girls' room,' she told him. 'And you are definitely not invited.'
'Don't go wandering off too far, and no swimming this time,' he ordered. 'You'll get enough of that tomorrow.'
'I hear and obey, O great white Bwana. ' She gave him a sarcastic curtsy and set off out of the perimeter of the burned village.
Sean watched her go uneasily and was about to call another warning after her when there was a shout from the papyrus bed and his attention was diverted from Claudia.
He jumped up. 'What is it, Job?' he yelled, and went down to the water's edge.
There were more confused shouts and splashing from the depths of the papyrus. Then Job and Matatu emerged, dragging something long and black and waterlogged between them.
'Our first bit of luck.' Sean grinned at Riccardo and slapped him on the shoulder.
It was a traditional mokorro dugout canoe, about seventeen feet long, hewn from a single log of the sausage tree, Kigeha africana.
The body of the dugout was just wide enough for a person to sit ISO in it, but it was usually propelled by a man standing in the stem and wielding a long punt pole.
Job tipped the water out of the craft and they examined it carefully. The hull had been repaired and caulked in a few places but seemed reasonably sound. Search the village,' Sean ordered. 'They must have had caulking material here. See if you can find it, then send Dedan and Pumula to cut a couple of punt poles. Claudia screamed, and they all spun to face the sound. she screamed again. The sound was strangely muffled and far off, and Sean began to run, snatching up his rifle from where he had left it beside the nearest burned-out hut.
'Claudia!' he yelled. 'Where are you?' Only his echo mocked him from the forest: 'Where are you?... are You?'
nm 9 When Claudia stood up and rebuckled her belt, she found it came in easily a full two notches shorter around her waist. She smiled down at her belly with approval. Now it was no longer flat but definitely concave. The long march and frugal rations had stripped every last ounce of fat from her frame.
'Strange how in an age of plenty we set out to starve ourselves.'
She smiled again. 'I'm going to enjoy putting on those lost pounds, plenty of pasta and red wine when I get home,' She started back toward the village, then realized that in her search for privacy she had gone further than she had intended and that a thicket of wiry thorn brush blocked her way back. She turned aside to circumvent it and came upon a broad pathway running directly down through the bush toward the edge of the swarnd. She followed it thankfully.
Claudia did not realize that she was following a hippo road, one of the wide thoroughfares the great amphibians followed on their nightly forays into the forest. However, the road had not been used for rnny months. The hippopotamus in the area had been decimated along with the other game. She was in a hurry to get back to her father, and she was feeling slightly uneasy at her isolation from the rest of the party. She strode down the pathway, just short of a run.
Ahead of her an old mat of dried papyrus stems was spread across the road from side to side. It had obviously been placed there by the previous occupants of the village, and although it served no purpose that Claudia could imagine, it was no obstacle to her progress and she stepped onto it without slackening her pace.
The Pitfall had been dug for the purpose of trapping a hippopotamus. It was ten feet deep with fannelshoped sides that would tumble one of the huge beasts down into its depth and wedge it securely between the earthen walls. The opening was covered by branches strong enough to carry the weight of a man or a lesser animal, but not that of a hippo. Over these branches the builders had spread the papyrus stems.
However, the pitfall had been built a long time previously and both branches and mat had rotted and weakened. They collapsed under Claudia's weight, and she screamed as she dropped through into the pit beneath, screamed again as she hit the sloping side and bounced off it. The bottom of the pit was covered with a few inches of stagnant water that had seeped into it. Claudia landed awkwardly with one leg twisted up under her and then rolled onto her back in the mud.
The breath had been driven from her lungs and there was a fierce pain in her left knee. For a few minutes she could not respond to the faint shouts she heard from above. She sat up, clutching her injured knee to her chest and gasping wildly to fill her agonized lungs. At last she managed a strangled shout.
'Here! I'm here!'
'Are you all right?' Sean's head appeared above her, peering down anxiously.
'I think so!' she gasped, and tried to stand up, but the pain shot through her knee and she fell back. 'My knee,' she said.
'Hold on. I'm coming down.' Sean's head withdrew. She heard voices, Job and Matatu and her father. Then a coil of nylon rope dropped down toward her, unfurling as it fell. Sean lowered himself swiftly down the rope and dropped the last few feet to land with a splash in the mud beside her.
'I'm sorry,' she said contritely. 'I guess I've done it again.'
'Don't apologize.' He grinned. 'I'm not conditioned to it. For once it's not your fault. Let's take a look at your leg.'
He squatted beside her. 'Move your foot. Capital! Can you bend your knee? Splendid! At least no bones broken. That's a relief. Let's get you out of this hole.' He tied a loop in the end of the rope, slipped it over her head and shoulders, and settled it under her armpits.
'Okay, Job,' he called up. 'Take her up. Gently, man, gently.'
As soon as they reached ground level, Sean made a more thorough examination of her knee.
He rolled up the leg of her jeans and said, 'Shit!'
As a Scout commander he had extensive experience of the type of injury a paratrooper is prone to-broken bones, torn cartilage, sprained ligaments in ankle and knee. Already Claudia's knee was ballooning and the first tinge of bruising colored the smooth tanned skin.
'This might hurt a little,' he warned, and manipulated her leg gently.
'Ouch!' she said. 'That's damned sore.'
'Okay.' He nodded. 'It's the medial ligament. I don't think you've torn it, it would be more painful if you had. Probably just sprained it.'
'What does that mean?' she asked.
'Three days,' he replied. 'You won't be walking on it for at least three days.'
He put his arm around her shoulders. 'Can you stand up?' he asked. When she nodded, he helped her to her feet. She leaned against him, standing on her good leg.
'Try putting a little weight on it,' he said.
immediately she exclaimed with pain. 'No, I can't use it.'
He stopped, picked her up in his arms as though she were a child, and carried her back to the village. She was surprised by his strength, and although her knee was beginning to throb, she relaxed in his arms. It was a good feeling. Papa had carried her like this when she was a little girl, and she had to resist the urge to lay her head against Sean's shoulder.
When they reached the village, he set her down in the clearing, and Matatu ran to fetch his pack. Her injury had diverted Riccardo's attention from his own troubles, and he came to fuss over his little girl in a way which ordinarily would have annoyed her.
Now she submitted to it, thankful for his revived animation and attention.
Sean strapped the knee with an elastic bandage from his first aid kit and gave her an anti inflammatory tablet to swallow with hot tea.
'That's about all we can do for it,' he told her, and sat back.
'Only thing that will fix it is time.
'Why did you say three days?'
'It takes that long. I've seen a hundred knees just like yours, except that they were usually a lot more hairy and not nearly as pretty. 'That's a compliment.' She raised an eyebrow. 'You're getting soft, Colonel.'
'Part of the treatment, and of course totally insincere,' he assured her with a grin. 'The only question now, ducky, is what on earth are we going to do with you?'
'Leave me here,' she said promptly.
'Are you out of your mind?' he asked. Riccardo backed him up immediately.
'That's out of the question.'
'Look at it this way,' she reasoned calmly. 'I can't move for three days, by which time your elephant will be long gone, Papa.'
She held up her hand to forestall his argument. 'We can't go back.
You can't carry me. I can't walk. We would have to sit here anyway.'
'We can't leave you alone. Don't be ridiculous.'
'No,' she agreed. 'But you can leave someone to look after me while you go on after Tukutela.'
'No.' Riccardo shook his head.
'Sean,' she appealed to him. 'Make him see that it's the sensible thing to do.'
He stared at her, and the admiration she saw in his gaze gave her a full warm feeling in her chest.
'Damn it' he said softly. 'You're all right.'
'Tell him it'll only be for a few days, Sean. We all know how much
