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 compass 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 compass 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 passed 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 compass. He started to go over the manuscript 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?’