The Quest of Julian Day (55 page)

The fourth attack came only a moment after I had regained the trench and, having massacred the natives who were in the open, O'Kieff now made the trench his objective.

‘Heads down!' Harry yelled as the first bullets sent the sand spurting up a few feet in front of us, and we crouched there in the bottom of our ditch while the shots clanged and thudded into the water-containers and packing cases which formed our parapet.

It was appallingly hot, which I put down to our exertions, and it was only later, while we were crouching there as the 'plane circled to come at us again and again, that I noticed
how stifling the air was and that the day had turned exceptionally sultry.

Time after time the guns in the great 'plane raked the trench, and each time it swooped at us we were unable to retaliate until it had passed since had we exposed ourselves to do so we should have been shot to pieces. All we could do was to blaze off a few rounds apiece in the frightfully short interval between it passing over our heads and flashing out of sight across the ridge behind us. The porter, Kait, was killed by a bullet through the top of the skull at the seventh attack and at the ninth Harry was hit in the left shoulder. As he could no longer use his rifle he started potting at the 'plane with his automatic, although it must have been out of range most of the time he was firing at it.

We had made the girls lie dead flat in the bottom of the trench although they both kicked about it, but it kept them out of danger; the rest of us put up a desperate but ineffective defence with an increasing sense of hopelessness. According to our own account given out in Luxor, Kharga and Dakhla, we had merely gone into the desert to survey a portion of it, so no one knew where we were; and if we failed to return people would only assume that we had got lost and died of thirst just as had happened to many other exploring parties before us. O'Kieff could murder us all without the slightest fear that it would ever be brought home to him. We could hope for no help in that great desolation so many hundreds of miles from any human being and there was not even any likelihood of our remains being discovered for centuries.

It could only be a question of time before O'Kieff wore us down and out ammunition became exhausted; nightfall might have saved us temporarily but the 'plane had appeared shortly before one o'clock and so there were yet many hours to go before sundown. Grimy, sweating, panting for air in the awful heat, and spattered with the blood of our casualties, all we could do was to stick there while we were picked off one by one.

At the twelfth attack Amin was wounded in the neck and in spite of all we could do he lost blood so quickly that we knew the wound was mortal. He died in my arms five minutes later. Although I have said very little of Amin, his death shook me
most terribly. He was such a splendid fellow, quiet, good-humoured, brave and kindly. During the many weeks we had spent together I had come to regard him as a true friend, and it was I who had drawn him into this wretched adventure.

I suppose I should have felt sorry, too, about all the other poor fellows who had been killed that afternoon on our account; and I was, in a general sense, both distressed and horrified at the fate which had overtaken them solely because we had hired them for our expedition; but there was nothing personal about that sorrow. Amin's death was somehow different and it touched me to the very roots of my being.

We were now reduced to two rifles, my own and Mussa's, as Hamid, the driver who was with us through being the one man to escape the first massacre, simply crouched in the bottom of the trench gibbering with fear and was too frightened to expose his head for a moment even when the 'plane had passed over.

It swooped twice again after Amin died and then it roared away and suddenly its engines were cut off. For a second I hoped that one of our bullets had hit it in a vital spot but the engines came on again and we could hear them humming although we could no longer see the machine as it was now behind us over the crest of the slope we occupied.

The engines were cut out again and I knew that the 'plane must be landing in the next valley. Evidently, now our fire was reduced to two rifles, O'Kieff had decided that the time had come for a closer form of attack in order to finish us off more quickly. For an hour or more the insistent drone of the 'plane's engines had either sounded from the distance or increased to a great roar each time it sailed low overhead, so the renewal of silence seemed quite unnatural. It was desperately hot and we all took a swig of water to quench our thirst while we waited for O'Kieff's next move.

It came within ten minutes of the 'plane's landing. Each previous attack had been delivered from our front as we stood facing down into the valley; now it came from the higher ground behind our backs. O'Kieff's gunmen had occupied the ridge and they began to pour a steady stream of bullets into the trench from above.

It was no longer possible to stand upright, even for a
moment, and we had to remain on our knees to avoid the shots that peppered the cans and cases which had previously formed the front breastwork of the trench. All we could do was to save ourselves for a last, desperate stand when they found that they could not kill us that way and left their cover to take the trench by storm.

The attack did not develop as I had expected and the firing from the ridge was not very fierce. It was maintained quite regularly but consisted only of single bullets at short intervals and a burst of machine-gun fire about every couple of minutes. We had been crouching under it for over a quarter of an hour, fighting for breath in the stifling heat when Clarissa said that she could smell smoke. Harry agreed with her and I could smell it myself after sniffing the air a little. Very cautiously I raised my head a few inches and popped up for one swift glance over the paapet down into the valley. I understood then why O'Kieff had been content for the time being to let his men only force us to keep our heads down by a steady fire instead of driving them on to finish us. He was busy looting our camp and destroying it.

As we had all our most valuable finds upon us I knew that he would not get much from the camp except the two gold cups and a fine collection of old weapons; but, with what seemed to me senseless fury, he and half a dozen of his thugs had poured our remaining petrol over our lorries, tents, and stores which were now going up in one huge bonfire.

The second I popped my head above the edge of the trench a blast of hot air struck it, which I took to be the intense heat radiating in all directions from the flaming camp, and as I ducked down again Sylvia exclaimed, ‘Just look at the sky!'

I saw then that the sky had taken on a strange, reddish tinge and that, too, I put down to the raging furnace just below us as a steady wind was now blowing the smoke and sparks in our direction.

‘It's our camp,' I said. ‘O'Kieff's soused everything with petrol and the whole outfit is going up like tinder.'

‘So that's his game,' muttered Harry.

‘It seems a pretty pointless one,' I replied. ‘He'll have to form a camp here himself if he's going to dig the valley over, and the sensible thing would have been to keep our stuff for
his own use. Destroying everything like this is just stupid vandalism.'

Harry shook his head. ‘Not a bit of it, old man. They haven't hit one of us since they've been firing from the ridge. O'Kieff knows now that he can't get us that way as long as we stay here and any attempt to finish us off means a hand-to-hand scrap in which some of the devils are sure to get killed. He doesn't mean to risk the skins of his people.'

‘I get you,' I nodded. ‘He's thought of a way to do us in without losing a single man. Having destroyed the whole of our supplies he'll fly off again and come back in a few days' time knowing that by then we shall all be dead from lack of water.'

Clarissa groaned. ‘We're scuppered, then. There isn't a hope in hell of our being picked up here or being able to reach an oasis, is there?'

‘Siwa is the nearest,' Sylvia sighed. ‘But that's the best part of a hundred miles and it might as well be a thousand for all the chance we've got of reaching it on foot and with no drink except what we've got in our water-bottles. Just look at that sky.'

Great clouds of smoke had been drifting over for the last couple of minutes but now the wind had dropped entirely and the smoke hung above us in a thick pall which had a livid red background. With the dropping of the wind the stillness seemed almost uncanny. We could still hear the crackle of the flames down in the valley but some other noise was missing. It dawned on us then that the almost regular crack of the rifles on the crest above us and the thudding of the bullets into the breastworks of the trench only a foot above our heads, had ceased.

Suddenly the wind came again, a steady, searing blast increasing in velocity until it was tearing at us, even where we crouched below the level of the ground, and whipping up the sand all round the trench like sheets of fly spray.

‘The
Gibli
! The
Gibli
!' gasped Sylvia, and even as she spoke her voice was almost drowned in the hideous moaning of the wind rushing down the valley. The moan increased to a high, screaming note and next second the full violence of the desert hurricane was upon us.

I knew then why the firing had ceased so abruptly; the men on the ridge had seen the approach of the dreaded sandstorm when it was still a few miles distant, whereas we had been caught by it without even a moment's warning. We were enveloped now in dense clouds of sand which made it impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction and were safe from the enemy's bullets but threatened with suffocation unless we could secure some sort of cover.

Instinctively we all started to climb out of the trench. Our sun helmets had been whipped from our heads in the first fierce blast and now the scorching fingers of the red-hot wind tore at our clothes as though it would strip them from us. For a second we staggered about uncertainly, covering our faces with our hands in a desperate endeavour to keep the sand out of our eyes. Sylvia bumped into me and I grabbed, her arm, yelling at the top of my voice:

‘Over the ridge! Over the ridge to their 'plane!'

Harry, Clarissa, Mussa and Hamid were near enough to hear my shout, even in the screaming of the storm, and the six of us, who were all that now survived of our party, began to blunder up the sand-dune; clutching at each other as we went for support against the frightful buffeting of the sand-laden gale which threatened every moment to overthrow us.

At last we reached the crest and began to slither down the other side. I had no idea where the 'plane was and through the fog of sand it was quite impossible to discern even the outline of the valley bottom; yet the storm had come up so suddenly that I believed O'Kieff and most of his men had been caught by it while still burning our camp, and so were even further from the 'plane than we were. If we could reach it before they did, the odds against us might not be quite so hopeless.

But could we reach it? Blinded as we were, we could only stagger forward down the slope praying that we might bump into it. We reached the valley bottom, as we knew by the fact that the ground beneath our feet had started to slope up again, and we halted there in desperation not knowing if we should turn to right or left. The decision was made for us. Another figure came rushing past us in the darkness and mistaking us for some of O'Kieff's people, called in a panic-stricken voice.

‘This way, you fools! this way!'

In a second we were blundering after him and almost at once the bulk of the great 'plane loomed up in the reddish murk ahead. The man who was leading us cannoned into another who stood, holding a tommy-gun, by a short ladder that led up to the door in the 'plane's side.

Letting go of Sylvia's arm I drew my pistol and rushed towards them. The one with the tommy-gun had his left hand over his eyes to protect them from the sand. In the fiendish wailing of the storm he neither saw nor heard me coming. With my left hand I grabbed his gun and jerked it from him; my right, which held my own pistol, smashed into his face. The other man was equally unprepared and Mussa clubbed him with his rifle.

The door of the 'plane was vaguely discernible above, and from behind its glass panel a third man must have been keeping a look-out. Seeing the two men below him attacked, he threw the door wide and opened fire with his automatic. Hamid lurched against me shot through the head and slipped to the ground without even a moan. Clarissa screamed and fell, hit in the thigh; but Sylvia, who was just behind me, had raised her pistol and fired at the same moment. The man above clutched at his tummy, doubled up and crashed forward on us, knocking Harry over.

Mussa was the first up the ladder and I tumbled into the 'plane right on his heels.

‘The pilot!' I gasped. ‘For Gods' sake don't shoot him!'

‘Right, boss!' he panted and with his rifle at the ready he charged forward between the two rows of seats in the saloon of the 'plane to the door which gave on to its cockpit. I thought the saloon was empty and was just about to follow when a small figure swathed in dark veils sprang up from one of the low, armchair seats. The second she had ripped away the veil which hid her face I saw that it was Oonas.

For an instant she stood there staring at me in the dim, uncertain light; her great, widely spaced blue eyes were starting from their sockets. Suddenly she screamed and cowered from me in abject terror. There can be no doubt that she believed it was my ghost she saw and that I had come back to earth to claim her. In a second her face had changed from its serene loveliness, as I had first glimpsed it when she had pulled away
the veil, to the contorted features of a mad-woman. Again and again she screamed upon a high, piercing note until I thought her shrieks would shatter my ear-drums.

I took a step forward and stretched out a hand to reassure her with my touch that I was real, but she sprang aside as though my hand was the head of a striking cobra. Next instant, before I had a chance to stop her, she had leapt through the open doorway of the 'plane.