'Vicky!' Jake shouted again.
'If you help it won't take so long, 'she called obstinately, and
Jake shrugged helplessly before climbing down out of the hatch.
Both cars were crammed with dreadfully wounded and dying Harari,
and the hulls were thick with those who still had strength to hold
on,
before Vicky was satisfied.
'We've lost fifteen minutes. 'Gareth glanced at his pocket watch in
the rain that still poured down with unabated fury.
'And that could be enough to get us all killed, and lose us the
gorge.'
'It was worth it,' Vicky told him stubbornly, and ran to her car. Again
the heavily burdened machines ground on towards the mountain pass, and
now they had to ignore the pitiful appeals of the wounded they passed.
They lay in huddles of rags soaked with rain and diluted pink blood, or
they crawled painfully and doggedly on towards the mountain, lifting
brown, agonized faces and pleading, clawlike hands,
hands as the two machines roared past in the mist.
Once a freak gap in the rain opened visibility to a mile around them,
and a pale shaft of watery sunlight slanted down to strike the cars
like a stage light, glistening on the wet steel hulls.
Immediately the Italian machine guns opened on them from a range of a
mere two hundred yards, and the bullets cut into the clinging mass of
humanity, knocking a dozen of them shrieking from their perch before
the rain closed in again, hiding them in its soft white protective
bosom.
They ran into the main camp below the gorge, and found that it was
plunged into terrible confusion. It had been heavily shelled and
machine-gunned, and then the rain had turned it all into a deep muddy
soup of broken flattened tents, and scattered equipment.
Dead horses and human corpses were half buried in the mud, here and
there a terrified dog or a lost child scurried through the rain.
Spasmodic fighting was still taking place in the rocky ground around
the camp, and they caught glimpses of Italian uniforms on the slopes
and muzzle-flashes in the gloom.
Every few seconds a shell would howl in through the rain and cloud and
burst with sullen fury somewhere out of sight.
'Head for the gorge,' shouted Gareth. 'Don't stop here,' and Jake took
the path that skirted the grove of camel thorns the direct path that
passed below and out of sight of the fighting on the slopes,
crossed the Sardi River and plunged into the gaping maw of the gorge.
'My men are holding them,' Gregorius shouted proudly.
'They are holding the gorge. We must go to their aid.'
'Our place is at the first waterfall. 'Gareth raised his voice for the
first time.
'They can't hold here not when the Eyetie brings up his guns. We've
got to get set at the first waterfall to have a chance.' He looked
back to where the other car should have been following them, and he
groaned.
