However, by the time 690 men were embarked, the Colonel had once more descended from the Rolls. It was an unfortunate chance that dictated that the Rolls should be parked directly in front of the casino.
The casino was a government-licensed institution under whose auspices young ladies were brought out from Italy on six-month contracts to cater to the carnal needs of tens of thousands of lusty young men in a woman less environment.
Very few of these ladies had the stamina to sign a renewal of the contract and none of them found it necessary.
Possessed of a substantial dowry, they returned home to find a husband.
The casino had a silver roof of galvanized corrugated iron Hill and its eaves and balconies were decorated with intricate cast-iron work. The windows of the girls" rooms opened on to the street.
The young hostesses, who usually rose in the mid afternoon, had been prematurely awakened by the bellowing of orders and the clash of weapons. They had traipsed out on to the long second-floor veranda, clad in brightly coloured but flimsy nightwear, and now entered into the spirit of the occasion, giggling and blowing kisses to the officers. One of them had a bottle of iced Lacrima Cristi, which she knew from experience was the Colonel's favourite beverage, and she beckoned with the cold de wed bottle.
The Colonel realized suddenly that the singing and excitement had made him thirsty and peckish.
"A cup for the stirrup, as the English say," he suggested jocularly, and slapped one of the captains on the shoulder.
Most of his staff followed him with alacrity into the casino.
A little after five o'clock, one of the junior subalterns emerged, slightly inebriated, from the casino with a message from the Colonel to the Major.
"At dawn tomorrow, we advance without fail." The battalion rumbled out of Asmara the following morning at ten o'clock. The Colonel was feeling liverish and disgruntled. The previous night's excitement had got out of hand, he had sung until his throat was hoarse and had drunk great quantities of Lacrima Cristi, before going upstairs with two of the young hostesses.
Gino knelt on the seat of the Rolls beside him, holding an umbrella over his head, and the driver tried to avoid potholes and irregularities in the road. But the Count was pale and his brow sparkled with the sweat of nausea.
Sergeant Gino wished to cheer him. He hated to see his Count in misery and so he attempted to rekindle the warlike spirit of yesterday.
"Think on it, my Count. We of the entire army of Italy will be the very first to confront the enemy. The first to meet the blood-thirsty barbarian with his cruel heart and red hands." The Count thought on it as he was bidden. He thought on it with great concentration and increasing nausea.
Suddenly he became aware that of all the 360,000 men that comprised the expeditionary forces of Italy, he, Aldo Belli, was the very first, the veritable point of the spear aimed at Ethiopia. He remembered suddenly the horror stories he had heard from the disaster of Adowa. One of the atrocity stories outweighed all others the Ethiopians castrated their prisoners. He felt the contents of that noble sac between his thighs retracting forcibly and a fresh sweat broke out upon his brow.
Stop!" he shrieked at the driver. "Stop, this instant."
A bare two miles from the centre of the town, the column was plunged into confusion by the abrupt halt of the lead vehicle, and, answering the loud and urgent shouts of the commanding officer, the Major hurried forward to learn that the order of march had been altered. The command car would take up station in the exact centre of the column with six motorcycle outriders brought back to ride as flank guards.
It was another hour before the new arrangement could be put into effect and once more the column headed south and west into the great empty land with its distant smoky horizons and its vast vaulted blue dome of the burning heavens.
Count Aldo Belli rode easier on the luxurious leather of the Rolls, cheered by the knowledge that preceding him were three hundred and forty-five fine rubbery sets of peasant testicles upon which the barbarian could blunt his blade.
The column went into bivouac that evening fifty-three kilometres from Asmara. Not even the Count could pretend that this was a forced march for motorized infantry but the advantage was that a pair of motorcyclists could send back with a despatch for General De Bono reassuring him of the patriotism, the loyalty and the fighting ardour of the Third Battalion and, of course, on their return the cyclists could carry blocks of ice from the casino packed in salt and straw and stowed in the sidecars.
The following morning, the Count had recovered much of his good cheer.
He rose early at nine " O clock and took a hearty alfresco breakfast with his officers under the shade of a spread tarpaulin and then, from the rear seat of the Rolls, he gave a clenched fist cavalry order to advance.
Still in the centre of the column, pennants fluttering and battle standard glittering, the Rolls glided forward and it looked, even to the disillusioned Major, as if they might make good going of the day's march.
The undulating grassland fell away almost imperceptibly beneath the speeding wheels, and the blue loom of the mountains on their right hand merged gradually with the lighter fiercer blue of the sky. The transition to desert country was so gradual as to lull the unobservant traveller.
The intervals between the flat-topped acacia trees became greater and the trees themselves were more stunted, more twisted and spiky, as they progressed, until at last they ceased and the bushes of spino Cristi replaced them grey and low and viciously thor ned The earth was parched and crumbled, dotted with clumps of camel grass and the horizon was unbroken, enclosing them entirely. The land itself was so flat and featureless that it gave the illusion of being saucer-shaped, as though the rim of the land rose slightly to meet the sky.
Through this wilderness, the road was slashed like the claw mark of a predator into the fleshy red soil. The tracks were so deeply rutted that the middle hump constantly brushed the chassis of the Rolls, and a mist of fine red dust stood in the heated air long after the column had passed.
The Colonel was bored and uncomfortable. It was becoming increasingly clear, even to the Count, that the wilderness harboured no hostile horde, and his courage and impatience returned.
"Drive to the head of the column," he instructed Giuseppe, and the Rolls pulled out and sped past the leading trucks, the Count bestowing a cheery salute on Castelani as he left him glowering and muttering behind him.
When Castelani caught up with him again, two hours later, the Count was standing on the burnished bonnet of the Rolls staring through his binoculars at the horizon and doing an excited little dance while he urged Gino to make haste in unpacking the special Mantilicher 9.3
men sporting rifle from its leather case. The weapon was of seasoned walnut, butt and stock, and the blued steel was inlaid with twenty-four-carat gold hunting scenes of the chase boar and stag, huntsmen on horseback and hounds in full cry. It was a masterpiece of the gunsmith's art.
Without lowering the binoculars, he gave orders to Castelani to erect the radio aerial and send a message of good cheer and enthusiasm to General De Bono, to report the magnificent progress made by the battalion to date and assure him that they would soon command all the approaches to the Sardi Gorge. The Major should also put the column into laager and set up the ice machine while the Colonel undertook a reconnaissance patrol in the direction in which he was now staring so intently.
The group of big dun-coloured animals he was watching were a mile off and moving steadily away into the mirage-fevered distance, but their gracefully straight horns showed dark and lo the against the distant sky.
Gino had the loaded Mannlicher in the rear seat and the Count jumped down into the passenger seat beside the driver. Standing holding the windshield with one hand, he gave his officers the Fascist salute, and the Rolls roared forward, left the road and careered away, weaving amongst the thorn scrub and bounding over the rough ground in pursuit of the distant herd.