By the time they were two days out of Halifax Lovelace was thoroughly glad that she had elected to come with them. Without her it would have been a gloomy crossing, for Christopher was silent and moody. Each, day he sat staring out across the grey waters of the North Atlantic with dark unseeing eyes, occupied, to the exclusion of all else, with the terrible secret war in which he had pledged himself to take human life.
Lovelace tried to put that out of his thoughts. To him no academic reasoning, however powerful, quite seemed to justify the sinister operations of the Millers, He had constantly to remind himself that Christopher’s life was threatened too, and that they were engaged in a battle of wits, rather than the planning of a cold blooded assassination.
Valerie seemed to accept the fact that her fiancé was pledged to his gruesome task and appeared to have no doubts as to its justice. She spoke of it little and it was a great relief to Lovelace that he was able to forget it while in her company. They talked happily enough of the thrills she had had in breaking air records, and of his experiences when travelling in foreign countries, or as a relief worker behind the lines in numerous wars.
He puzzled his wits in vain as to where he had met her, before. Her dead straight eyebrows below the white forehead and chestnut hair, the big, grey, almost magnetic eyes and the deep dimple below the left cheek were strangely familiar to him. For some reason that he could not fathom, she continued to make a mystery of it, insisting that their first meeting must have been in some former life, and refusing to aid his memory with any sort of clue.
It was not until late on the last afternoon of the voyage that, settling herself beside him in a steamer chair, she broached the subject of Abyssinia.
`You'll look pretty foolish,' she said thoughtfully, `if the war is over by the time you get to Addis Ababa.'
`Christopher may, but I shan't,' he answered dryly. `Anyhow, I think it unlikely the war will be over for some time to come.'
`Why? Look at the victories the Italians have gained recently. They captured those two big mountains, Amba something, weeks ago.'
'Amba Aradam and Amba Aladji you mean. Yes, that was at the end of February.'
`Well, ever since the Italians have been smashing up Abyssinian armies right and left. Ras Kassa and Ras Immira have both been defeated and Marshal Badoglio is pressing on now into the interior.'
Lovelace shook his head. `The Abyssinian armies are very different from ours. If a modern army sustains, a serious defeat its organization breaks down and the whole thing may go to pieces, but these people have no organization worth talking about. The Races' troops are just great hosts of fighting men in which every man’s his own Army Service Corps. You can launch an attack which will send the whole lot running helter skelter one day but twenty four hours later ninety five percent of them will pop up again ready for another scrap."
Yes, I know that, but what's to stop the Italians just keeping them on the run? How can they put up any really serious resistance? Why! The British won a war against the Abyssinians with the old fashioned sort guns and rifles they used fifty years ago. The Italians have machine guns and tanks and aeroplanes; things undreamed of then. With such a tremendous advantage in armaments I can't see why the Italians shouldn't march straight through to Addis Ababa now and mop the whole thing up."
`Can't you?' Lovelace laughed, 'When we defeated the Abyssinians the whole situation was entirely different. The tribes were in revolt against the bad old Emperor Theodore and we only went in to give them a hand pushing him off the throne. The bulk of the population welcomed General Napier with open arms and, anyhow, he only got as far as Magdala. It's another thing altogether to have to fight your way through that devilish country with every hand against you
'Is It? Even with tanks
'Lord, yes! Ask any`' of the fellows who've seen fighting on the North West Frontier of India. It's much the same kind of terrain and the Abyssinian is own twin to the Pathan as far as bravery, cunning and cruelty.
Columns are ambushed and shot to pieces in every gully and you hardly ever see a tribesman. They fade away into the rocks and you can't imagine where they've got to until they start shooting you up again from a new niche at the next turn of the road. What's the good of tanks in that sort of warfare?'
`How about planes? The airman ought to be able to spot their hiding places and bomb them out.'
`They try, of course, but it's mighty expensive on ammunition. No real targets to go for, you see, only handfuls of snipers scattered about the precipitous hillsides. They may kill a man here or there and scare his nearest pals for an hour or two; but planes can't really help much when the fighting is in such mountainous country. The Italians have only penetrated to a depth of about a hundred and fifty miles so far. They've still got two fifty to go and nothing short of a miracle in courage and endurance could enable them to cover that in the month to run before the rains come.'
`Will the rains make further progress quite impossible?'
`Utterly. You've no idea how it rains out there. Every gully becomes a mountain torrent and tiny rivers swell to hundreds of yards in width. It just comes down like a cloud burst for days on end and it seems as if half the country's going to be washed away. If all the engineers of the finest armies in the world were concentrated there they couldn't transport their troops and stores through that welter of mud and foaming water.'
Valerie sighed. `But supposing the League persuades the Emperor to agree to a peace with Italy after all. That would let Christopher out, wouldn't it?
'Not necessarily. Abyssinia's only one act in the game as far as the Millers are concerned. Their campaign is world wide. They may not be sending Christopher to Africa at all for all we know.'
`As he was told to get his passport visaed for all countries bordering on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea it looks as if Abyssinia is almost certain to be his destination. What's it like there, Anthony? The people are Christians, aren't they?'
`Well, hardly. Most of the wilder tribes are still dyed in the wool pagans. In the towns there are many Mohammedans, particularly in Harar, which is an old wailed Arab city, but most of the ruling caste has been Christians of a sort since the dark ages. Before that they followed the Jewish faith:
`Are they Jewish by race, then?'
`Oh, no, but they consider themselves the Chosen People because they've been in possession of the Ark of the Covenant for centuries. One of their kings pinched it when he was on a visit to Jerusalem. They'd adopted the Jewish faith before that owing to the lapse from virtue of the Queen of Sheba.'
Valerie glanced at him suspiciously from under her level brows. `You're pulling my leg. She wasn't a real person, was she?'
'She was indeed,' he protested, `and by all accounts a darned good looking girl, into the bargain.' 'Tell me about her.'
`She was the Virgin Queen of Ethiopia in King Solomon's day. The country was already rich and powerful. Probably much more civilized than it is at the present time through the influence of Egypt and Babylonia. Anyhow, her merchants used to trade as far as India and the Sudan. She's said to have lived in great luxury and been very wise and beautiful, of course an Arab type a sort of Egyptian Shahrazade. The report of Solomon's wisdom came to her so she determined to visit him.
`It must have been a tough journey for a woman; trekking on under the blazing sun week after week with very little water, almost trackless deserts to cross, and most of the route infested with bands of marauding Arabs. But she did it and legend relates that, when she arrived in Jerusalem, her state chariot was drawn by sixteen zebras; although they're always said to be untamable.' Lovelace picked up a book he had been reading before Valerie came on deck. `The whole story's here if you're interested.'