"All right, Rassey." Gareth unwound the sham ma from around his head.
"You can come out now. Call your boys up, and tell them to get us out
of here." In the few moments of respite while the main body of
motorized infantry came through the batteries, Major Castelani hurried
from gun to gun, lashing with tongue and cane until he had contained
the infectious panic of his gunners and had them under his hand
again.
Then out of the dust clouds, appearing at short pistol range as
suddenly as a ghost ship, but with the Vickers machine gun in its
turret crackling wickedly and the muzzle blast flickering in an angry
throbbing red glow, was a second Ethiopian armoured car.
It was enough to destroy the semblance of control that Castelani had
forced heavy-handedly upon the gun crews.
As the armoured car swung across their line at point-blank range,
raking the exposed guns with a withering. burst of machine-gun fire,
the loaders dropped their ready shells and almost knocked the layers
from their seats in their anxiety to get behind the armoured shield of
the gun. They all huddled there with their heads well down. The
driver of the armoured car, after that one rapid pass down the front of
the batteries, swung the vehicle abruptly back into the screen of
dust.
Jake had been just as startled by the encounter as were the gunners;
at one moment he had been joyously tearing along after a fat
wallowing
Fiat, and at the next he had emerged from a cloud of dust to be
confronted by the gaping muzzles of the big guns.
"My God, Greg, "Jake shouted up at the boy in the turret.
"We nearly ran right into them."
"Volleyed and thundered do you remember the poem?"
"Poetry, at a time like this?" growled Jake, and he gave Priscilla the
throttle.
"Where are we going?"
"Home, and the sooner the quicker. That's a powerful argument they are
pointing at us."
"Jake-" Gregorius began to protest, when there was a bang and a flash
that glowed briefly even through the shrouds of dust, and close beside
the high turret passed a
100 men. shell. The air slammed against their eardrums and the shriek
of it made both of them flinch violently, the air.
stank of the electric sizzle of its passing, and it burst half a mile
beyond them in a tall tower of flame and dust.
"Do you see what I mean?" asked Jake.
"Yes, Jake oh yes, indeed As he spoke, the dust clouds that had
covered them so securely now subsided and drifted aside, exposing them
unmercifully to the attentions of the Italian guns, but revealed also
was another tempting target. The Ethiopian cavalry were still coming
on, and after a few futile volleys had burst around the tiny elusive
shape of the speeding car, Castelani resigned himself to the
limitations of his gunners and switched targets.
"Shrapnel," he bellowed. "Load with shrapnel fuse for air burst."
He hurried along the battery, repeating the order to each layer,
emphasizing his orders with the cane. "New target. Massed horsemen.
Range two thousand five hundred metres, fire at will." The Ethiopian
ponies were small shaggy beasts, bred for sure-footed ascent of
mountain paths, rather than sustained charges across open plains they
had, moreover, been pastured for weeks now on the dry sour grass of the
desert, and in consequence their strength was by this time almost
expended.
The first shrapnel burst fifty feet above the heads of the leading
riders. It popped open like a gigantic pod of the cotton plant,
blooming with sudden fearsome splendour the milky blue sky. It bloomed
with a crack as though the sky had shattered, and instantly the air was
filled with the humming, hissing knives of flying shrapnel.
A dozen of the ponies went down under the first burst, pitching forward
abruptly over their own heads and flinging their riders free.
Then the sky was filled with the deadly cotton balls, and the
continuous crack of the bursts sent the ponies wheeling and the riders
crouching low on their withers or swinging out of the saddle to hang
low under the bellies of their mounts. Here and there a braver soul
would kick his feet free of the stirrups and pick up a dismounted
comrade on each of the leathers, the gallant little ponies labouring
under their triple burdens. Within seconds, the entire Ethiopian army
its single remaining armoured vehicle and all its cavalry were in a
retreat every bit as headlong as that of the motorized Italian column
which was still on its way back to the Wells of Chaldi. The field was
left entirely to Castelani's artillery and the stranded crew of the
Hump.
From the shelter of the shattered hull, Gareth Swales watched his hopes
of quick rescue fading rapidly in the shape of the dwindling cavalry.
"Don't blame them, not really," he told the Ras, and then he looked
across at the speeding armoured car. Priscilla the Pig was rapidly
overhauling the cavalry.
"He saw us, - I know he did." There had "Him I do," he muttered.
been a moment when Priscilla the Pig had passed within a quarter of a
mile of them, had in fact turned directly towards them for a few
