They had no comfort for him, and Lij Mikhael listened with a great weight growing in his chest.
At last he gestured for silence. "Is the telephone line to Sardi still open? "he asked.
"The Gallas have not yet cut it. It does not follow the railway line but crosses the spur of Ambo Sacal. They must have overlooked it."
"Have me connected with the Sardi station I must speak to somebody there. I must know exactly what is happening in the gorge."
He left the group of officers beside the railway tracks and walked a short way along the Sardi spur.
Down there, a few short miles away, the close members of his family his father, his brothers, his daughter were risking their lives to buy him the time he needed. He wondered what price they had already paid, and suddenly, a mental picture of his daughter sprang into his mind Sara, young and lithe and laughing. Firmly he thrust the thought aside and he turned to look back at the endless file of bedraggled figures that shuffled along the Dessie road. They were in no condition to defend themselves, they were helpless as cattle "Until they could be regrouped, fed and re-armed in spirit.
No, if the Italians came now it would be the end.
"Excellency, the line to Sardi is open. Will you speak? Lij Mikhael turned back and went to where a field telephone had been hooked into the Sardi-Dessie telephone line. The copper wires dangled down from the telegraph poles overhead, and Lij Mikhael took the handset that the officer handed him and spoke quietly into the mouthpiece.
Beside the station master's office in the railway yards of Sardi town stood the long cavernous warehouse used for the storage of grain and other goods. The roof and walls were clad with corrugated galvanized iron which had been daubed a dull rusty red with oxide paint.
The floor was of raw concrete, and tire cold mountain wind whistled in through the joints in the corrugated sheets.
At a hundred places, the roof leaked where the galvanizing had rusted away, and the rain dripped steadily forming icy puddles on the bare concrete floor.
There were almost six hundred wounded and dying men crowded into the shed. There was no bedding or blankets, and empty grain bags served the purpose. They lay in long lines on the hard concrete, and the cold came up through the thin jute bags, and the rain dripped down upon them from the high roof.
There was no sanitation, no bed pans, no running water, and most of the men were too weak to hobble out into the slush of the goods yard. The stench was a solid tangible thing that permeated the clothing and clung in a person's hair long after he had left the shed.
There was no antiseptic, no medicine not even a bottle of Lysol or a packet of Aspro. The tiny store of medicines at the missionary hospital had long ago been exhausted. The German doctor worked on into each night with no anaesthetic and nothing to combat the secondary infection.
Already the stink of putrefying wounds was almost as strong as the other stench.
The most hideous injuries were the burns inflicted by the nitrogen mustard. All that could be done was to smear the scalded and blistered flesh with locomotive grease. They had found two drums of this in the loco shed.
Vicky Camberwell had slept for three hours two days ago.
Since then, she had worked without ceasing amongst the long pitiful lines of bodies. Her face was deadly pale in the gloom of the shed, and her eyes had receded into dark bruised craters. Her feet were swollen from standing so long, and her shoulders and her back ached with a dull unremitting agony. Her linen dress was stained with specks of dried blood, and other less savoury secretions and she worked on, in despair that there was so little they could do for the hundreds of casualties.
She could help them to drink the water they cried out for, clean those that lay in their own filth, hold a black pleading hand as the man died, and then pull the coarse jute sacking up over his face and signal one of the over, worked male orderlies to carry him away and bring in another from where they were already piling up on the open stoep of the shed.
One of the orderlies stooped over her now, shaking her shoulder urgently, and it was some seconds before she could understand what he was saying. Then she pushed herself stiffly up off her knees, and stood for a moment holding the small of her back with both hands while the pain there eased, and the dark giddiness in her head abated. Then she followed the orderly out across the muddy fouled yard to the station office.
She lifted the telephone receiver to her ear and her voice was husky and slurred as she said her name.
"Miss Camberwell, this is Lij Mikhael here." His voice was scratchy and remote, and she could hardly catch the words, for the rain still rattled on the iron roof above her head. "I am at the Dessie crossroads."
"The train," she said, her voice firming. Lij Mikhael, where is the train you promised? We must have medicine antiseptic, anaesthetic don't you understand? There are six hundred wounded men here. Their wounds are rotting, they are dying like animals." She recognized the rising hysteria in her voice, and she cut herself off.
"Miss Camberwell. The train I am sorry. I sent it to you.
With supplies. Medicines. Another doctor. It left Dessie yesterday morning, and passed the crossroads here yesterday evening on its way down the gorge to Sardi-" "Where is it, then?" demanded Vicky. "We must have it.
You don't know what it's like here."
"I'm sorry, Miss Camberwell.
The train will not reach you. It was derailed in the mountains fifteen miles north of Sardi. Ras Kullah's men the Gallas were in ambush.
They had torn up the tracks, they have Fired everybody aboard and burned the coaches." There was a long silence between them, only the static hissed and buzzed across the wires.
"Miss Camberwell. Are you there?"
"Yes."
"Do you understand what I am saying?"
"Yes, I understand."
"There will be no train." "No." Ras Kullah has cut the road between here and Sardi."
"Yes."
"Nobody can reach you and there is no escape from Sardi up the railway line.
Ras Kullah has five thousand men to hold it. His position in the mountains is impregnable. He can hold the road against an army."
"We are cut off," said Vicky thickly. "The Italians in front of us.
The Gallas behind us." Again the silence between them, then Lij Mikhael asked, "Where are the Italians now, Miss Camberwell?"
"They are almost at the head of the gorge, where the last waterfall crosses the road-" She paused and listened intently, removing the receiver from her ear.
Then she lifted it again. "You can hear the Italian guns. They are firing all the time now. So very close."
"Miss Camberwell, can you get a message to Major Swales?"
"Yes."
"Tell him I need another eighteen hours. If he can hold the Italians until noon tomorrow, then they cannot reach the crossroads before it is dark tomorrow night. It will give me another day and two nights. If he can hold until noon, he will have discharged with honour all his obligations to me, and you will all have earned the undying gratitude of the Emperor and all the peoples of Ethiopia. You, Mr. Barton and Major Swales."
"Yes," said Vicky. Each word was an effort.
"Tell him that at noon tomorrow I shall have made the best arrangements I can for your evacuation from Sardi. Tell him to hold hard until noon, and then I will spare no effort to get all of you out of there."
"I will tell him."
"Tell him that at noon tomorrow he is to order all the remaining Ethiopian troops to disperse into the mountains, and I will speak to you again on this telephone to tell you what arrangements I have been able to make for your safety." Lij Mikhael, what about the wounded, the ones who cannot disperse into the hills?" The silence again, and then the Prince's voice, quiet but heavy with grief.
"It would be best if they fell into the hands of the Italians rather than the Gallas."