She reached down to pick up her clothes, but these were seized from her hands and thrown into the bus.    They set light to the vehicle and pushed in down the steep ravine into the river below.   Charred fragments, including a page from her passport, were later to be found in the wreckage.  The absence of a body was attributed to its having been thrown out of the bus and washed downstream and lost - as had happened to several other  passengers.

As she stood before this group of armed thugs, she realised,  all too well that,  she was in the hands of the rebel movement, of  whose enormities she had been told so much in the last few months.  She was sure  her last hour had come - a hail of bullets awaited as the men raised their weapons and prepared to fire.

They lowered their guns in response to a command from one who appeared to be their leader.  This ill-favoured gentleman,  an obese creature, who looked rather incongruous in such a gathering of lean and mean desperadoes,  waddled down to the water's edge and placed his hands on Harriet's quivering body, assessing her physical strength as had Bernard James nearly one year ago.  His appraisal did not turn her on as had Bernard's - this foul-smelling lump of lard made her flesh creep.

She was forced to go down on one knee,  and the chuckling leader straddled her shoulders. He gave an unintelligible command and the surrounding gang indicated that Harriet should stand up.  With this weight on her shoulders, it was not easy, but she struggled to her feet and the gangleader was sitting on her shoulders, laughing wheezily.   The other gang members laughed at her herculean efforts to raise their leader, but fell silent when she finally succeeded - they saw that she was a strong girl and could perhaps be useful.

Two members of the group stood behind her and indicated by means of viciously applied blows to her rear that she should move off.  With immense difficulty she carried this disgusting heap of blubbery putrefaction on her shoulders as the gang moved off into the bush,  presumably towards the rebel base.  It was not until they had gone about ten miles and Harriet was on the point of fainting from exhaustion that the party came to a halt.

The group of guerrillas sat about, resting and quenching their thirst.  The man on Harriet's shoulders continued to sit there.  He was handed food and drink by his men and Harriet was forced to stand, bearing  this unspeakable, foul-smelling and horrible load of obesity, hearing, smelling and feeling him farting from time to time,  until the party were ready to move on.  No one offered her anything to eat or drink.  She began to wish that they had killed her with the rest of the passengers and then told herself not to be so silly.  Where there is life, there is hope, she reminded herself.

The party followed the track of a dried up stream ever higher into the hills.  The man on her back seemed to delight in ensuring that her feet passed over all the sharpest looking rocks and Harriet breathed a sigh of thanks that after nearly a year barefoot she could cope with this added misery far better than she could the  horrible burden on her back.  She compared her plight with that of Sinbad and "The Old Man of the Sea", a story she appreciated all the beter now that she was in that mythical sailor's predicament.

They finally came to rest for the day at a village whose inhabitants seemd friendly to the rebel cause and she was tied to a tree for the night, after being fed some loathsome concoction which caused her almost to vomit.

Next day, when she ought to have been flying home, the trek continued and Harriet made the first and most dramatic of her efforts to escape.  The path took them along a ridge with a sharp drop on either side and she took advantage of her gross passenger's inattention to shake him off and he fell heavily down the slope, sliding down and hitting his head on a rock at the bottom.

She ran for her life and by the time the gang had gone to the aid of their leader, she was out of sight.  The only course she could think of was to try and head back the way she had come, but this was impossible by a direct route without walking back into the arms of her kidnappers.  Harry had been trying her best to assess the direction they had been taking and was fairly certain she was nearing the place of her original capture, when she made the mistake of asking for help at a small settlement that she  passed through.

The villagers were sympathetic but too intimidated by rebel threats to do other than detain her.  Soon she was back with her captors - minus the gross leader, who had fractured his skull on the rocks. It seemed to her that it was all over for her this time, but the new leader was inclined to be lenient, having long despised the fat old bastard whose command was now his. He had been planning a fatal accident for some time.  Harriet had done him a favour!

But it would be unwise to let the men see how grateful he was and he gave orders for her to be punished immediately. Harriet was tied spreadeagled to a rudimentary upright  triangle. The rebels began to gather around and the villagers, too, were forced to come and see what happened to people who displeased them. The chattering and laughing died away as two large rebels each holding a long leather whip, strode out of the leader's tent and took up position behind the prisoner. She took one look at those well-muscled bodies and poweful arms and shoulders and almost wet herself.

There was a murmur of exitement as they started cracking their whips by way of warming up. Even some villagers were smiling to see a white girl in such a humilating position, about to be given the kind of flogging that had once been reserved only for blacks. Some of the older men had suffered this way and were metaphorically rubbing their hands in anticipation! Harriet fought to control her bladder and bowels. Come what may, she must not disgrace herself! She noticed that most of the onlookers were shifting around to get a good view of her back. Only a handful remained where she could see them.

"This is it, Harriet, my girl. Time to be brave!  But I'd be a lot braver if Gwen was here!"

She knew how convicts had been tied to contraptions like this in the penal sttlements and guessed what was in store as soon as she was secured.. At this stage she had no idea that she was in the new leader's good books and supposed they would whip her to death.  She resolved to die bravely as the leader gave a signal. Her stomach contracted into a hard ball of fear and her heart mised several beats. This was it!

The first rebel raised his arm and brought the whip down across her back. She had never felt such pain in her life. When she had watched Gwen being beaten for pleasure she had wondered what it felt like. Now she knew! It was hell! Then his colleague gave her another and she had to fight hard not to scream. She bit her lip hard and drew blood. Number three came down and the pain increased a hundred fold. She moaned from the dreadful hurt she was feeling. Ten more and she was screaming like a demented thing.  It sure as hell wasn't getting easier as it went along! They gave her one hundred lashes and long before that she had worn herself out screaming and was just whining faintly. Then she was left tied to the frame for  two days while the flies crawled all over her lacerated back. Beside herself with the pain of it and almost out of her mind though she was,  she knew she was lucky to be alive.

After that,  instead of the late leader, she carried other burdens - supplies and ammunition.  These loads rubbed against her raw and weeping back and the pain was unbearable but somehow she steeled herself to bear the agony.  That broad back was to be raw and bleeding for weeks to come and they showed her no mercy and spared her no burden. For months she was used in this way to transfer material from one location to another, along with other unfortunates conscripted from the local villages. In time her skin was to become like leather. Right now, though, it was a lot more tender than she would have liked!

Then they seemed to have settled on developing one base in particular and Harriet was forced to participate in preparing  an improvised airstrip for light aircraft.   Loads of interlocking steel plate were dropped by helicopter one night and she laboured to lay them on an area of flat ground.  Each piece of plate was heavy and the other workers, strong men all,  needed to work in pairs to make any kind of speedy headway.  Harriet attracted their grudging admiration by lifting, handling  and assembling the heavy steel sections on her own, keeping up her rate of work all through a very long day.  She was still able to enjoy the sensation  of pitting her body against physical challenge and the sickness of soul at what she was doing for an unworthy cause did not develop until much later.

At one stage, a group of white people were ferried in for a couple of days and she overheard one of them talking.  He was English.  He looked at Harriet a couple of times, but made no effort to speak to her and she was warned not to talk to him on pain of another severe beating, if not worse.  They had given the man some ridiculous excuse  or other to explain why Harriet could not talk to him and he seemd satisfied.  One  Lenin's "useful idiots" she concluded.

The visitors left and this was the last Harriet was to see of any fellow countryman  or woman for  a long time.

This base came under pressure from Government forces and the rebels left one night,  under cover of darkness,  loading Harriet more heavily than ever. After another month-long trek she arrived at the major base, deep in rebel territory,  where this story began.

On the way to this final destination, the band stopped at a village and the leader told Harry they would remain here for a few days as the movement was celebrating a recent victory over Government troops.  He told her that she would be able to rest, and in a very special way!  Thereupon she was seized by half a dozen men who grappled her to the ground despite her struggles.  She was sure she was about to be raped, which she had expected to happen long ago, but instead she was spreadeagled and staked to the ground. The grinning rebels told her she would be left here until the time came to move on.

On the first day as the sun rose higher the thirst began to torment her and she wondered if she would  stay sane.  Upset by the girls's obvious distress, one of the villagers,  a kindly looking elderly man came across to her with a ladle full of water and she was about to drink it when one of the rebels rushed across and dashed it out of his hand, clubbing the kindly old fellow to the ground.  No one dared try to help her after that, although there were many pitying glances directed at her and Harriet sensed the villagers' shame that they were forced to watch her misery and do nothing to help her.

She was given water after sunset and again before dawn, but in the heat of the day she had nothing to drink and suffered agonies.  She was heartily glad when the feasting was over and she was put back to work.

When, finally, she arrived at what was to prove the  final destination of her captivity,  she was mainly employed on the construction of another and longer runway - one to take large military transports.  More and more equipment was being ferried in day by day and the camp soon began to look more and more of a formidable military base.  She could guess where the material was coming from.  Her friend Algy had often talked despairingly of the large scale help the rebels were getting from outside the country.

Each day that she spent engaged on this work shamed her more and more as the hoplessness of escape became ever more apparent.  She might be growing stronger physically all the time, but inside she was shrinking and dying by degrees.

She awoke on the morning following her resolution to end all this. She braced herself to make the decision that would end her   misery one way or another. She ate her morning meal,  took her bucket to the latrine pit, emptying it for the last time and, after being handed her pick axe and shovel, and directed to a fresh area to be levelled,  prepared to throw away her tools and make a run for it.

And then she looked up and saw an amazing sight, which caused her to blink and wonder if she was dreaming or hallucinating.   A tall white woman was walking down towards the camp having just emerged behind some rocks at the top of the ring of hills overlooking the base.  She was jumping nimbly from one  rock to another and heading straight for the rebel camp.  It was a young woman who was approaching, fair haired and deeply tanned over her whole body, which was utterly naked and had obviously been under the burning sun for weeks if not months.  She was covered in dust from head to toe and looked like some kind of wild woman.

Men soon came out of the camp and surrounded this surprise visitor, who was quickly escorted to one of the buildings in the administrative section.  Harriet knew of this building only too well.  She had spent half an hour there after her last unsuccessful attempt to escape.  There were no cries or screams to be heard this time, unlike the ones with she had rent the air on that awful day. Harriet knew this girl would not scream  but her heart bled for the poor young woman, all the same.

Several hours later, the newcomer was brought across to near where Harry was working (she had put off her act of defiance for the while) and put to work next to her.  She was unmarked, but clearly weakened and shaky after four hours of the extremely painful things that had been done to her.  A very imperative and scarcely perceptible shake of the head from the new prisoner told Harriet very clearly indeed to refrain from speaking to her.

Finally they were both put into that cage which Harriet had previously occupied alone and the new girl spoke, having made sure that no guards were near.

"Next time you take it into that nearly empty head of yours to go off on some fucking stupid, hare-brained jaunt to the ends of the fucking earth and get yourself into a fucking mess,  thanks to being the world's most fucking useless dimwit,  you might care to have some consideration and thought for the inconvenience you are putting me to.  I've plenty to do without having to come all the fucking way to this fucking horrible country just to rescue you!"

"Rescue me!  Just how do you aim on doing that Gwen, now you've blithely walked into the same mess yourself?"

"Let's get some sleep, darling Harry, it's not been a good day for me and I'm tired.  Sorry I can't hug and kiss you, but I don't want them to know we're previously acquainted.  Nighty night,  sweetheart!"