Vicky recognized the aircraft type immediately, for she had trained for her own pilot's licence on a similar model.
It was a Puss Moth, a small sky-blue high-winged monoplane, powered by the versatile De Havilland four-cylinder aero engine. It would carry a pilot and two passengers in a tricycle arrangement of seating, the pilot up front in an enclosed cabin under the broad sweep of the wings. Seeing the familiar aircraft reminded her, with a fleeting but bitter pang, of those golden untroubled days before October 1929, before that black Friday of evil reputation. Those idyllic days when she had been the only daughter of a rich man, spoilt and pampered, plied with such toys as motor cars and speed boats and aircraft.
All that had been swept away in a single day. Everything had gone, even that adoring godlike figure that had been her father dead by his own hand. She felt the chill of it still, the sense of terrible loss, and she turned her thoughts aside and concentrated on the approaching aircraft.
The pilot came in down the western pass under the cliffs, then turned steeply and side-slipped in towards the only piece of open ground in the valley that was free of rocks and oles- It was used as a stockyard, gymkhana ground or polo field as the need arose and at the moment the ankle-deep grass was providing grazing for fifty goats.
Ras Kullah's horsemen drove the goats from the field at a gallop, and then as the Puss Moth touched down, they wheeled and tore down the field at its wing-tips, firing their rifles into the air and vying with each other to perform feats of horsemanship.
The pilot taxied to where the car stood and opened the side window. He was a burly young white man, with a suntanned face and curly hair. He shouted above the engine rumble in an indeterminate colonial accent Australian, New Zealand or South African, "Are you Lij Mikhael?" The Prince shook hands briefly with Vicky before jumping down. With his sham ma fluttering wildly in the slipstream from the propeller, he hurried to the aircraft and climbed into the tiny cabin.
The pilot was watching Vicky with a lively interest through the side window and when she caught his eye he pursed his lips and made a circle with thumb and forefinger in the universal sign of approval.
His grin was so frank and boyishly open that Vicky had to grin back.
"Room for one more!" he shouted, and she laughed and shouted back, "Next time, perhaps."
"it will be a pleasure, lady," and he gunned the motor and swung away lining up on the short rough-surfaced runway.
Vicky watched the Puss Moth climb laboriously up towards the mountain crests. As the busy buzzing of its engine faded, a feeling of terrible aloneness fell over her and she glanced around apprehensively at the hordes of swarthy horsemen who surrounded the armoured car. Suddenly she realized that not one of all these men could speak her language, and that now there was a small cold cramp of fear at the base of her belly to go with the aloneness.
Almost desperately, she longed for some contact with the world which she knew, rather than these savage horsemen in this land of wild mountains. For an instant she thought of checking the telegraph office for a reply to her despatch, but dismissed the idea immediately. There was no chance that her editor would yet have received, let alone replied to her communication. Now she looked around her and identified the knot of men and horses that comprised Lij Mikhael's bodyguard, but they seemed very little different from the greater mass of Gallas.
Little comfort there, and she climbed quickly down into the driver's hatch of the car and engaged the low gear.
She bumped over the rough ground and found the track that led down along the river towards the tall grey stone portals of the gorge. She was aware of the long untidy column Of Mounted men that followed her closely, but her t mind leapt ahead to her arrival at the foot of the gorge, to her reunion with Jake and Gareth. Suddenly those two were the most important persons in her whole existence and she longed for them, both or either of them, with a strength that showed in the white knuckles of her hands as she gripped the steering-wheel.
The descent of the gorge was a more terrifying experience than the ascent. The steeper stretches fell away before Vicky with the gut-swooping feel of a ski-run, and once the heavy cumbersome car was committed to it, its own weight took charge and it went down bucking and skidding. Even with the brakes locking all four wheels, it kept plunging downwards, with very little steering control transmitted to the front wheels.
A little after noon, Vicky had come more than halfway down the gorge, and she remembered that this final pitch was the truly terrifying part, where the track clung to the precipice high above the roaring river in its rocky bed. Her arms and back were painfully cramped with the effort of fighting the kicking wheel, and-sweat had drenched the hair at her temples and stung her eyes. She wiped it away with her forearm, and went at the slope, braking hard the moment that the car began rolling down the thirty-degree incline.
With rock and loose earth kicking and spewing out from under the big wheels, they descended in a heavy lumbering rush, and halfway down Vicky realized that she had no control and that the vehicle was gradually slewing sideways and swinging its tail out towards the edge of the cliff.
She felt the first lurch as one rear wheel dropped slightly, riding out over the hundred-foot drop, and instinctively she knew that in this instant of its headlong career, the car was critically hanging at the extreme edge of its balance. In a hundredth of a second, it would go beyond the point of recovery, and she made without conscious thought a last instinctive grasp at survival. She jumped her foot from the brake pedal, swung the wheel into the line of skid and thrust her other foot down hard on the throttle. One wheel hung over the cliff, the other caught with a vicious jerk as the engine roared at full power, and the huge steel hull jumped like a startled gazelle, and hurled itself away from the cliff edge, struck the far bank of earth and rocky scree and was flung back, miraculously, into its original line of track.
At the bottom of the pitch, the slope eased. Vicky fought the car to a standstill there and dragged herself out of the driver's hatch.
She found that she was shaking uncontrollably, and that she had to get to a private place off the track, for in reaction she was close to vomiting and her control of her other bodily functions was shaken by that terrible sliding, bucking ride.
She had left the column of horsemen far behind, and could only faintly hear their voices and the clatter of hooves on the rocky track as she scrambled and clawed her way up the side of the gorge to a thicket of dwarf cedar trees, where she could be alone.
There was a spring of clear sweet water amongst the cedars and when her body had purged itself and she had it under control again, she knelt beside the rocky pool and bathed her face and neck. Using the surface of the shining water as a mirror, she combed her hair and rearranged her clothing.
The reaction to extreme fear had left her feeling lightheaded and slightly apart from reality. She picked her way out of the cedar thicket, and down to where the car stood upon the track. The Galla horsemen had arrived and they and their mounts crowded the entire area, back up the track for half a mile, and in a solid mob about the armoured car.
Those nearest the car had dismounted, and when she tried to make her way through their ranks they gave her only minimal passage, so that she must brush close to them.
Suddenly she realized with a fresh lunge of fear in her chest that the Harari bodyguard of Lij Mikhael was no longer with her and she stopped uncertainly and looked about her, trying to find where they were.