The Secret War (24 page)

Immediately the screen was pulled across the entrance it became pitch dark inside, but Lovelace caught a glimpse of Valerie's face before the light was blotted out and saw that she had fainted.

The place stank worse than any kennel; with the mixed odours of goats, pigs, and filthy humanity. Almost instantly the hundreds of fleas which infested it settled upon them.

For a long time they were too broken and bemused even to stir from the places where they had fallen. Lovelace, knowing what was in store for them, was thinking feverishly of the knives of the Danakil women as they would cut into his shrinking flesh, when Christopher roused at last and muttered: “If they're going to kill us, why the hell don't they get on with it?”

Lovelace knew the answer. They were being kept for a night's entertainment. It was highly probable that
never before in its history had this village experienced the undreamed-of pleasure which could be provided by the skilful mutilation of two white men and a white woman. If they were dead before the morning they would be lucky and the Danakils intensely disappointed. His one prayer was that they might all go mad and cease to suffer early in the game, but he forebore to voice his thoughts in case Valerie had regained consciousness.

Actually she had never quite lost it, and now she had recovered sufficiently to speak clearly again. With uncanny precision she guessed his thoughts, and said:

“It seems years since we crashed in the plane, but it can't be midday yet. That means we've got a long while to wait until sundown.”

Christopher stretched his bruised arms, clasping and unclasping his stiff fingers. Their captors had not troubled to bind them. The ghastly thought had come to him that, since his gun had gone, he had better strangle Valerie, because he loved her. As he moved she spoke again, deliberately and bitterly.

“I wish some of the people who want to go to war to save the Abyssinians were in our place now. They don't understand—they can't. These brutes are worse than animals—worse than reptiles—even a snake doesn't bite you unless you provoke it in some way. I've never seen such fiendish cruelty as stared at me out of the eyes of these loathsome creatures when they dragged us here, and the women who met us looked even more ferocious than the men. They're not human, but soulless devils incarnate whose one delight is inflicting pain.”

Her voice rose to a shrill note of hysteria. “I don't care any more for ideals and all the senseless nonsense that is talked about Leagues and Covenants and Treaties. I hope the Italians win! I hope they wipe these people out, man, woman and child. Destroy them and blast them limb from limb until there's not a single one of them left to pollute the decent earth they tread on.”

As she ceased speaking the first bomb fell.

The explosion occurred with such frightful suddenness that for a second they did not grasp what was happening. The ground they lay on shuddered under the impact, a shower of dried mud rattled down from the unseen walls and roof of the hut, the hot dark air quivered, and the crash nearly burst their ear-drums. There came another before the echoing reverberations of the first, thrown back from the cliff face, had subsided.

“Bombs!” yelled Lovelace, staggering to his feet. “Quick—we must get out of this!”

He kicked aside the wicket covering the entrance to the hut, and with the others hard on his heels, dashed into the open. Any guards who might have been keeping watch a moment earlier had disappeared. In the blinding sunlight a ghastly spectacle lay before them.

A third of the village had been blown to fragments. Men, women and children shrieked and screamed as they fled in all directions; here and there brown figures lay in terribly distorted attitudes, some deadly still in pools of glistening blood, others contorted into fantastic shapes by an agony of pain.

Valerie glimpsed one headless body and another with both legs blown away as Lovelace, gripping her by the arm, raced her across the tough grass out into the open.

Another bomb burst behind them. It was not big stuff, Lovelace knew, otherwise there would have been only great craters where the village stood, but extremely deadly, nevertheless. The attacker was using light bombs with instantaneous fuses specially designed for spreading their metal laterally and causing casualties to troops rather than wrecking buildings. Tiny pieces of
jagged steel, capable of inflicting frightful wounds, sang past them as they ran.

Three hundred yards from the wreck of the village he pulled up for a second. Christopher was close behind. They halted, gasping for breath after their desperate race.

An intensely bright light that was almost unbearable to look upon suddenly appeared on the edge of the remaining huts. Instantly the whole lot burst into flames like a stand of matches upon which the end of a lighted cigarette has been dropped.

A pitiful whimper in the tall grass near by caused Valerie to switch round just as Lovelace was urging her on again. It came from a naked child, about three years old, who had been scampering away in front of them. A large piece of the last explosive bomb had taken off his right foot, severing it at the ankle, so that it now hung from the leg by only a shred of skin.

She ran to him and snatched him up, regardless of the blood which poured over her soiled skirt. The others seized her by the arms and forced her on while the child struggled wildly in her fierce grip; more terrified to find itself clutched to the breast of a white woman than at the pain of its shattered limb.

The bombing had ceased and they eased their pace after they had covered another hundred yards. Valerie sank down exhausted with her quivering burden. As she fell she burst into a passionate flood of tears.

“The brutes!” she sobbed. “The fiends!—how could they? Oh, my lamb, my lamb, what have they done to you?”

Christopher bent over her. The old fanatic gleam had come back into his dark eyes. “This is war,” he muttered. “War! The curse of humanity. The horror we're out to stop. Can you ever doubt again that the
Millers of God
are right? Oh, how I wish I'd killed that devil Zarrif when I had the chance.”

“He's coming down.” Lovelace was staring upward
into the fierce blue sky where a single Italian war-plane circled gracefully above their heads. “Look! he's coming down.”

The village was now only a smouldering pile of ruins; the surviving Danakils had disappeared as though by magic. As they watched the plane circled lower, seeking an even stretch of the coarse grass on which to land. It came to earth a few hundred yards away.

A man got out of it and walked over to a hummock on which he halted to scan the surrounding country.

Christopher waved, the man waved back, and they started to run towards him, Valerie still clutching the child whose moans had grown more feeble now.

As they approached they saw that the man was lithe and dark and handsome. He wore a pair of beautifully cut breeches, field-boots that shone with the reflection of the sun, an open-necked sleeveless shirt, and an air-helmet. He was smoking a cigarette with quiet enjoyment.

A rifle cracked and the bullet sent up a little spurt of dust just to his left; another zipped a rock in the rear. Some of the Danakils who had managed to retain their weapons had now regained their courage. He lifted the hand that held his cigarette; a machine-gun on the plane began to sweep a rocky patch where the survivors of the massacre had taken refuge, and the feeble attempt at retaliation was silenced.

The dark man smiled as the dishevelled fugitives came panting up to him; bringing his heels together, he gave the Fascist salute as he introduced himself. “Lieutenant Count Giulio Dolomenchi.”

Still sobbing, Valerie held out the child towards him. “Look!” she gasped. “Look what you've done! How could you?”

He made a little gesture of distress and spoke in Italian. “Signorina, we are at war. Think, too, of what these barbarous people would have done to
you
had I not seen the wreckage of your plane. I risked the
lives of my men and myself to land here on the chance that I might be in time to save white airmen from mutilation.”

She knew enough Italian to catch the drift of what he said, and felt that his argument was unanswerable. Her pity for the child fought with her gratitude at the thought of the inexpressible horrors from which Lieutenant Count Dolomenchi had rescued them.

Lovelace was already stammering their thanks and the Lieutenant glanced at him quickly. “You are English—are you not?—but you can tell me about yourselves later. Into the plane, please, now. They will be shooting at us again and we shall get sunstroke if we remain here much longer. Signorina, that child is dead, I fear, so you had better leave it.”

It was true. The little Danakil had ceased to moan and struggle. Its life-blood had drained from it and the small body now lay limp in Valerie's arms. She laid it down in the grass and, after a last sorrowful glance, turned towards the war-plane.

The crew of Italian airmen helped them up into the narrow cabin. Lieutenant Count Dolomenchi mounted to the pilot's seat; the machine taxied forward, bumped a little, and they were in the air again. The desert was still and lifeless below them as they climbed. Where the village had been there was now only a pile of blackened ash with a few wisps of smoke curling up from it.

Christopher was staring down at the ruin they were leaving behind them. “How quickly it burnt once it caught fire,” he muttered to Lovelace.

One of the airmen overheard him and said in English: “I used explosives first—just to scare them out—but once we saw you running from the village I dropped one of our new incendiary bombs to finish it.”

“I thought as much,” Lovelace nodded. “From the frightful glare it must have been a pretty big chap.”

“No, no, quite small.” The Italian smiled. “They weigh only one kilo, about two English pounds, but
they are thermite and develop a heat of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Anyone within ten yards of one when it bursts would be scorched to death instantly. They would bore a hole through the steel decks of your most heavily-armoured battleships, and come straight out through their bottoms too, as easily as a rifle bullet would go through an orange.”

Lovelace would have liked to have heard more of this new weapon, but the Italian excused himself with the plea that he and his comrades must continue the reconnaissance upon which they were engaged.

The war-plane was now well above the level of the towering cliff, and turned north-by-west in the direction of Dessye. As further ranges of cliffs appeared, they climbed higher and higher while the observers took innumerable photographs of the wild gorges, and hardly discernible goat tracks, beneath them.

The three passengers had fallen silent. They were now feeling the reaction from the excitement of their escape and the minor misfortunes resulting from their grim ordeal. All of them were badly bruised from the blows they had received, and had numerous small cuts from knives and spears upon their backs and thighs.

Many of the fleas which had attacked them in the hut were still upon them, and although they had not been exposed to the sun for any length of time, its rays were so strong that they had been badly scorched about their necks and shoulders.

As the reconnaissance progressed they lapsed into a semi-stupor. Their bodies ached, itched and burned intolerably, yet they were too dead-beat to do anything but crouch on the narrow seats they had been given and pray that the flight would soon be over.

Once the English-speaking Italian roused them and, pointing downwards with a grin, said, “Look, we are over Dessye.”

Lovelace peered down. From the air the place appeared much as Diredawa had that morning except,
that it was somewhat larger and set in a valley among mountains instead of in a plain. There were the same round native
tuculs;
the same cluster of whitish tin-roofed buildings and churches in its centre; the same lack of plan in its straggling outlay. In the rarefied mountain air, however, this landmap stood out with startling clearness, and he could see swarms of ant-like creatures moving about their business below. To one side of the town several hundred white tents and marquees had been erected; regular lines of little oblong things near them could only be rows of stationary tanks and lorries. The rumour that the Italians had taken Dessye was true, then.

As they flew on they passed over an artillery park and veering northward saw a long, long, snake-like stream of slowly moving transport emerging from the entrance of a mountain pass. Evidently the invaders were forming a new base at the Emperor's old headquarters before pushing on again. They still had a hundred-and-fifty miles to go, though, Lovelace reckoned, before they could enter Addis. Their recent progress had been remarkable, but they were very far from having won as yet.

He closed his eyes and dropped back in his seat: too tired and ill to watch the scene beneath them any longer. Valerie and Christopher were huddled up in an uneasy doze opposite to him. None of them noticed when the plane changed its direction again, after having made three-quarters of a great circle from Assab, over Diredawa and Dessye, to head back towards the Red Sea. They did not open their eyes again until it landed at a large, military aerodrome.

Lovelace climbed stiffly out and, seeing the long rows of hangars with the white houses of quite a considerable town beyond in the distance, asked where they were.

“Assab, our port in Southern Eritrea,” said Count Dolomenchi. “It is a devilish place, but while the war lasts one must put up with such discomforts.”

“Assab,” repeated Lovelace dully. “Then we're only just over the border from French Somaliland. Jibuti, from where we started this morning, can't be much more than a hundred miles along the coast from here. We could get there overnight if there's a steamer sailing, and make a fresh start for Addis Ababa to-morrow.”