The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur (бесплатные полные книги .TXT) 📗

upon itself while it gathered its strength for the next mad charge down

the gorge.

One of the Avons had capsized and was floating belly up - even its

highly stable hull had not been able to weather the   down the falls,

The crews of the other ro boats gathered themselves and then paddled

across to drag the survivors from the water and to salvage the oars and

other floating equipment. It took the combined efforts of all of them to

right the overturned Avon, and then it was almost completely dark by the

time they had it back on even keel, "Count the crates!" Nicholas

ordered. "How many have we lost?"

He could hardly credit his good fortune when Sapper shouted back,

"Eleven still on board. All present and correct." The cargo nets were

holding well. But all of them, men and women, were exhausted and soaked

through and shivering with the cold., Any attempt to go on in darkness

would be suicidal. Nicholas looked across at Mek in the nearest boat and

shook his head.

"There is a bit of slack water in the angle of the cliff." Mek pointed

towards the tail of the pool. "We might be able to find moorings for the

night."

him-

There was a stunted but tough little tree growing out of the vertical

fissure in the rock, and they used this as a bollard and made a line

fast to it. Then they lashed all the Avons together in a line down the

cliff and settled in for the night. There was no chance of hot food or

drink, and they had to make do with some cold tinned rations eaten off

the blade of a bayonet, and a few chunks of soggy injera bread.

Mek scrambled over from his own boat and huddled down close beside

Nicholas with one arm over his shoulder and his lips close to his ear.

"I have made a roll call. Another man missing when we went over the

falls. We won't find him now."

"I am not doing too well," Nicholas admitted. "Perhaps you should lead

tomorrow."

"Not your fault." Mek squeezed his shoulders. "Nobody could have done

better. It was this last waterfall-' he broke off and they listened to

it thundering away in the darkness.

"How far have we come?" Nicholas asked. "And'how much further to go?"

"It's almost impossible to tell, but I guess we are halfway to the

border. Should reach there some time tomorrow afternoon."

They were silent for a while, and then Mek asked, "What is the date

today? I have lost count of the days."

"So have  Nicholas tilted his wrist-watch so that he could read the

luminous dial in the last of the light. "Good God! It's the thirtieth

already," he said.

"Your pick-up aircraft is due at Roseires airstrip the day after

tomorrow."

"The first of April,'Nicholas agreed. "Will we make it?"

"You answer that question for me." Mek grinned  in the night without

humour. "What, chances of your fat friend being late?"

jannie is a pro. He is never late," said Nicholas. Again a silence fell,

and then Nicholas asked, "When we reach Roseires, what do you want me to

do with your share of the booty?" Nicholas kicked one of the ammunition

crates.

"Do you want to take it with you?"

"After we see you off on the plane with your fat friend, we are going to

be doing some hot-footed running from Nogo. I don't want to be carrying

any extra luggage. You take my share with you. Sell it for me - I need

the money to keep fighting here."

"You trust me?"

"You are my friend."

"Friends are the easiest to cheat - they never expect it," Nicholas told

him, and Mek punched his shoulder and chuckled.

"Get some sleep. We will have to do some hard paddling tomorrow." Mek

stood up in the Avon as she pitched and rolled gently to the push of the

current. "Sleep well, old friend," he said, and climbed across to the

boat alongside, where Tessay waited for him.

Nicholas braced his back against the soft pneumatic gunwale of the Avon

and took Royan in his arms. She sat between his knees and leaned back

against his chest, shivering in her sodden clothes.

After a while her shivering abated, and she murmured, "You make a very

good hot'water bottle."

"That's one reason for keeping me around on a permanent basis," he said,

and stroked her wet hair. She did not answer him, but snuggled closer,

and a short while after, wards her breathing slowed as she fell into an

exhausted sleep.

Although he was cold and stiff and his shoulders ached and his palms

were blistered from wrestling with the steering oar, he could not find

sleep as readily as she had.

Now that the prospect of reaching the airstrip at Roseires loomed

closer, he was troubled by problems other than those of simply

navigating the river and battling his way  Wot through Nogo's men. Those

were enemies he could recognize and fight; but there was something more

than that which he would soon have to face.

Royan stirred in his arrns and muttered something he could not catch.

She was dreaming and talking in her sleep.

He held her gently and she settled down. again. He had started to drift

off himself when she spoke again, this time quite clearly. "I am sorry,

Nicky. Don't hate me for it.

I couldn't let you-' her words slurred and he could make no sense of the

rest of it.

He was fully awake now, her words aggravating his doubts and misgivings.

During the rest of that night he slept only intermittently, and his rest

was troubled by dreams as distressing as hers must have been to hern the

pre-dawn darkness he shook Royan gently.

She moaned and came awake slowly and reluctantly.

They bolted down a few mouthfuls of the cold rations that remained from

the previous night. Then, as dawn lit the gorge just enough for them to

see the surface of the river and the obstacles ahead, they pushed off

from their moorings and the yellow boats strung out down the current.

The battle against the river began all over again.

The cloud cover was still low and unbroken, and the rain squalls swept

over them at intervals. They kept going all that morning, and slowly the

mood of the river began to ameliorate. The current was not so swift and

treacherous, and the banks not so high and rugged.

It was midafternoon and the clouds were still closed in solidly overhead

as they entered a stretch where the river threaded itself through a

series of bluffs and headlands, and they came upon another set of

rapids. Perhaps Nicholas was more expert in his technique by now, for

they swept through them without mishap, and it seemed to him that each

stretch of white water was progressively less severe than the last.

"I think we are through the worst of it now," he told Royan as she sat

on the deck below him. "The gradient and the fall of the river are

definitely more gentle now. I think it is flattening out as we approach

the plains of the Sudan."

"How much further to Roseires?" she asked.

"I don't know, but the border can't be too far ahead now."

Nicholas and Mek were keeping the flotilla closed up in line astern, so

that orders could be shouted across the gaps between them and all the

boats kept under their command.

Nicholas steered for the deeper water on the outside of the next wide