'Have you got a better idea?' Gareth asked,
and she looked despairingly around her.
Priscilla the Pig was the only thing that moved in the whole valley.
The Harari had vanished into the rocky ground on the slopes of the
mountains, and behind them the Italian tanks had not yet come in over
the lip of the valley.
She lifted her eyes to the sky again, where only a few wreaths of cloud
still clung to the peaks, and suddenly her whole mood changed.
Her chin came up, and new colour flooded into her cheeks her hand shook
as she pointed up between the peaks.
'Yes,' she cried. 'Yes, I've got a better idea. Look! Oh, won't 'you
look!' The tiny blue aircraft caught the sun as it banked in steeply,
turning in under the rearing granite cliffs, and it flashed like a
dragonfly in flight.
'Italian?' Gareth stared up at it.
'No! No! Vicky shook her head. 'It's Lij Mikhael's plane.
I recognize it. It came to fetch him here before.' She was laughing
almost hysterically, her eyes shining. 'He said he would send it,
that's what he was trying to tell me before he was cut off.'
'Where will it land?' Gareth demanded, and Vicky scrambled down into
the driver's compartment to direct him towards the polo field beyond
the burned and still smoking town.
They watched anxiously, all of them except Gregorius, standing on the
edge of the open field close beside the bulk of the car, all their
heads craning to watch the little blue aircraft circle.
'What the hell is he doing? 'Jake demanded angrily. 'The Eyeties will
be here before he makes up his mind.'
'He's nervous,' Gareth guessed. 'He doesn't know what the hell is
going on down here. From where he is, he can see the town has been
destroyed, and he can probably see the tanks and the trucks following
us down from the gorge.' Vicky turned from them and ran back to the
car; she climbed up on to the turret and stood high, waving both arms
above her head.
On the next circuit the little blue Puss Moth dropped lower, and they
could see the pilot's face in the side window of the cockpit peering
down at them. He banked steeply over the smoking remains of the town,
with the lower wing pointing directly at the earth and then he came
back at them, this time only ten feet above the field.
He was staring at Vicky, and with a lift of her heart she recognized
the same young white pilot as had flown Lij Mikhael. He recognized her
at the same instant, and she saw him grin and lift a hand in salute as
he flashed past.
As he came out of his next turn, he was lined up on the field for his
landing and he touched down and taxied tail-up to where they stood.
As the light aircraft rolled to a halt, they crowded up to the cabin
door. The wash of the propeller buffeted them savagely and the pilot
slid back the pane of his window and shouted above the noise of his
engine.
'I can take three small ones or two big ones.' Jake and Gareth
