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.
Comparative silence had fallen over the smoky, dimlit cavern, and 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 rolling 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."