the sand desert and formed a narrow causeway through the shifting
dunes. They crept following its winding course slowly across this
rocky bridge, for twelve miles, while the dunes rose on each side of
them.
Vicky thought that this was much like the passage of the Red Sea by the
fleeing Israelites. Even the dunes seemed like frozen waves that might
at each moment come crashing down to swamp them and she despaired that
she could ever adequately describe the wild and disordered beauty of
this multicoloured sea of sand.
They emerged at last and with startling suddenness into the dry flat
grasslands of the Ethiopian lowlands. The desert proper was at last
behind them and although this was a harsh and and savannah,
there was, at least, the occasional thorn tree and an almost unbroken
carpet of se red grass the grass was so amongst the low thorny scrub.
Altho fine and dry that all colour had been bleached from it by the
sun, it shone silver and stiff as though coated with hoar frost.
Most cheering of all was the distant but discernible blue outline of
the far mountains. Now they hovered at the edge of their awareness,
a far beacon calling them onward.
Over the short crisp grass, the four vehicles roared forward joyously,
bumping through an occasional ant-bear hole and flattening the clumps
of low them that stood in their way as they plunged ahead.
In the last glimmering of the day, just when Jake had decided to halt
the day's march, the flat land ahead of them opened miraculously and
they looked down into the steep boulder-strewn gorge of the Awash
River fifty feet below them. They climbed out of the parked vehicles
and gathered stiffly in a small group on the lip of the ravine, 'There
is Ethiopia, two hundred yards away. It's two years since last I stood
upon the soil of my own country,' said Gregorius, his big dark eyes
catching the last of the light.
He stopped himself and explained. 'The river rises in the high country
near Addis Ababa and comes down one of the gorges into the lowland. A
short distance downstream from here it ends in a shallow swamp. There
its waters sink away into the desert sand and disappear.
Here we are standing on French territory still, ahead of us is
Ethiopia, there far to the north is Italian Eritrea.'
'How far is it to the Wells of Chaldi?'Gareth interrupted.
That for him was the end of the rainbow and the pot of gold.
Gregorius shrugged. 'Another forty miles, perhaps.'
'How do we get across this lot?' Jake muttered, staring down into the
dim depths of the ravine where the shallow pools still glowed dull
silver.
'Upstream there is an old camel route to J ibuti,' Gregorius told him.
'We might have to dig out the banks a little, but I think we'll be able
to cross.'
'I hope you are right,' Gareth told him. 'It's a long way home, if we
have to go back.' The view of water that she had glimpsed in the
depths of the ravine haunted Vicky Camberwell during the night. She
dreamed of foaming mountain streams and spilling waterfalls, of
