Sheba. Part 33

They moved down the other side and walked forward in the general direction of the place where they had left the camels. All tracks had been swept away by the storm, and Kane's heart sank. He stopped and whistled several times, the sound falling shrill on the cold night air, but there was no answering cry.

They separated, Kane going one way, Jamal another, but it was no good. An hour later, they returned to the camp without the camels.

Cunningham was sitting outside the camp, wearing his Bedouin robes against the chill of the night. He rose to meet them, and as they approached, his wife emerged from the tent and joined him.

'No luck,' Kane told them. 'They're probably miles away by now. I'm afraid our last goatskin of water has gone with them as well.'

Cunningham slipped an arm around his wife's shoulders. 'What do we do?'

Kane shrugged. 'There isn't any choice - we start walking.'

'But the nearest water's at Shabwa and that's at least forty miles away,' Cunningham said. 'It's impossible - especially for Ruth.'

Kane went across to the truck, leaned inside the cab and unscrewed the compa.s.s from its fixing. When he turned, his face was grim. 'There aren't any ifs or buts about it. We walk, and we walk now. With luck we can cover maybe twenty or twenty-five miles before daylight. If we don't, we're finished.'

Cunningham's shoulders sagged and he turned to his wife. 'In a way, I got you into this. I want you to know that I'm sorry.'

She touched his face gently and smiled. 'There's no place I'd rather be.'

They might have been alone as they stood there, staring into each other's eyes, and Kane turned away quickly and went to speak to Jamal.

SIXTEEN.

A THOROUGH SEARCH of the camp produced plenty of food, but only one aluminium water-bottle. When they left at midnight, Kane carried it slung over one shoulder.

Split four ways, its contents were virtually useless, but they had no choice and he was determined it should not be used until the last possible moment.

He led the way at a fast pace, using the compa.s.s regularly to check on direction. It was bitterly cold and he felt quite fresh and full of energy. It was ironic to think that, within another six hours, they would be exposed to the merciless rays of the sun. How long they would be able to keep going after that was anyone's guess.

It was the woman who was going to be the problem. He paused to consult the compa.s.s again and looked back over his shoulder. Jamal was close behind, with Cunningham and his wife thirty yards in the rear.

Kane started forward again, trying to follow the easy way through the dunes. On several occasions this proved impossible, and they were forced to toil up the steep side of some sand mountain, every step an effort.

After some two hours, they came out of the dunes and moved down towards a vast flat plain that disappeared into the distance, hard-baked and strewn with gravel. Kane paused to take a bearing, and Jamal came up behind and tapped him on the shoulder. As Kane turned, the Somali pointed back.

Cunningham and his wife were a good two hundred yards away, and Kane sat down in the sand and waited. As they approached, he stood up to meet them, but Ruth Cunningham slipped down to the ground with a heavy sigh. 'I feel as if I've walked twenty miles.'

'I'm afraid we've only done eight or nine at the most,' Kane told her. 'We must cover at least twenty-five before the full heat of the sun hits us or we don't stand a chance.'

'It's all right for you,' Cunningham said, 'but Ruth can't stand the pace. You're going too fast.'

She quickly placed a hand on his arm. 'Gavin is only stating the obvious, John. Don't worry about me. I'll be all right.'

'I know it's tough,' Kane said, 'but it's got to be done.'

Cunningham stood up. 'Well, what are we waiting for?'

It took them almost three hours to cross the plain and they moved rapidly on its hard-baked surface. Ruth Cunningham was doing much better, and when they pa.s.sed out of the plain and moved into the sand dunes on the other side, they were bunched closely together.

Kane felt no fatigue at all and his long legs, toughened by years of hard living, strode effortlessly over the ground. His mind was not on the present, but on the morning and what it would bring. He pushed the thought away from him and tried to think of other things.

It was then that he remembered that Alexias had done this journey before them and without a compa.s.s. He started to go over the ma.n.u.script again in his mind, trying to recapture again that vivid image of the man that had come to him after reading it for the first time.

He must have been tough, that much was obvious. Leather and whipcord and an unyielding will. A man who believed in his destiny and in his ability to conquer all obstacles. And yet, were those things enough? There must have been something else. Something which had brought him walking out of the desert on his own two feet when, by all logic, he should have died. A woman, perhaps, waiting for him back home?

It was a question to which there could be no answer and he paused to check on their direction again. It was almost five o'clock, and he sat down and waited for the others to catch up to him.

Ruth Cunningham looked white and drawn in the pale light of the waning moon, and her husband seemed anxious. He gently eased her down beside Kane, and Jamal opened a knapsack and took out dates and boiled rice, which he handed round.

Ruth Cunningham tried to wave her share away, but Kane took it from the Somali and held it out to her. 'You must keep up your strength.'

She smiled wanly and put some of the boiled rice into her mouth. Cunningham said, 'How far do you think we've come?'

Kane shrugged. 'Twenty to twenty-five miles. We made good time across the plain.'

Cunningham looked up into the vast bowl of the sky. 'It seems to be getting lighter.'

'Dawn in an hour,' Kane said. 'We've got perhaps another hour after that before the sun really starts giving us trouble.'

'And then what?'

Kane shrugged. 'We'll worry about that when the time comes.'

He got to his feet and started forward again, and when he glanced back over his shoulder from the top of the next dune, they were trailing close behind him, walking strongly.

They covered another seven or eight miles before the sun slipped up over the edge of the horizon, a blood-red disc whose heat warmed them pleasantly, chasing the cold of the night from their bones.

Kane increased his stride, his eyes on the horizon, watching the sun rise into the heavens with something like despair in his heart. For the first time it occurred to him that it was useless, that what they were attempting was impossible. If they were still walking at noon, it would be a miracle.

The sun was an orange ball of fire and its rays burned their way into his skull. He pulled the ends of the head-cloth across his face, leaving only the eyes free, as a slight breeze lifted dust from the ground.

There was no air to draw into his lungs, only the fiery breath of the sun, searing the flesh and cracking the lips, turning his throat into a dry tunnel of dust.

He began to think about the water-bottle and his fingers went to it. As he plodded on, he looked down at it, imagining the coolness of the water inside, its wetness, the feel of it trickling down his burning throat and spreading throughout his body. He pushed the bottle round to the small of his back where he couldn't see it any longer and started the slow climb up the side of a large sand dune.

When he reached the top, his limbs were tired for the first time and he paused, trembling with effort, feeling the sweat trickling from every pore in his flesh, draining his body of the liquid needed to live.

He shaded his eyes and gazed before him and suddenly he caught a flash of scarlet as the sun sparkled on something in the distance. It was the wrecked Rapide in which he and Ruth had crashed four days previously.

He was filled with a sudden wild hope. The plane had carried a jerrycan filled with water. Allowing for the lapse of time and the great heat, there was still a good chance that some of it remained.

It occurred to him with something of a shock, that he had not checked on his companions for a considerable time. He turned to look back and saw Jamal at the bottom of the sand dune, Ruth Cunningham cradled in his great arms. Cunningham was struggling up the steep slope and his eyes burned feverishly in his swollen face.

He fell on his knees a few feet away from Kane, and pa.s.sed a hand slowly across his face. Finally, he forced himself upright, and when he spoke, his voice seemed to come from a great distance. 'We've got to rest.'

Kane tried to moisten cracked lips. 'We must keep moving.'