Heart of Ice

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In the port of Boulogne, the enemy lay hidden. The journey — by land and by sea over thousands of miles — was almost at an end; all that remained was the narrow band of water that separated continental Europe from England.

And that would be crossed tonight. .

The epic voyage had begun in an obscure land far to the south, in the dark heart of a steamy river basin whose few inhabitants were utterly ignorant of the races and the civilisations of Western Europe; as, indeed, most people in those temperate latitudes were ignorant of them, few even knowing that the vast and secretive continent of Africa existed. The enemy was born there in the heat and the humidity and its first hiding place was not with humans but with a troupe of monkeys. Unwittingly carrying the foe with them, the monkeys travelled slowly north-eastwards until one of their number, weakened and falling behind the rest, was caught in a hunter’s trap. The hunter butchered the little creature and smoked its flesh, later enjoying it as a rare delicacy and savouring each slow mouthful.

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