shy." A shell burst close alongside, showering sand and gravel into
the open hatch. They were ranging in on him now, it was time to
confuse the range again.
He spat sand from his mouth and yelled, "Engaging!" Priscilla spun
handily towards the Italian line, and went bounding in towards them
with that prim rocking action, her ugly old silhouette grim and
uncompromising as the visage of a Victorian matron.
They were close, horribly frighteningly close, so that Jake could hear
the Vickers bullets hammering against the black carapace of the leading
tank. Gregorius had picked out the formation leader by his command
pennant, and was concentrating all his fire upon him.
"Good thinking," grunted Jake. "Get the bastard's blood up." As he
spoke, there was a thunderous clank close beside his head, as though a
giant had swung a hammer against the steel hull, and the car reeled to
the blow.
"We've taken a hit," Jake thought desperately, and his ears buzzed from
the impact and there was the hot acrid stench of burned paint and hot
metal in his nostrils. He swung the wheel over and Priscilla responded
as handsomely as ever, turning sharply away from the Italian line.
Jake stood up in his compartment, sticking his head out into the open
and he saw immediately how lucky they had been. The shell had struck
one of the brackets he had welded on to the sponson to carry the arms
crates. It had torn the bracket away, and dented the hull,
leaving the metal glowing with the heat of the strike but the hull was
intact, they had not been penetrated.
"Are you all right, Greg?" he yelled as he dropped back into his
seat.
"They are following, Jake," the boy called down to him, ignoring the
hit. "They are after us all of them."
"Home and mother here we come," Jake said, and turned directly away
from them, once again changing the range and aim of the Italian gunners
abruptly.
Shot burst close, driving the air in upon their eardrums, and making
them both flinch involuntarily.
"We are pulling too far ahead, Jake," called Greg, and Jake glancing up
saw that he had his hatch open and his head out.
"Lame bird," Jake decided reluctantly. If they outstripped the
Italians too rapidly, there was a danger they would abandon the
chase.
Another shell burst close alongside, covering them with a veil of pale
dust, and Jake faked a hit, cutting back the throttle so that their
seed bled off, and he swung Priscilla into an erratic broken pattern of
flight, like a bird with a broken wing.
"They're gaining on us now, "Greg reported gleefully.
"Don't sound so damned happy about it," Jake muttered, but his voice
was lost in the whine and crack of passing shot.
"They're still coming," howled Greg. "And they're still shooting."
"I noticed." Jake peered ahead, still flinging the car mercilessly
from side to side. The ridge of the first dune was half a mile ahead,
but it seemed like an hour later that he felt the earth tilt up under
him and they went slithering and skidding up the slip-face of the dune
and crashed over the crest into safety.
Jake swung Nscilla into a broadside skid, like a skier performing a
christy, bringing her to an abrupt halt in the lee of the dune and then
he backed and manoeuvred up until he was in a hull-down position behind
the sand, with only the turret exposed.
"That's it, Jake," cried Greg delightedly, as he found his Vickers
would bear again. He crouched over it, and fired short crisp bursts at
the four black tanks that roared angrily towards them across the
plain.
From the stationary position behind the dune, Gregorius made every
burst of fire sweep the oncoming hulls, driving the Latin tempers of
the crews into frenzy, like the sting of a tsetse fly on the belly of a
bull buffalo.
"That's about close enough," decided Jake, judging the charge of enemy
armour finely. They were less than five hundred yards off now and
already they were dropping shell close around the tiny target afforded
by the car's turret.
"Let's get the hell out of here." He swung Priscilla hard and she
plunged down the side of the dune into the trough. As she crashed
through the dense dark scrub, Jake caught a glimpse of the men lying in
wait under the screen of vegetation. They were stripped to
loin-Cloths, huddled down over the long steel rails, and two of them
had to roll frantically aside to avoid being crushed beneath
Priscilla's tall, heavily bossed wheels.
The momentum of her charge down the side of the dune carried her up on
the second dune with loose sand pouring out in a cloud from her
spinning rear wheels. She reached the crest and went over it at
speed,
dropping with a gut swooping dive down the far side.
Jake cut the engine before she had come to rest, and he and
Gregorius sprang out of the opened hatches and went panting back up the
dune, labouring in the heavy loose footing, and panting as they reached
the crest and looked down into the trough at almost the same instant as
the four Italian tanks came over the crest opposite them.
Their racks boiling in the loose sand, they came crashing over the top
