"The ladies in those days were very naughty," Sara explained primly.
"And my great-grandfather was a good man. He thought to make the breeches difficult to remove." Vicky laughed delightedly.
"Do you think it helps? "she demanded, still laughing.
"Oh no, Sara shook her head seriously. "It makes it very hard." She spoke with the air of an expert, and then thought for a moment. They come down quickly enough it's when you want to get them up again in a hurry that can be very difficult."
"Well, the only way we are going to get you out of these now is to cut you loose." Vicky was still smiling, as she took a large pair of scissors from the medicine chest and Sara shrugged again with resignation.
"They were very pretty before Jake tore them now it does not matter."
And she showed no emotion as Vicky snipped carefully along the seam and peeled them off her.
"Now you must rest." Vicky wrapped her naked lower body in a woollen sham ma and helped her settle comfortably on one of the thin coir mattresses spread on the floor of the car.
"Stay with me," Sara asked shyly, as Vicky picked up her portable typewriter and would have climbed out of the rear doors.
"I must begin my despatch."
"You can work here. I will be very quiet."
"Promise?"
"I promise," and Vicky opened the case and placed the typewriter in her lap, sitting cross-legged. She wound a sheet of fresh paper into the machine, and thought for a moment. Then her fingers flew at the keys.
Almost instantly, the anger and outrage returned to her and was transferred smoothly into words and hammered out on the thin sheet of yellow paper. Vicky's cheeks flamed with colour and she tossed her head occasionally to keep the tendrils of fine blonde hair out of her eyes.
Sara watched her, keeping very still and silent until Vicky paused to wind a fresh sheet into the typewriter, then she broke the silence.
"I have been thinking, Miss Camberwell,"she said.
"You have?" Vicky did not look up.
"I think it should be Jake."
"Jake?" Vicky glanced at her, baffled by this sudden shift in thought.
"Yes," Sara nodded with finality. "We will take Jake as your first lover." She made it sound like a group project.
"Oh, we will will we?" The idea had already entered Vicky's head and was almost firmly rooted, but she baulked instantly at Sara's bold statement.
"He is so strong. Yes!" Sara went on. "I think we will definitely take Jake," and with that statement she dashed as low as they had ever been the chances of Jake Barton.
Vicky snorted derisively, and flew at the typewriter once again. She was a lady who liked to make her own decisions.
The river of moving men and animals flowed wedge shaped across the sparsely grassed and rolling landscape beneath the mountains. Over it all hung a fine mist of dust, like sea fret on a windy day, and the sunlight caught and flashed from the burnished surfaces of the bronze war shields and the lifted lance-tips. Closer came the mass of riders until the bright spots of the silk shammas of the officers and noblemen showed clearly through the loom of the dust cloud.
Standing on the turret of Priscilla the Pig, Jake shaded the lens of his binoculars with his helmet and tried to see beyond the dust clouds, searching anxiously for any pursuit by the Italians. He felt goose-flesh march up his arms and tickle the thick hair at the nape of his neck as he imagined this sprawling rabble caught in a crossfire of modern machine guns, and he fretted for the arrival of their own weapons which were lost somewhere amongst that ragged army.
He felt a touch on his shoulder and turned quickly to find Lij Mikhael beside him.
"Thank you, Mr. Barton,"said the Prince quietly, and Jake shrugged and turned back to his scrutiny of the distant plains.
"It was not the correct thing but I thank you all the same." How is she?"
"I have just left her with Miss Camberwell. She is resting and I think she will be well." They were silent a while longer, before Jake spoke again.
"I'm worried, Prince. We are wide open. If the Italians chase now it will be bloody murder. Where are the guns?
We must have the guns." Lij Mikhael pointed out on to the left rear flank of the approaching host.
"There," and Jake noticed for the first time the ungainly shapes of the pack camels, almost obscured by dust and distances, but standing taller than the shaggy little Harari ponies that surrounded them, and lumbering stolidly onwards towards where the cars waited. "They will be here in half an hour." Jake nodded with relief. He began planning how he would arm the cars immediately, so that they could be deployed to counter another Italian attack but the Prince interrupted his thoughts.
"Mr. Barton, how long have you known Major Swales?" Jake lowered the glasses and grinned.
"Sometimes I think too long," and regretted it, as he noticed the Prince's immediate anxiety.
"No. I didn't mean that. It was a bad joke. I haven't known him long."
"We checked his record very carefully before " he hesitated.
"Before tricking him into taking on this commission," Jake suggested, and the Prince smiled faintly and nodded.
"Precisely," he agreed. "All the evidence suggests that he is an unscrupulous man, but a skilled soldier with a proven record of achievement in training raw recruits. He is an expert weapons instructor, with a full knowledge of the mechanism and exploitation of modern weapons." The Prince paused.
"Just don't get into a card game with him."
"I will take your advice, Mr. Barton." The Prince smiled fleetingly, and then was serious again. "Miss Camberwell called him a coward. That is not so. He was acting under my direct orders, as a soldier should."
"Point taken," grinned Jake. "But then I'm not a soldier, only a grease monkey." But the Prince brushed the disclaimer aside.
"He is probably a better man than he thinks he is," said Jake, and the Prince nodded.
"His combat record in France is impressive. The Military Cross and three times mentioned in despatches."
"Yeah, you have me convinced," murmured Jake. "Is that what you wanted?"
"No," admitted the Prince reluctantly. "I had hoped that you might convince me," and they both laughed.
"And did you check my record also? "Jake asked.
"No," admitted the Prince. "The first time I ever heard of you was in Dares Salaam. You and your strange machines were a bonus a surprise packet." The Prince paused again, and then spoke so softly that Jake barely caught the words, "and perhaps the best end of the bargain.
"Then he lifted his chin and looked steadily into Jake's eyes."
The anger is still with you," he said. "
"I can see how strong it is." With surprise, Jake realized that the Prince was correct.
The anger was in him. No longer the leaping flames that had kindled at the first shock of the atrocity. Those had burned down into a thick glowing bed in the pit of his guts, but the memory of men and women caught by the guns and the mortars would sustain that glow for a long time ahead.
"I think now you are committed to us," the Lij went on softly, and Jake was amazed at the man's perception. He had not yet recognized that commitment himself; for the first time since he had landed in Africa, he was motivated by something outside himself. He knew that he would stay now, and that he would fight with the Lij and these people as long as they needed him. In an intuitive flash he realized that if these simple people were enslaved, then all of mankind including Jake Barton were themselves deprived of a measure of freedom. A line, almost forgotten, imperfectly learned long ago and not then understood surfaced in his memory.
"No man is an island," - " he said, and the Lij nodded and continued the quotation. "entire of itself. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind"." The Lifs dark eyes glowed. "Yes, Mr. Barton, John Donne. I think that in you I have been lucky. You are fire, and Gareth Swales is ice. It will work for me. Already there is a bond between you."