saw through the spray that the rain clouds were low and purple. They
seemed to sag down upon the tops of the tall cliffs.
"Luck starting to run our way," he told Royan. "Even with the helicopter
they won't be able to find us in this Weather."
He glanced at his Rolex and the spray was heading the glass. "Couple of
hours until nightfall. We should be able to put a few miles of river
behind us before we are forced to stop for the night."
He looked back over his stem and saw the rest of the little flotilla
bobbing along behind him. The Avons were reflective yellow in colour and
stood out brilliantly even in the mist and murk of the gorge. He lifted
his clenched fist high in the signal to advance, and from the following
boat Mek repeated the gesture and grinned at him through his beard.
The river grabbed them and they shot through its portals into the
narrow, twisted gut of the Nile. The men at the oars stopped paddling,
and let the river take them.
All they could do now was to help Nicholas to steer her through any
desperate moments, and they crouched ready along the gunwales.
The high water in the gorge had covered many of the reefs of rock, but
their presence below the surface was clearly marked by the waters that
humped up in standing waves or foamed white in the narrows between them.
The flood reached up high on either bank, dashing against the cliffs of
the sub-gorge. If an Avon overturned, or even if a crew member were
thrown overboard there would be no place on this river to heave-to and
pick up survivors.
658 95, Nicholas stood high and craned ahead. He had to pick his route
well in advance, and once committed he had to steer her through. It all
depended on his ability to read the river and judge her mods. He was out
of practice, and he had that tight, hard cannonball of fear in the pit
of his belly as he put the long sweep over and steered for the first run
of fast green water. They went swooping down it, Nicholas holding their
bows into it with delicate touches of the sweep, and came out into the
bottom of it with all the other boats following them down in sequence.
"Nothing to it!" Royan laughed up at him.
Don't say itV Nicholas pleaded with her. The bad angel is listening."
And he lined up for the head of the next set of rapids that raced
towards them with terrifying speed.
Nicholas steered through the gap between two outcrops of rock and they
shot the barrel, gaining speed down the chute. It was only when they
were halfway down that he saw the tall standing wave below them over
which the river leaped. He put the sweep across and tried to steer round
it, but the river had them firmly in its grip.
Like a hunter taking a fence they shot up the front of the standing
wave, and then with a sickening lurch plummeted down the far side into
the deep trough. The Avon folded across the middle, the bows almost
touching the stem as she tried to pull through the hole in the river
surface.
The crew were tumbled over each other and Nicholas would have been
catapulted overside if it had not been for his body line and his grip on
the steering sweep. Royan flung herself flat on the deck and hung on to
the safety strap with all her strength as the Avon's buoyancy exerted
itself and the boat bounded high in the air, whipping back elastically
into its original shape, then hovered a moment and almost capsized
before it crashed back, right side up.
One of the crew had been hurled overboard and was floundering alongside,
carried along at the same speed as the flying Avon, so his comrades were
able to lean out and haul him back on board. The cargo of ammunition
crates had tumbled and shifted, but the nets had prevented any of them
from being lost over the side.
"What did you do that for?" Royan yelled at him. "Just when I was
beginning to trust you."
"Just testing'he yelled back. "Wanted to see how tough you really are."
"I admit it, I am a sissy," she assured him. "You really don't need to
do it again."
Looking back, Nicholas saw Mek's boat crash through the trough just as
they had, but the following craft had enough warning to steer clear and
slip through the sides of the run.
He looked ahead again, and his whole existence became the wild waters of
the river. His universe was contained within the tall cliffs of the
sub-gorge as he battled to bring the racing Avon through. He did not
know whether it was spray or rain that stung his cheeks and his wounded
chin, and that flew horizontally into his eyes and half-blinded him. At
times it was a mixture of the two.
An hour later Nicholas misjudged the rapids again, and they went in
sideways and almost capsized. Two of his crew were hurled overboard.
Steering fine and leaning outboard they managed to pull one of them from
the river, but the other man struck a rock before they could reach him.
He went under and did not rise again. None of them spoke or mourned him,
for they were all too busy staying alive themselves.
Once Royan shouted up at Nicholas through the rattling spray and the
thunder of the river all around them, "Helicopter! Can you hear it?"
Half-deafened, he looked up at the lowering grey belly of the clouds
that hung at the level of the cliffs, and faintly made out the whistle
and flutter of the rotors.
"Above the cloud!" he shouted back, wiping the rain and the spray from
his eyes with the back of his hand.
"They will never spot us in this."
The onset of the African night was sped upon them by the low cloud. In
the gathering darkness another hazard leaped upon them with no warning
at all. One instant they were running hard and clear down a smooth
stretch of the river, and the next the waters opened ahead of them and
they were hurled out into space. It seemed that they fell for ever,
although it was a drop of not more than thirty feet, before they hit the
bottom and found themselves floating in a tangle of men and boats in the
pool below the falls. Here the river was stalled for a moment, revolving
upon itself while it gathered its strength for the next mad charge down
the gorge.
One of the Avons had capsized and was floating belly up - even its
highly stable hull had not been able to weather the down the falls,
The crews of the other ro boats gathered themselves and then paddled
across to drag the survivors from the water and to salvage the oars and
other floating equipment. It took the combined efforts of all of them to
right the overturned Avon, and then it was almost completely dark by the
time they had it back on even keel, "Count the crates!" Nicholas
ordered. "How many have we lost?"
He could hardly credit his good fortune when Sapper shouted back,
"Eleven still on board. All present and correct." The cargo nets were
holding well. But all of them, men and women, were exhausted and soaked
through and shivering with the cold., Any attempt to go on in darkness
would be suicidal. Nicholas looked across at Mek in the nearest boat and
shook his head.
"There is a bit of slack water in the angle of the cliff." Mek pointed
towards the tail of the pool. "We might be able to find moorings for the