'Of course, with the small escort that can be spared, it will be a
desperate business.'
'On the other hand, the Count mused aloud, 'I
wonder if my heart does not lie here with my boys? There comes a time
when a warrior must trust his heart rather than his head and I
warn you, Castellani, my fighting blood is aroused.'
'Indeed, Colonel.'
'I shall move up immediately,' announced Aldo Belli, and glanced
anxiously back into the dark depths of the gorge. His intention was to
place his command tank fairly in the centre of the armoured column,
protected from both front and rear.
The drumming continued, booming and pounding against his brain until he
felt he must scream aloud.
It seemed to emanate from the very earth, out of the fierce dark slope
of rock directly ahead, and it bounced and reverberated from the rock
walls of the gorge, driving in upon him in great hammers of sound.
Suddenly, the Count realized that the darkness was dispersing. He
could make out the shape of a stunted cedar tree on the scree slope
above his position where, moments before, there had been only black
shades. The tree looked like some misshapen monster, and quickly the
Count averted his eyes and looked upwards.
Between the mountains the narrow strip of sky was defined, a paler pink
light against the black brooding mass of rock. He dropped his gaze and
looked ahead, the darkness retreated rapidly, and the dawn came with
dramatic African suddenness.
Then the beat of the drums stopped. It was so abrupt, the transition
from a pounding sea of sound to the deathly, unearthly silence of the
African dawn in the mountains.
The shock of it held Aldo Belli transfixed and he peered, blinking like
an owl, up the gorge.
There was a new sound, thin and high as the sound of night birds
flying, plaintive and weird, an ululation that rose and fell so that it
was many moments before he recognized it as the sound of hundreds upon
hundreds of human voices; Suddenly he started, and his chin snapped
up.
'Mary, Mother of God,' he whispered, as he stared up the gorge.
It seemed that the rock was rolling down swiftly upon them like a dark
fluid avalanche, and the ululation rose, becoming a wild loolooing
clamour. Swiftly the light strengthened and the Count realized that
the avalanche was a sweeping tide of human shapes.
'Pray for us sinners,' breathed the Count and crossed himself swiftly,
and at that instant he heard Castelani's voice, like the bellow of a
wild bull, out of the darkened Italian positions.
Instantly the machine guns opened together in a thunderous hammering
roar that drowned out all other sound.
The tide of humanity seemed no longer to be moving forward; like a wave
upon a rock it broke on the Italian guns, and milled and eddied about
the growing reef of their own fallen bodies.
The light was stronger now strong enough for the Count to see clearly
