night."
him-
There was a stunted but tough little tree growing out of the vertical
fissure in the rock, and they used this as a bollard and made a line
fast to it. Then they lashed all the Avons together in a line down the
cliff and settled in for the night. There was no chance of hot food or
drink, and they had to make do with some cold tinned rations eaten off
the blade of a bayonet, and a few chunks of soggy injera bread.
Mek scrambled over from his own boat and huddled down close beside
Nicholas with one arm over his shoulder and his lips close to his ear.
"I have made a roll call. Another man missing when we went over the
falls. We won't find him now."
"I am not doing too well," Nicholas admitted. "Perhaps you should lead
tomorrow."
"Not your fault." Mek squeezed his shoulders. "Nobody could have done
better. It was this last waterfall-' he broke off and they listened to
it thundering away in the darkness.
"How far have we come?" Nicholas asked. "And'how much further to go?"
"It's almost impossible to tell, but I guess we are halfway to the
border. Should reach there some time tomorrow afternoon."
They were silent for a while, and then Mek asked, "What is the date
today? I have lost count of the days."
"So have Nicholas tilted his wrist-watch so that he could read the
luminous dial in the last of the light. "Good God! It's the thirtieth
already," he said.
"Your pick-up aircraft is due at Roseires airstrip the day after
tomorrow."
"The first of April,'Nicholas agreed. "Will we make it?"
"You answer that question for me." Mek grinned in the night without
humour. "What, chances of your fat friend being late?"
jannie is a pro. He is never late," said Nicholas. Again a silence fell,
and then Nicholas asked, "When we reach Roseires, what do you want me to
do with your share of the booty?" Nicholas kicked one of the ammunition
crates.
"Do you want to take it with you?"
"After we see you off on the plane with your fat friend, we are going to
be doing some hot-footed running from Nogo. I don't want to be carrying
any extra luggage. You take my share with you. Sell it for me - I need
the money to keep fighting here."
"You trust me?"
"You are my friend."
"Friends are the easiest to cheat - they never expect it," Nicholas told
him, and Mek punched his shoulder and chuckled.
"Get some sleep. We will have to do some hard paddling tomorrow." Mek
stood up in the Avon as she pitched and rolled gently to the push of the
current. "Sleep well, old friend," he said, and climbed across to the
boat alongside, where Tessay waited for him.
Nicholas braced his back against the soft pneumatic gunwale of the Avon
and took Royan in his arms. She sat between his knees and leaned back
against his chest, shivering in her sodden clothes.
After a while her shivering abated, and she murmured, "You make a very
good hot'water bottle."
"That's one reason for keeping me around on a permanent basis," he said,
and stroked her wet hair. She did not answer him, but snuggled closer,
and a short while after, wards her breathing slowed as she fell into an
exhausted sleep.
Although he was cold and stiff and his shoulders ached and his palms
were blistered from wrestling with the steering oar, he could not find
sleep as readily as she had.
Now that the prospect of reaching the airstrip at Roseires loomed
closer, he was troubled by problems other than those of simply
navigating the river and battling his way Wot through Nogo's men. Those
were enemies he could recognize and fight; but there was something more
than that which he would soon have to face.
Royan stirred in his arrns and muttered something he could not catch.
She was dreaming and talking in her sleep.
He held her gently and she settled down. again. He had started to drift
off himself when she spoke again, this time quite clearly. "I am sorry,
Nicky. Don't hate me for it.
I couldn't let you-' her words slurred and he could make no sense of the
rest of it.
He was fully awake now, her words aggravating his doubts and misgivings.
During the rest of that night he slept only intermittently, and his rest
was troubled by dreams as distressing as hers must have been to hern the
pre-dawn darkness he shook Royan gently.
She moaned and came awake slowly and reluctantly.
They bolted down a few mouthfuls of the cold rations that remained from
the previous night. Then, as dawn lit the gorge just enough for them to
see the surface of the river and the obstacles ahead, they pushed off
from their moorings and the yellow boats strung out down the current.
The battle against the river began all over again.
The cloud cover was still low and unbroken, and the rain squalls swept
over them at intervals. They kept going all that morning, and slowly the
mood of the river began to ameliorate. The current was not so swift and
treacherous, and the banks not so high and rugged.
It was midafternoon and the clouds were still closed in solidly overhead
as they entered a stretch where the river threaded itself through a
series of bluffs and headlands, and they came upon another set of
rapids. Perhaps Nicholas was more expert in his technique by now, for
they swept through them without mishap, and it seemed to him that each
stretch of white water was progressively less severe than the last.
"I think we are through the worst of it now," he told Royan as she sat
on the deck below him. "The gradient and the fall of the river are
definitely more gentle now. I think it is flattening out as we approach
the plains of the Sudan."
"How much further to Roseires?" she asked.
"I don't know, but the border can't be too far ahead now."
Nicholas and Mek were keeping the flotilla closed up in line astern, so
that orders could be shouted across the gaps between them and all the
boats kept under their command.
Nicholas steered for the deeper water on the outside of the next wide
bend, and as he came through it he saw that the stretch of river ahead
seemed open and altogether free of rapids or shoals. He relaxed and
smiled at Royan.
"How about lunch at the Dorchester grill next Sunday?
Best roast beef trolley in London."
He thought he saw a shadow pass across her eyes before she smiled
brightly and replied, "Sounds good to me., "And afterwards we can go
back home and curl up in front of the telly and watch Match of the Day,
or play our 01" little match."
"You are rude," she laughed, "but it does sound tempting."
He was about to stoop over her, and kiss her for the pleasure of
watching her blush again, when he saw the dance of tiny white fountains
spurting up ftorn the surface of the river ahead of their bows, coming
swiftly towards, them. Then, moments later, he heard the crackle of
automatic fire, the distinctive sound of a Soviet RPD.
He threw himself down over the top of Royan, covering her with his own
body, and heard Mek bellowing from the boat behind them.
'411111%awOv .AL.
"Return fire! Keep their heads down."
His men threw down their paddles and seized their weapons. They blazed