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.
"You think I didn't know that, old son?" Gareth grinned back at him.
Vicky woke in the hours immediately after midnight when human vitality is at its lowest, and the night was utterly silent except for the gentle sound of one of the men snoring. She recognized the sound from the previous evening, and wondered which of them it was.
something like that could influence a girl's decision, she thought, imagine sleeping every night of your life in a saw mill.
It was not that which had woken her, however. Perhaps it was the cold.
The temperature had plunged in that phenomenal temperature range of the desert, and she drew her blankets tighter over her shoulder and settled to sleep ,again when the sound came again and she shot upright into a rigid sitting position.
It was a long-drawn rolling, rattling sound, quite unlike anything she had ever heard before. The sound rose to a pitch which clawed her nerves, and then ended in a series of deep gut-shaking grunts. It was so fierce and menacing a sound that she felt the slow ice of terror spreading through her body. She wanted to shout to the others, to wake them, but she was afraid to draw attention to herself and she sat frozen and wide-eyed in the next silence waiting for it to happen again.
"It's all right, Miss Camberwell." Vicky started at the quiet voice.
"It's miles away. Nothing to worry about." And she looked round to see the young Ethiopian, still wrapped in his blankets watching her.
"My God, Greg what on earth is it?"
"A lion, Miss Camberwell," Gregorius . explained, obviously surprised that she did not recognize such a commonplace sound.
"A lion? That is a lion roaring?" She had not expected it to sound anything like that.
"My people say that even a brave man is frightened three times by a lion and the first time is when he hears it roar."
"I believe it," she whispered. "I truly do." And she picked up her blankets and went to where Jake and Gareth slept on, undisturbed. She lay down carefully between them, and felt a little easier that the lion had now a wider choice, but still she did not sleep, Count Aldo Belli had retired to his tent with the sincerest and firmest resolve that in the morning he would press forward to the Wells of Chaldi. The General's pleas had touched him. Nothing would check him now, he decided, as he composed himself to sleep.
He woke in the utter dark of the dog hours to find that the Chianti he had drunk at dinner was now exerting internal pressure.
Where a lesser man might have slipped without ceremony from his bed to deal with this problem, the Count did things in greater style.
He lay back on his pillows and let out a single loud bellow, and immediately there was the frantic activity in the night, and within minutes Gino had arrived with a bull's-eye lantern, hastily dressed in a camel-hair gown, and tousle-haired and owl-eyed with sleep. He was followed by the Count's personal valet and his galloper, all in the same state of freshly awoken bewilderment.
The Count stated his physical needs, and the dedicated group gathered around his bed solicitously. Gino helped him up as though he were an invalid, the valet held a dressing gown of quilted blue Chinese silk, embroidered with ferocious scarlet dragons, and then knelt to place a calf-skin slipper on each of the Count's feet, while his aide hastened to kick the Count's personal guard awake and fall them in outside the tent.
The Count emerged from the tent and a small procession, well armed and lighted, filed down to the latrine which had been dug exclusively for the Count's personal use. Gino entered first and checked the small thatched edifice for snakes, scorpions and brigands. Only when he emerged and declared it safe did the Count enter. His escort stood to attention and listened respectfully to the copious outpouring taking place within until they were interrupted by the sky shaking earth-rattling, heart-stopping roar of a male lion.
The Count shot from the latrine, his face a startled glistening white in the lantern light.
"Sweet and merciful Mother of God!" he cried. "What in the name of Peter and all the saints is that?" Nobody could answer him, in fact nobody showed any interest in the question whatever, and the Count had to move swiftly to catch up with his armed escort which had already started back towards the bivouac in a sprightly fashion.
Once within the security of his own brightly lit tent, and surrounded by his hastily assembled staff, the Count's pulse rate returned to normal, and one of his officers suggested that the native Eritrean guides be sent for and questioned on the terrible night sounds that had plunged the entire battalion into consternation.
"Lion?" said the Count, and then again, "Lion!" Instantly the formless terrors of the night evaporated, for by this time the first light of dawn was gleaming in the east, and the Count's breast swelled with the fierce instincts of the huntsman.
"It appears, my Colonel, that the beasts will be feeding on the antelope carcasses that you left lying out on the desert," the interpreter explained. "The smell of blood has attracted them."
aGi no snapped the Count. "Fetch the Mannlicher and have the driver bring the Rolls-Royce to my tent immediately." My Colonel," protested Major Luigi Castelani. "The battalion, by your own orders, is to march at dawn."
"I Countermanded!" snapped the Colonel. Already he imagined the magnificent trophy skin spread before his Louis XIV desk in the library of his castle. He would have it prepared with wide open jaws, flashing white fangs and fierce yellow glass eyes. The picture of open jaws and fangs suddenly reminded him with considerable force of his nerve racking brush with the beisa oryx. "Major," he ordered, "I want twenty men to accompany me, a truck to transport them, full battle order, and one hundred rounds of ammunition each." The Count was not about to take any more silly chances.
The lion was a fully mature male, six years of age, and, like most of the desert strain of leo panthers, he was much larger than the forest lions. He stood well over three feet high at the shoulder, and he weighed in excess of four hundred pounds. The late sun enhanced the sleek reddish ochre of his skin and transformed his mane into a glowing halo of gold. The mane was dense and long, framing the broad flattened head, reaching far back beyond the shoulder, and hanging so low under his chest and belly as almost to sweep the earth.
He walked stiffly, head held very low and swinging heavily from side to side with each laborious step. His breathing came with a low explosive grunt at each exhalation, and occasionally he stopped and swung his head to snap irritably at the buzzing blue cloud of flies that swarmed about the wound in his flank. Then he would lick at the small dark hole from which pale watery blood oozed steadily.
The long pink tongue curled out and, rough as shagreen, rasped against the supple hide. The constant licking had away the hair around the wound, giving it a pale worn shaven appearance.
The 9.3 Marmlicher bullet had caught him at the instant he had begun to turn away to run. It had angled in from two inches behind the last rib, striking with a force of nine tons that had bowled the lion down, rolling him in a cloud of pale dust. The copper-jacketed bullet was tipped with soft expanding lead, and it mushroomed as it raked the belly cavity, lacerating the bowels and tearing four large abdominal veins. The slug had passed close enough to the kidneys to bruise both of them severely, so now, when the lion stopped, arched his back and crouched to pass a spattering of bloodstained urine, he groaned like the roll of drums at an execution. Then, finally, the bullet had struck the arch of the pelvic girdle and lodged there against the bone.