gently. He did not want him to tax his strength. He wanted to deliver
to his commanding officer an animal in the peak of its anger and
destructive capabilities.
He was sitting up in his turret, chuckling and shaking his head with
anticipation and growing delight, for the hunter's lines were only a
mile or so ahead when suddenly, directly ahead of him, the ground
erupted and an armoUred car roared out in a cloud of red dust. It was
of a model that the Captain had seen only in illustrated books of
military history like an apparition out of the remote past.
It took him some seconds to believe what he was seeing, then with a
jarring impact on his already highly strung nerve ends, he recognized
the enemy colours that the ancient machine was flying.
"Advance!" he screamed. "Squadron, advance!" and he groped
instinctively at his side for his sword. "Engage the enemy." On each
side of him his tanks roared forward, and for want of a sword, the
Captain tore his helmet off and waved it over his head.
"Charge!" he screamed. "Forward into battle!" Now at last he was not
a mere game-beater. Now he was a warrior leading his men into action.
His excitement was So contagious and the dust thrown up by the car, the
elephant and the steel tracks so thick, that the first two tanks did
not even see the fifteen-foot-deep sheer-sided ravine.
Running side by side, they went into it at the top of their speed and
were destroyed effectively as though they had been demolished by a
100 kilo, aerial bomb, the riding wheels ripped away by the impact and
the heavy steel tracks flying loose and snaking viciously into the air
like living angry cobras. The revolving turrets were torn from their
seatings, neatly bisecting the men at the waist, who stood in the
hatches, as though with a gigantic pair of scissors.
Clinging to the rim of his own turret and peering backwards,
Gareth saw the two machines disappear into the earth, and the great
leaping towers of dust that rose high into the air to mark their
destruction.
"Two down" he shouted.
"But another four to go," Jake shouted back grimly, fighting
Priscilla over the rough earth. "And how about that jumbo?"
"How indeed!" The elephant, goaded on by the roar of engines and crash
of steel behind and by the buzzing bouncing car ahead of it, was making
incredible speed over the broken scrubby plain.
"He's right here with us," Gareth told Jake anxiously. So close was
the great beast that Gareth had to look up at it, and he saw the thick
grey. trunk uncoiling from its chest and reaching out to pluck him
from the turret.
"As fast as you like, old son, or you'll have him sitting on your
head."
"I have told that idiot not to run the game down on the guns so hard,"
snapped the Count petulantly. "I -have told him a dozen times,
have I not, Gino?"
"Indeed, my Count."
"Run them hard at the beginning,
then bring them in gently for the last mile or so. "The Count took an
angry gulp at his glass. "The man is a fool, an insufferable fool
and
I can't abide fools around me." "Indeed not, my Count. I shall send
him back to Massawa-" the rest of the threat trailed away, and the
Count sat suddenly upright, the canvas chair creaking under his
weight.
"Gino," he murmured uneasily. "There is something very strange taking
place out there." Both of them peered anxiously out through the rifle
slots in the thatched wall of the blind at the billowing dust clouds
that raced down upon them with quite alarming speed.
"Gino, is it possible?" asked the Count.
"No, my Count," Gino assured him, but without any true conviction.
"It is the mirage. It is not possible."
"Are you certain, Gino?" The
Count's voice "took on a strident edge.
"No, my Count."
"Nor am I, Gino. What does it look like to you?"
"It looks like,- Geno's voice choked off. "I do not like to say, my
Count," he whispered. "I think I am going mad." At that moment the
Captain of tanks, whose efforts to catch up with the fleeing armoured
car and stampeding elephant were unavailing, opened fire with the 50
men.
Spandau upon them. More accurately, he opened fire in the general
direction of the rolling dust cloud which obscured his forward
vision,
and through which he caught only occasional glimpses of beast and
machine. To confound further the aim of his gunner, the range was
rapidly increasing, the manoeuvres with which the armoured car was
trying to throw off the close pursuit of the elephant were violent and
erratic, and the cavalry tank itself was plunging and leaping wildly
over the rough ground.
Fire!" shouted the Captain. "Keep firing," and his gunner sent half a
dozen high-explosive shells screeching low over the plain. The other
tanks heard the banging of their Captain's cannon and immediately and
enthusiastically followed his example.
One of the first shells struck the thatched front wall of the blind in
which the Count and Gino cowered in horrified fascination.
The flimsy wall of grass did not trigger the fuse of the shell so there
was no explosion, but nevertheless the high-velocity shell passed not
