“Is it a good place to hide? Could they find us there easily?”
“They’d have to come across the lake or up the river. It’ll be all right so long as they don’t send their dragon after us. He can go through the water. I’ve seen him do it.”
“Oh well,” said Bond diplomatically, “let’s hope he’s got a sore tail or something.”
The girl snorted. “All right, Mr Know-all,” she said angrily. “Just you wait.”
Quarrel splashed out of the mangroves. He was carrying a rifle. He said apologetically. “No harm ‘n havin’ anudder gun, cap’n. Looks like us may need hit.”
Bond took it. It was a U.S. Army Remington Carbine, .300. These people certainly had the right equipment. He handed it back.
Quarrel echoed his thoughts. “Dese is sly folks, cap’n. Dat man mus’ of come sneakin’ down soffly behind de udders to ketch us comin’ out after de dawgs had passed. He sho is a sly mongoose, dat Doctor feller.”
Bond said thoughtfully, “He must be quite a man.” He shrugged away his thoughts. “Now let’s get going. Honey says there’s another hour to the camp. Better keep to the left bank so’as to get what cover we can from the hill. For all we know they’ve got glasses trained on the river.” Bond handed his gun to Quarrel who sto.wed it in the sodden knapsack. They moved off again with Quarrel in the lead and Bond and the girl walking together.
They got some shade from the bamboo and bushes along the western bank, but now they had to face the full force of the scorching wind. They splashed water over their arms and faces to cool the burns. Bond’s eyes were bloodshot with the glare and his arm ached intolerably where the gun butt had struck. And he was not looking forward to his dinner of soaking bread and cheese and salt pork. How long would they be able to sleep? He hadn’t had much last night. It looked like the same ration again. And what about the girl? She had had none. He and Quarrel would have to keep watch and watch. And then tomorrow. Off into the mangrove again and work their way slowly back to the canoe across the eastern end of the island. It looked like that. And sail the following night. Bond thought of hacking a way for five miles through solid mangroves. What a prospect! Bond trudged on, thinking of M’s ‘holiday in the sunshine’. He’d certainly give something for M to be sharing it with him now.
The river grew narrower until it was only a stream between the bamboo clumps. Then it widened out into a flat marshy estuary beyond which the five square miles of shallow lake swept away to the other side of the island in a ruffled blue-grey mirror. Beyond, there was the shimmer of the airstrip and the glint of the sun on a single hangar. The girl told them to keep to the east and they worked their way slowly along inside the fringe of bushes.
Suddenly Quarrel stopped, his face pointing like a gun-dog’s at the marshy ground in front of him. Two deep parallel grooves were cut into the mud, with a fainter groove in the centre. They were the tracks of something that had come down from the hill and gone across the marsh towards the lake.
The girl said indifferently. “That’s where the dragon’s been.”
Quarrel turned the whites of his eyes towards her.
Bond walked slowly along the tracks. The outside ones were quite smooth with an indented curve. They could have been made by wheels, but they were vast-at least two feet across. The centre track was of the same shape but only three inches across, about the width of a motor tyre. The tracks were without a trace of tread, and they were fairly fresh. They marched along in a dead straight line and the bushes they crossed were squashed flat as if a tank had gone over them.
Bond couldn’t imagine what kind of vehicle, if it was a vehicle, had made them. When the girl nudged him and whispered fiercely “I told you so”, he could only say thoughtfully, “Well, Honey, if it isn’t a dragon, it’s something else I’ve never seen before.”