At the last moment he reared back like a baseball pitcher and hurled the bottle. It was an instinctive action, using the only weapon however puny that was at hand.
The bottle flew straight at the lion's head, catching it in the direct centre of its broad forehead as it lunged smoothly upwards towards the ledge where Jake stood.
The bottle exploded in a burst of sparkling glass splinters and a creamy gush of the pungent liquid. It filled both the lion's eyes, blinding it instantly, and the stench of concenits open mouth and flaring nostrils killed trated ammonia in its sense of smell and shocked its whole system so violently that it missed its footing and fell, roaring with the agony of scalded eyeballs and burning throat, into the shallow water where it rolled helplessly on its back.
Jake ran forward, seizing the few seconds of advantage he had gained.
He stooped to pick up a water-worn ironstone boulder the shape and size of a football, and swung it up above his head with both hands.
As he poised himself on the ledge above the pool, the lion recovered its balance and came up at him blindly. Jake swung the boulder down from on high and, like a cannon ball, it smashed into the back of the animal's neck, where the sodden mane covered the juncture of skull and vertebrae, crushing both so that the dreadfully mutilated beast collapsed and rolled on to its side, half in the water and half on the black rock ledge.
For long seconds Jake stood over it, panting with exertion and reaction, then he leaned forward and touched with his fingertip the long pale lashes that fringed the lion's open staring golden eye.
Already the sheen of the eyeball was clouded by the corrosive liquid.
At Jake's touch there was no blinking reflex, and he knew that the animal was dead.
He turned to find that Vicky had not obeyed his instruction to run. She stood frozen where he had left her, naked and vulnerable, so that he felt his heart shift within him and he went to her quickly.
With a sob she flew into his arms and clung to him with startling strength. Jake knew that the embrace was the consequence of terror not affection, but as his own heart-beat slowed and the tingle of the adrenalin in his blood receded, he thought that he had achieved a solid advantage. If you save a girl's life, she just has to take you seriously, he reasoned, and grinned to himself still a little unsteadily. All his senses were enhanced by the high point of recent danger. He could smell the perfumed soap and the stink of ammonia. He could feel with excruciating clarity the slim hard length of the girl's body pressed to his and the smooth warmth of her skin under his hands.
"Oh Jake!" she whispered brokenly, and with sudden aching certainty he knew that in this moment she was his to take, to possess right here on the black rock bank of the Awash, beside the warm carcass of the lion.
The knowledge was certain and his hands moved on her body, receiving instant confirmation her body was quick and responsive, and her face turned up to his. Her lips trembled and he could feel her breath upon his mouth.
"What the hell is going on down there?" Gareth's voice rang across the murky depths of the gorge. He stood at the top of the bank high above them. He had one of the Lee Enfield bolt-action rifles under his arm and seemed on the point of coming down to them.
Jake turned Vicky, shielding her with his own big body and slipping off his moleskin jacket to cover her nakedness.
The jacket reached halfway down her thighs and folded voluminously around under her armpits. She was still shivering like a kitten in a snowstorm, and her breathing was broken and thick.
"Don't worry about it," Jake called up at Gareth. "You weren't in time to help, and you aren't needed now." He groped in his hip pocket and Produced a large, slightly grubby handkerchief, which Vicky accepted with a tearful, quivering smile.
"Blow your nose," said Jake. "and get your pants on, before the whole gang arrives to give you a hand." regorius was so impressed that he was speechless for several minutes. In Ethiopia there is no act of ivalour so highly esteemed as the single-handed hunting and killing of a full-grown adult lion, The warrior who accomplishes this feat wears the mane thereafter as a badge of his courage and earns the respect of all. The man who shoots his lion is respected, and the man who kil with a spear is venerated. - Gregorius had never heard of one killed with a single rock and a bottle of ammonia.
Gregorius skinned out the carcass with his own hands.
Before he had finished, the black pinioned vultures were sailing in wide circles overhead. He left the naked pink carcass lying in the river bed, and carried the wet skin up to the bivouac where Jake was fretting to continue the trek towards the Wells. He was irreverent in his disdain of the trophy, and Greg tried to explain it to him.
"You will gain great prestige amongst my people, Jake.
Wherever you go, people will point you out to each other."
"Fine Greg. That's just fine. Now will you kindly haul arse.
"I will have a war bonnet made for you out of the mane, Greg insisted, as he strapped the bundle of wet skin to the sponson of Jake's car.
"With the hair combed out, it will look very grand."
"It could only be an improvement on his present hair style," Gareth observed drily. "I agree it's been a beautiful honeymoon, and Jake is a splendid lad but like he said, let's move on, before I am violently ill." As they moved towards their respective cars, Gregorius fell in beside Jake and quietly showed him the mushroomed copper-jacketed bullet he had removed from its niche in the pelvic bone of the carcass.
Jake paused to examine it closely, turning it in the palm of his hand.
"Nine millimeter, or nine point three," he said. "It's a sporting calibre not military."
"I doubt if there is a single rifle in Ethiopia that would fire this bullet," said Greg seriously. "It's a foreigner's rifle."
"No need to blow the bugle yet," said Jake, and flicked the bullet back to him. "But we'll bear it in mind." Gregorius almost turned away, then said shyly, "Jake, even if the lion was already wounded it's still the bravest thing I ever heard of. I have often hunted for them, but never killed one yet." Jake was touched by the boy's admiration. He laughed roughly and slapped his shoulder.
"I'll leave the next one for you," he promised.
They followed the windings of the River Awash through the savannah grassland, moving in towards the mountains so that with each hour travelled the peaks stood higher and clearer into the sky. The ridges of rock and the deep-forested gorges came into hazy focus, like a wall across the sky.
Suddenly they intersected the old caravan road, hitting it at a point where the steep banks of the Awash flattened a little. The ford of the river had been deeply worn over the ages by the passage of laden beasts of burden and the men who drove them, so that the many footpaths down each bank were deep trenches in the red earth, that jinked to avoid any large boulder or ridge of rock.
The three men worked in the brilliant sunlight and swung shovel and mattock in a fine mist of red dust that powdered their hair and bodies.
They filled in the uneven ground and deeply worn trenches, levering the boulders free and letting them roll and bounce down into the river bed, and slept that night the deathlike sleep of utter exhaustion that ignored the ache of abused muscle and burst blisters.
Jake had them at work before it was fully light the next morning, clearing and levelling, shovelling and packing the dry hard-baked earth, until at last each bank had been shaped into a rough but passable ramp.
Gareth was to take the first car through and he stood in the turret, somehow managing to look debonair and sartorially elegant, under the fine layer of red dust. He grinned at Jake and shouted dramatically, "Noli il legitimi carborundum," and disappeared into the steel interior The engine roared and he went bounding and sliding down the steep ramp of newly turned earth, bounced and jolted across the black rock bottom and flew at the far bank.