"Giuseppe!" he shrieked, and hit the driver with the butt of the
Marmlicher. It was not a heavy blow, it was meant merely to attract
his attention, but Giuseppe had already taken much punishment and was
by now lightly concussed.
He clung to the wheel with white knuckles and roared on directly into
the path of the new enemy.
"Giuseppe!" shrieked the Count again, as he suddenly recognized the
gaily coloured flashes on the turret of the nearest machine, and at the
same instant saw the thick stubby cylindrical shape that protruded
ahead of it. It was fluted vertically and at the far end a short pipe
like muzzle thrust out of the heavy water-jacket.
"Oh, merciful Mother of God!" he howled as the machine altered course
slightly and the muzzle of the Vickers machine gun pointed directly at
him.
"You fool!" he shrieked at Giuseppe, hitting him again.
"Turn! You idiot, turn!" Suddenly through the tears of pain, the
singing in his ears, and the blinding terror that gripped him, Giuseppe
saw the huge camel-like shape looming up ahead of him and he spun the
wheel again just as the muzzle of the Vickers erupted in a fluttering
pillar of bright flame and the air all around them was torn by the hiss
and crack of a thousand bull whips.
Castelani stood on the cab of his truck, and peered disapprovingly
through his binoculars into the distant clouds of rolling dust where
confused movement and shadowy indistinguishable shapes flitted without
seeming purpose or pattern.
It had required all of his presence and authority to restrain the ten
trucks which carried the artillery men and towed their field pieces, to
keep them under his personal command and to prevent them joining in the
wildly enthusiastic rush after the small contingent of
Ethiopian horsemen.
Castelani was about to give the order to mount up and cautiously follow
the Count's charge into history and glory, when he raised the
binoculars again and it seemed that the pattern of dust-obscured
movement out there had altered. Suddenly he saw the unmistakable shape
of a Fiat transport emerge from the dust bank, and move ponderously
back towards him. Through the glasses the men who clung to the canvas
roof were all staring back in the direction from which they were coming
at speed.
He panned the glasses slowly and saw another truck lumber out of the
dust-mist headed back towards him. One of the soldiers on its roof was
aiming and firing his rifle back into the obscuring clouds and his
comrades, clinging to the roof about him, were frozen in attitudes of
trepidation and alarm.
At that moment, Castelani heard something which he recognized
instantly, his skin prickling at the distant ripping tearing sound.
The sound of a British Vickers machine gun.
His eye sought the direction, turning swiftly to the right flank of the
extended Italian column which seemed now to be rushing back towards him
in confused and completely disordered retreat.
He picked up the tall hump-backed shape instantly, standing high on the
open plain, coming in fast with the strange bounding motion of a
rocking horse, cutting boldly into the flank of the mass of
soft-skinned Italian transports.
"Unlimber the guns," shouted Castelani. "Prepare to receive enemy
armour." The Vickers machine guns in the turrets of the two armoured
cars had ball-type mountings. The barrels could be elevated or
depressed, but they could not traverse more than ten degrees to left or
right, this being the limit of the ball mountings" turn. The driver
had of necessity to act as gun-layer, swinging the entire vehicle to
Within the limited traverse aim of the gun, or at least bring it of the
mounting.
The Ras found this frustrating beyond all enduring. He would select a
target, and shout in perfectly clear and coherent Amharic to his
driver. Gareth Swales, not understanding a word of it, had already
selected another target and was doing his best to line up on it while
the Ras delivered a series of wild kicks at his kidneys to register his
royal right of refusing to engage it.
The consequence of this was that the Hump wove a crazy,
unpredictable course through the Italian column, spinning off at sudden
tangents as the two crew members shouted bitter recriminations at each
other, almost ignoring the sheets of rifle fire that thundered upon the
steel hull from point-blank range, like hail on a galvanized roof.
Priscilla the Pig, on the other hand, was doing deadly execution.
She had missed her first burst fired at the speeding Rolls, and it had
ducked away behind the screen of dust and bucking trucks. Now,
however, Jake and Gregoritis were working with all the precision and
mutual understanding that had developed between them.
"Left driver, left, left," called Gregorius, peering down the open
sights of the Vickers at the truck that roared and bounced along a
hundred yards ahead of them.
"All right, I'm on him," shouted Jake, as the vehicle appeared in the
narrow field of his visor. This was a perforated steel plate that
allowed only forward vision but once Jake had the truck centred, he
