'All my men know the river,' Mek told him, and shouted his orders. Each
of them hurried to the Avon he had been allocated. Nicholas gave Royan a
boost over the gunwale of their boat, and then helped his men launch her
down the rocky bank. As soon as the hull floated free they scrambled
aboard and each man grabbed a paddle.
As they bent to their paddles, Nicholas Saw at once that every man of
his crew was indeed a riverman, as Mek had boasted. They pulled strongly
but smoothly, and the light inflatable craft shot out into the main
stream of the Nile.
The Avons were designed to accommodate sixteen, and were lightly loaded.
The ammunition cases that held the grave goods from the tomb were bulky
but weighed little, and there were not more than a dozen people in any
one boat. They all floated high and handled well.
'Bad water ahead,' Nicholas told Royan grimly. 'All the way to the
Sudanese border.' He stood at the steering sweep in the stem, from where
he had a good forward view.
Royan crouched at his feet, clinging to on of the safety straps and
trying to keep out of the way of the oarsmen.
They cut across the current that was scouring the great stone basin
below the falls, and Nicholas lined up for the narrow heads through
which the river was escaping to the West. He looked up at the sky and
saw through the spray that the rain clouds were low and purple. They
seemed to sag down upon the tops of the tall cliffs.
'Luck starting to run our way,' he told Royan. 'Even with the helicopter
they won't be able to find us in this Weather.'
He glanced at his Rolex and the spray was heading the glass. 'Couple of
hours until nightfall. We should be able to put a few miles of river
behind us before we are forced to stop for the night.'
He looked back over his stem and saw the rest of the little flotilla
bobbing along behind him. The Avons were reflective yellow in colour and
stood out brilliantly even in the mist and murk of the gorge. He lifted
his clenched fist high in the signal to advance, and from the following
boat Mek repeated the gesture and grinned at him through his beard.
The river grabbed them and they shot through its portals into the
narrow, twisted gut of the Nile. The men at the oars stopped paddling,
and let the river take them.
All they could do now was to help Nicholas to steer her through any
desperate moments, and they crouched ready along the gunwales.
The high water in the gorge had covered many of the reefs of rock, but
their presence below the surface was clearly marked by the waters that
humped up in standing waves or foamed white in the narrows between them.
The flood reached up high on either bank, dashing against the cliffs of
the sub-gorge. If an Avon overturned, or even if a crew member were
thrown overboard there would be no place on this river to heave-to and
pick up survivors.
658 95, Nicholas stood high and craned ahead. He had to pick his route
well in advance, and once committed he had to steer her through. It all
depended on his ability to read the river and judge her mods. He was out
of practice, and he had that tight, hard cannonball of fear in the pit
of his belly as he put the long sweep over and steered for the first run
