly and at times thick with that clinging mud into which their stumbling feet penetrated almost to knee height.
No wheeled transport could ever pass through this.
Shaw judged that they had been covering little more than a mile an hour.
On and on and on, lurching, staggering, slogging away with only will-power and sheer determination to keep them moving at all, the knowledge that for the sake of humanity they had to get there and not give up. After a time Shaw had to support the girl every step of the way, and she was crying now with weariness and desperation. Every now and then when they came to a more or less sheltered spot, Shaw called a brief halt and they rested, eating when they came to them such berries and fruit as had been missed by the ants. Glancing constantly at his watch, fuming with impatience at the delay, however short, he knew that a break was essential, and he didn’t let the girl see his anxiety to press on; for her part, she knew the urgency now as well as he did himself, and she stopped only for long enough to ease her exhaustion so that she could make better speed.
The farther they went, the worse the roadway became. Now it was just a derelict, shifting sea of mud and slime and loose rubble in which all purpose and direction was lost. The track had merged with the surrounding bush. All he could do was to set his sights on a high peak of the Naka Hills whenever he could glimpse it through the trees, and press on that way, and hope.
Somewhere the other side was Manalati… Manalati and a telephone line, and the depot of the Rifles. And — much later — hot food and drink and a bath.
Shaw decided, after a while when they came clear of the jungle into a kind of plain, that they might just as well strike direct across country. On the plain the road itself could no longer be made out at all, didn’t give them any direction whatever, and there wouldn’t be the slightest hope of picking up any sort of vehicle. So they might just as well take the shortest distance and go on hoping to make it in time. Hoping — though Shaw had realized now that the bringing down of the load on such a vast area as “somewhere in Africa” was not like pinpointing a target. The twelve-hour delay might not be necessary after all.
It was late afternoon and they were passing through a long tree-belt when Shaw caught sight of the dim, rain-hazed outline of low buildings, and what looked like mine workings. It could be one of the copper-mines… but even at this distance there seemed to be a derelict air hanging over the place, as though it had stood there abandoned and deserted for a long, long time.
It was a mine right enough, but a tin-mine and not copper, as Shaw discovered when they approached. And it had pretty obviously been abandoned. But it wasn’t quite deserted. Shaw and Gillian were quite close when he caught just a glimpse of the black form coming out from behind the corner of a building and he got an equally brief sight of metal as the man crouched and lifted something in his arms.
Shaw snapped, “Down, Gillian — quick!”
He reached out and pulled the girl down beside him roughly, down into the cover of a big tree, and he cocked his gun. As the girl dropped to the ground, they heard the wicked phut-phut-phut of an old Sten gun crashing through the rain. Slivers of wood flew above their heads as the bullets snicked the tree.
Earlier, during the morning, Sam Wiley had also reached the mine on foot, carrying the portable two-way radio which he had mentioned to Shaw.
He had only just escaped with his life when the truck, which he had been driving recklessly, had skidded off the road, hung for a moment — long enough for the big Negro to grab the radio and scramble clear — and had then slithered off into a deep, water-filled declivity beside the track. That had been when he was not far from the mine, and he’d walked on, cursing to himself at the further slight delay.
When he had got to the line of old buildings he had spoken briefly to the man on guard with the Sten, and then he’d run across to the disused working-face and disappeared into a tunnel which led under the sheer drop where the earth had been cut away in the open-cast workings. He flicked on some electric lights. Some way up the tunnel he turned off the lights again and climbed into the same trolley which Julian Hartog had used in the opposite direction some days earlier. He switched on the motor and was carried rumblingly away into the darkness stretching ahead. In due course he reached the widened section of the tunnel, where he left the trolley and went ahead on foot, coming out into the small, overgrown secondary mine encampment not far from the Bluebolt station, the mast of which he could in fact see distantly.
As he had emerged into view he’d heard the shout:
“Edo… Edo comes at last!”
Men had moved out from the bush, prostrating themselves before their leader. There was a big gathering of Africans under a headman, men from a near-by village, armed with rifles as well as native weapons; and there was a detachment of twenty-four steel-helmeted, well-armed African riot police under an inspector.
As Wiley stood there, tight-lipped, just staring back at them with his massive arms folded across his chest, the headman got up from his subservient position and walked across to him. He said, “Master, we have waited since one hour before the dawn, as we were told—”
Wiley interrupted bad-temperedly. “Of course. I too was waiting — for the signal from the control-station. What went wrong?”
The headman bowed low, humbly. “Lord Edo, Bwana Hartog sent a message to my village to explain and to ask me to send a runner to you in the village of Zambi. This I was unable to do because of the march of the ants.”
“Yes, my friend… but what was this message — and why did not Bwana Hartog speak to me himself on the radio?”
“Lord Edo, he said that he was not yet ready, that there had been much work going on and that his own headman, the Bwana Geisler, was with him all the time, and that there were many other people about as well. For that reason also, he was unable to use the radio at the proper time, and when he could use it, you did not answer him. He feared that you had been overcome by the ants. However, he has sent again to my village to say that he will be ready to bring down the big weapon safely into the sea… ninety minutes after dusk to-night, if you should escape from Zambi. He awaits your order. A man from his African workers is waiting now at my village to convey your commands.”
Wiley nodded. “Hartog had better be ready. This delay is dangerous, though the biggest of the men working against us will assuredly be dead by now — eaten by the ants, for he was tied up and helpless. Now, you will send a message back to Bwana Hartog that the plan will be put into effect to-night at the time he says… ninety minutes after sunset, as soon as the big bird that flies so high is in the right position. The only other change in the plan will be that now I shall myself be at the station when the big bird releases its offspring, and I shall want the men from the villages to be there also.” He chuckled to himself, then added, “You will also tell Bwana Hartog to speak to me on the radio as soon as it is safe for him to do so. He knows that I cannot call him.”
He turned then to the inspector of police, who had now joined the group. “Inspector, you know your orders?”