‘How is he?‘I asked.
‘Not good. He says much that I do not understand, but he knows what is happening.’
We lifted him on to the cart. Then we got the others on.
‘Can you drive?’ I asked Hacket.
‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ve forgotten how. But I was an artilleryman in the first war.’
‘You carry on then,’ I said. ‘I never held a pair of reins in my life.’
He nodded. ‘Okay, then. Here we go.’ He clicked his tongue and flicked George’s back with the reins. The mule started forward at a walk. Hacket slapped the reins. Still the. animal ambled. I could have walked faster myself and I thought, My God, we’ll never get through Avin before the lava streams cut us off.
I think Zina had the same thought for she called out to Hacket, ‘Swear at him in Italian. He requires many curses to make him go fast.’
‘ Via!’ Hacket shouted.’ Via!’
‘Oh, you do not understand what I mean by curses.’ She moved over to him and took the reins. She jerked at them and then she began to scream curses at the wretched animal. She screamed them at the top of her voice, using gutter language, many of the words quite unrecognisable to me. George laid his ears back and then suddenly he had broken into a trot. ‘Ecco! Now we move.’