Kane shrugged. ‘Twenty to twenty-five miles. We made good time across the plain.’
Cunningham looked up into the vast bowl of the sky. ‘It seems to be getting lighter.’
‘Dawn in an hour,’ Kane said. ‘We’ve got perhaps another hour after that before the sun really starts giving us trouble.’
‘And then what?’
Kane shrugged. ‘We’ll worry about that when the time comes.’
He got to his feet and started forward again, and when he glanced back over his shoulder from the top of the next dune, they were trailing close behind him, walking strongly.
They covered another seven or eight miles before the sun slipped up over the edge of the horizon, a blood-red disc whose heat warmed them pleasantly, chasing the cold of the night from their bones.
Kane increased his stride, his eyes on the horizon, watching the sun rise into the heavens with something like despair in his heart. For the first time it occurred to him that it was useless, that what they were attempting was impossible. If they were still walking at noon, it would be a miracle.
The sun was an orange ball of fire and its rays burned their way into his skull. He pulled the ends of the head-cloth across his face, leaving only the eyes free, as a slight breeze lifted dust from the ground.
There was no air to draw into his lungs, only the fiery breath of the sun, searing the flesh and cracking the lips, turning his throat into a dry tunnel of dust.
He began to think about the water-bottle and his fingers went to it. As he plodded on, he looked down at it, imagining the coolness of the water inside, its wetness, the feel of it trickling down his burning throat and spreading throughout his body. He pushed the bottle round to the small of his back where he couldn’t see it any longer and started the slow climb up the side of a large sand dune.
When he reached the top, his limbs were tired for the first time and he paused, trembling with effort, feeling the sweat trickling from every pore in his flesh, draining his body of the liquid needed to live.
He shaded his eyes and gazed before him and suddenly he caught a flash of scarlet as the sun sparkled on something in the distance. It was the wrecked Rapide in which he and Ruth had crashed four days previously.
He was filled with a sudden wild hope. The plane had carried a jerrycan filled with water. Allowing for the lapse of time and the great heat, there was still a good chance that some of it remained.
It occurred to him with something of a shock, that he had not checked on his companions for a considerable time. He turned to look back and saw Jamal at the bottom of the sand dune, Ruth Cunningham cradled in his great arms. Cunningham was struggling up the steep slope and his eyes burned feverishly in his swollen face.
He fell on his knees a few feet away from Kane, and passed a hand slowly across his face. Finally, he forced himself upright, and when he spoke, his voice seemed to come from a great distance. ‘We’ve got to rest.’
Kane tried to moisten cracked lips. ‘We must keep moving.’
Cunningham shook his head stubbornly. ‘Got to rest.’ He took a wavering step forward and started to buckle at the knees. As Kane grabbed him, his feet slipped in the soft sand and they went over the edge together, rolling over and over in a cloud of dust to the bottom.
Cunningham lay with limbs sprawled, and Kane dropped to his knees beside him and forced a little water between his teeth. Jamal appeared on top of the dune and moved down to join them. He laid Ruth Cunningham beside her husband and looked at Kane enquiringly.
Kane explained about the plane and something glowed briefly in the Somali’s eyes. At that moment Cunningham groaned and sat up. ‘Where am I? What happened?’
His voice sounded weak and lifeless as if it didn’t really belong to him any more.
Kane lifted him to his feet and slipped an arm around his shoulders. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said soothingly. ‘We haven’t got far to go now. Not far at all.’