as they wielded their machetes.
The Europeans at the rear of the long trail moved with lassitude. So far they had escaped the ever-pestilential malaria: drugs had seen to that, as far as Harry Perrivale and Rita were concerned. Caleb Moon seemed to remain on his feet because of the amount of whiskey he consumed. He just sweated everything out of his system and kept on going—but the spirits had done many things to his temper since the long gone day when the journey into the interior had started.
In fact, his temper was the cause of the woefully thinned safari, and when the safari halted its journey for the night, Perrivale said so in no uncertain language. Caleb Moon listened to him, seated on the campstool in his own camp, and going through the routine of looking for chiggers’ eggs in his faded drill suit. The eggs, hatching at body heat, could drive a man or woman to frenzy if not ‘deloused.’
“Less drinking would help, Moon,” Perrivale said, and his dissolute mouth tightened.
Moon grinned. “What d’you expect a man to do in this blasted frying pan? Run around with his tongue out waiting for Mr. Perrivale to say, ‘You can have your water ration now’? I drink when I like, Perrivale—and that’ll be often. You’ve no authority over me. In fact, without me you won’t get anywhere! So get back to your tent and shut up!”
“This safari is mine,” Perrivale retorted. “Thanks to your damned temper, it’s cut in half. The boys are scared of you, flaring up at the least thing. They’re flesh and blood the same as us—and we can’t do without them. We’ll need every man we can get when we reach Akada.”
Moon dragged on his examined shirt. “I’ve handled this kind of scum all my life, Perrivale, and you only get results by making ’em afraid of you. I know my business.”
“Lessen this safari any further and we may as well go right back home,” Perrivale snapped. “Watch yourself, Moon, that’s all.”
Perrivale left, his mood black, and crossed the fire-lighted clearing to his own tent. Within it Rita was doing what she could with her damp tresses, She eyed her husband as he came in.
“Well, did you warn him?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I doubt it. You’re as scared of him as these poor black devils outside. And a scared man in the jungle is no use to anybody.”
Perrivale glared at her. She studied his reflection through the folding mirror in the lamplight.
“No use denying it, Harry,” she added. “You’ve got plenty of money but precious little nerve. You’ve only come on this expedition because you think there is safety in numbers. Well maybe there was—until the safari thinned out so much. We can’t have more than twenty boys left. If they go—”
“They mustn’t,” Perrivale interrupted, alarm in his voice. “If we were just left to find our way back—we—we just couldn’t.”
Rita finished playing with her hair and turned to him. There was contempt in her grey eyes.
“I wish I’d known you were so yellow when I married you,” she sighed. “Unfortunately, the only yellow I saw was the gold you own. Moon, for all his faults, is tough.”
“Good God, from the way you say that, one would think you prefer him to me!”
Rita shook her head. “I think he’s a beast,” she said deliberately. “And a drunken one too, but I do wonder if that isn’t preferable to being cowardly. That’s the one thing about you, Harry, I just can’t tolerate!”
Perrivale said nothing. He knew she was right, but to a great extent his wealthy parents had been to blame. Whilst they had lived, they had brought him up in cotton wool, under the belief money could buy manhood for him. It had not—and this was the first time he had ever ventured into the merciless jungle. It had frayed his nerves, shortened his temper—
A scream from outside the tent suddenly made Rita start. Perrivale looked up in surprise. Getting to her feet, Rita hurried over to the tent flap and dragged it aside. At that moment she heard the thick, liquor-cracked voice of Caleb Moon shouting:
“You damned louse! I’ll teach you to let the fire go down—!”
There followed the crack of a rhino-lash and a desperate scream.
“Bwana, I slept—I—” But the lash cut off the rest of the words.
“Blasted scum!” Moon screamed, obviously inflamed with liquor. “The more that fire goes down, the more we stand to get attacked by jungle beasts! Sleeping? I’ll show you—”
Again and again the lash came down, and in the light of the subdued fire Rita could see a black figure squirming under the onslaught of Moon’s flashing arm. She also saw other black figures darting off like shadows into the jungle, scared of the white boss’s fury. Rita looked after them helplessly, unable to call since she did not know the mongrel tongue they used.
“Mr. Moon!” she cried angrily, striding towards him. “Stop it! Do you hear me? Stop it!”
In his frenzy Moon took no notice. Rita strode on towards him and finally grasped his arm. He paused for a split second, and then swept his arm back and round, flinging Rita from her feet and sending her stumbling into the undergrowth. Dazed, she lay there, her shoulder throbbing from the blow.
The interval had been enough for the hapless black to make an effort to escape, but the vicious whip brought him down on his knees again. He chattered desperately for mercy, and did not get it. His chattering broke in screams again as the lash flayed across his naked back.
“Next time you’ll keep a fire going!” Moon roared at him.
From his own tent Perrivale stood watching, then he suddenly yanked out the .38 at his hip and took aim. At exactly the same moment Moon caught sight of him in the firelight. Drunk though he was, he was not so confused that he could not act fast. He dropped his whip and aimed his own revolver instead. Flame bit across the dimness, and with a cry Perrivale dropped his weapon and fell, clasping his leg tightly. He remained as he had fallen, his features contorted.
“Harry!” Rita cried in anguish, leaping up from where she had fallen. “Oh, Harry—”
Moon blocked her path, his thick arm encircling her shoulders from the front.
“No you don’t!” he breathed, clutching her. “If that scared louse of a husband of yours has a parked bullet in him, it’s no more than he deserves. I’ve been waiting for this—a legitimate reason for shooting him. You and me will keep going—”
“Let me go!” Rita kicked at him savagely, and the sharp points of her half-boots made him wince—but he did not release her. She struggled vainly to tear free, but only succeeded in being dragged all the closer to the trader.
Then something else happened. Moon saw it first and blinked. A second later he felt it. Something that seemed to be too hard for flesh and bone crashed straight into his face and sent him flying backwards. Half stunned, he flattened in the loam, sparks bursting through his brain.
It took him a second or two to recover. He twisted round and stared on something he could not believe. There was a newcomer in the clearing, white-skinned in the dim firelight, his only attire a leopard-pelt about his loins.
