grabbed his grandson by one arm, shaking him agitatedly as he demanded
details and Gregorius replied with as much animation, his eyes shining
as he mimed the charge of the lion, and the act of hurling the bottle
and the crushing of its skull.
Comparative silence had fallen over the smoky, dimlit cavern, and
hundreds of guests craned forward to hear the details of the hunt. In
that silence, the Ras walked down to where Jake sat. Stepping, without
looking, into various bowls of food and kicking over a jug of tea, he
reached the big curly-headed American and lifted him to his feet.
'How do you do?' he asked, with great emotion, tears of admiration in
his eyes for the man who could kill a lion with his bare hands.
Forty years before, the Ras had broken four broad-bladed spears before
he had put a blade in the heart of his own lion.
'Never better, friend,' Jake grunted, clumsy with embarrassment,
and the Ras embraced him fiercely before leading him back to the head
of the board.
Irritably the Ras kicked one of his younger sons in the ribs,
forcing him to vacate the seat on his right hand where he now placed
Jake.
Jake looked across at Vicky and rolled his eyes helplessly as the
Ras began to ladle steaming wat on to a huge white round of bread and
roll it into a torpedo that would have daunted a battle cruiser. Jake
took a deep breath and opened his mouth wide, as the Ras lifted the
dainty morsel the way an executioner lifts his sword.
'How do you do?' he said, and with another hoot of glee thrust it in
to the her.
The Colonel and all the officers of the Third Battalion were exhausted
from long hours of forced march and, by the time they reached the Wells
of Chaldi, were anxious only to see their tents erected and their cots
made up after that they were quite content that the Major be left to
use his own initiative.
Castelani sited his twelve machine guns in the sides of the valley
where they commanded a full arc of fire, and below them he placed his
rifle trenches. The men sank the earthworks swiftly and with little
noise in the loose sandy soil, and they buttressed their trenches and
machine-gun nests with sandbags.
The mortar company he held well back, protected by both rifle trenches
and machine-gun nests, from where they could drop their mortar bombs
across the whole area of the wells with complete impunity.
While his men worked, Castelani personally paced out distances in front
of his de fences and supervised the placing of the painted metal
markers, so that his gunners would be able to fire over accurately
ranged sights. Then he hurried back to chivvy along the ammunition
parties who staggered up in the darkness, slipping in the sandy soil
and cursing softly, but with feeling, under the burden of the heavy
wooden cases.
All that night he was tireless, and any man who laid down his shovel
for a few minutes of rest took the risk of being pounced upon by that
looming figure, the stentorian voice restrained to a husky but
