With each man performing his own task skilfully, one at a time the cars
were lowered on to the bobbing raft. There its wheels were hastily
lashed and it was hauled carefully towards the beach by the land
line.
As soon as the raft ran aground on the sloping yellow sand, Jake
started the engine while Gregorius clamped the footboards into place.
Then with the engine revving noisily and the raft swaying dangerously,
it rolled over the footboards and up the slope to park well above the
high-water mark. Then the raft was hauled back alongside the schooner
for its next load.
Although they worked as swiftly as safety would allow, the hours sped
away just as swiftly, and it was late afternoon when the last load of
fuel drums and wooden cases, with Vicky Camberwell sitting on top of
the precarious load, made the short crossing to the beach.
Almost the instant it left the ship's side, the diesel thumped into
life, the anchor chain rattled in over the bows and Papadopoulos gave
the order to cast off the line of the raft.
By the time Vicky jumped down on the crunchy sand, the Hirondelle was
moving steadily out between the horns of the bay, and spreading her
wings of white canvas to the evening breeze. The four of them stood
upon the beach in the lowering dusk and watched her go. None of them
waved, and yet they all felt a loss at her going. Stinking slaver,
with a crew of pirates, yet she had been their link with the outer
world. HirondeUe cleared the cliffs and caught the full drive of the
wind, heeled eagerly and went away, with her wake leaving a long oily
slick across the surface long after she had disappeared into the
Gulf.
Jake broke the spell of silence and loneliness that held them.
'All right, my children. Let's make camp.' They had landed on the
open beach between the ruined city and the headland, and now the
evening wind was sweeping dust and grit across their exposed
position.
Jake selected a sheltered hollow under the lee of the ruins, and they
moved the cars up and parked them in the protective hollow square of
the laager.
The ancient buildings were choked with piled sand and thick with the
spiny camel-thorn growth that blocked the narrow streets. While
Jake and Gregorius checked the fuelling and lubrication of the
vehicles, and Gareth scraped a fireplace against a shielding stone
wall, Vicky wandered off to explore the ruins in the dusk.
She did not go far. A tangible sense of menace and human suffering
seemed to emanate from the rubble of buildings that had been burned
over a century before. It made her skin crawl, but she picked her way
cautiously along a narrow alleyway that opened at last into an open
square.
She knew instinctively that this had been the trading square of the
slave city and she imagined the long chained lines of human beings.
The pervading aura of their misery still persisted. She wondered if
she could capture it on paper, and make her readers see that it had not
changed. Once again, a consuming greed was to place a nation in
