of unleavened bread, washed down by tea, strong and sweet with
condensed milk and lumpy brown sugar. The sun was well up before they
finished.
Jake belched softly. 'My turn to sleep,' he said, and he curled up
like a big brown dog in the shade under the hull.
Gareth tried to make himself comfortable against the turret and keep
watch out across the open plain, where the mirage was already starting
to quiver and fume in the rising heat. He congratulated himself
comfortably on his choice of shift; he'd had a good few hours' sleep in
the night, and now he had the comparative cool of the morning. By the
time it was Jake's turn on watch again, the sun would be frizzling, and
Priscilla's hull hot as a wood stove.
'Look out for Number One,' he murmured, and took a leisurely sweep of
the land with the glasses. There was no way that an Italian patrol
could surprise them here. He had selected the stake-out with a
soldier's eye for ground, and he congratulated himself again, as he
slumped in relaxation against the turret and lit a cheroot.
'Now,' he thought. 'Just how do you take on a squadron of cavalry
tanks, without artillery, mine-fields or armour-piercing guns ?' and
he let his mind tease and worry the problem. A couple of hours later
he had decided that there were ways, but all of them depended on having
the tanks come in at the right place, from the right direction at the
right time. 'Which, of course, is an animal of a completely different
breed,' and that took a lot more thought. Another hour later he knew
there was only one way the Italian armoured squadron could be made to
co-operate in its own destruction. 'The jolly old donkey and the
carrot trick again,' he thought. 'Now all we need is a carrot.'
Instinctively he looked down at where Jake lay curled. Jake had not
moved once in all the hours, only the deep soft rumble of his breathing
showed he was still alive. Gareth felt a prickle of irritation that he
should be enjoying such undisturbed rest.
The heat was a heavy oppressive pall, pressing down upon the earth,
beating like a gong upon Gareth's head.
The sweat dried almost instantly upon his skin, leaving a rime of salt
crystals, and he screwed up his eyes as he swept the horizon with the
glasses.
The glare and the mirage had obscured the horizon, blotted out even the
nearest ridges behind a shifting throbbing curtain of hot air that
seemed thick as water, swirling and spiralling in wavering columns and
sluggish eddies.
Gareth blinked his eyes, and shook the drops of sweat from his
eyebrows. He glanced at his watch. It was still another hour until
Jake's shift, and he contemplated putting his watch forward. It was
distinctly uncomfortable up on the hull in the sun, and he glanced
again at the sleeping form in the shade.
Just then he caught a sound on the thick heated air, a soft quiver of
sound, like the hive murmur of bees. There was no way in which to tell
the direction of the sound, and Gareth crouched attentively,
straining for it. It faded and returned, faded and returned again, but
this time stronger and more definite. The configuration of the land
