"Makes him look younger, not a day over ninety, "he gave his opinion, and revved the engine, carefully manoeuvring the car into a hull-down position below the bank from where he could keep the Italians under observation. Gareth brought the other car up alongside and grinned at him from the open hatch. It was a wicked grin, and Jake realized that the Englishman was looking forward to the coming clash with antic.i.p.ation.
It was no longer necessary to use binoculars. The Italian column was less than two miles distant, moving swiftly on a course that was carrying it parallel to the dry river-bed, beyond the curved horns of the ambush into the open unprotected funnel of flat land between the mountains.
Another fifteen minutes at this rate of advance and it would have turned the Ethiopian flank and would be able to drive without resistance to the mouth of the gorge and Jake knew better than to hope to be able to reorganize the rabble of cavalry once their formations were shattered. Instinctively he knew that they would fight like giants as long as the tide carried them forward, but any retreat would become a rout, and they would race for the hills like factory workers at five o"clock. They were accustomed to fighting as individuals, avoiding set piece battles, but s.n.a.t.c.hing opportunity as it was offered, swift as hawks, but giving instantly before any determined thrust by an enemy.
"Come on!" he muttered to himself, pounding his fist against his thigh impatiently, and with the first stirring of alarm. Unless the bait was offered within the next few moments. Because they fought as individuals, each man his own general, and because the art of ambush and entrapment came as naturally to the Ethiopian as the feel of a rifle in his hand, Jake need not have fretted.
Seeming to rise from the flat scorched earth under the wheels of the leading Italian vehicles, a small galloping knot of hors.e.m.e.n flitted across the heat-tortured earth, seeming to float above it like a flock of dark birds. Their shapes wavering and indistinct, wrapped in pale streamers of dust, they cut back obliquely across the Italian line of march, running hard for the centre of the hidden Ethiopian line.
Almost instantly a single vehicle detached itself from the head of the column and headed on a converging course with the flying hors.e.m.e.n.
Its speed was frightening, and it closed so swiftly that the squadron of cavalry was forced to veer away, forced to edge out towards where the two armoured cars were hidden.
Behind the single speeding vehicle the Italian column lost its rigid shape. The front half of it swung away in a long untidy line abreast in pursuit of the hors.e.m.e.n. These were all larger, heavier vehicles, with high, canvas-covered cupolas, and their progress was ponderous and so slow that they could not gain perceptibly on the galloping horses.
However, the smaller faster vehicle was gaining rapidly and Jake stood higher to give himself a better view as he refocused the binoculars. He recognized instantly the big open Rolls-Royce tourer that he had last seen at the Wells of Chaldi. Its polished metalwork glittered in the sunlight, its low rakish lines enhancing the impression of speed and power, as the dust boiled out from behind its spinning rear wheels with their huge flashing central bosses.
Even as he watched, the Rolls braked and skidded broadside, coming to a halt in a furiously billowing cloud of dust. A figure tumbled from the rear seat.
Jake watched the man brace himself over the sporting rifle and the spurt of gunsmoke from the muzzle as he fired seven shots in quick succession, the rifle kicking up abruptly at the recoil and the thud thud of the discharge reaching Jake only seconds later.
The hors.e.m.e.n were drawing swiftly away from the Rolls, but neither the changing range nor the dust and mirage affected the marksman. At each shot a horse went down, sliding against the earth, legs kicking to the sky or plunging and rolling, as it struggled to regain its legs, falling back at last and lying still.
Then the rifleman leaped aboard the Rolls again, and the pursuit was continued, gaining swiftly on the survivors, the heavy phalanx of trucks and troop transports lumbering on behind it the whole ma.s.s of horses, men and machines rolling steadily deeper into the killing-ground that Gareth Swales had so carefully surveyed and laid out for them.
"The b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" whispered Jake, as he watched the Rolls skid to a standstill once more. The Italian was taking no chances of approaching the hors.e.m.e.n closely. He was standing well off, out of effective range of their ancient weapons, and he was picking them off one at a time, in the leisurely fashion of a shot gunner at a grouse shoot in fact, the whole b.l.o.o.d.y episode was being played out in the spirit of the hunt.
Even at the range of almost a thousand yards, Jake seemed able to sense the blood pa.s.sion of the Italian marksman, the man"s burning urge to kill merely for the sake of inflicting death, for the deep gut thrill of it.
If they intervened now, cutting into the flank of the widespread and disordered column, they might save the lives of many of the frantically fleeing hors.e.m.e.n. But the Italian column was not yet fully enmeshed in the trap that had been laid. Swiftly, Jake traversed the gla.s.ses across the dust-swirling and heat-distorted plain and for the first time he noticed that a dozen trucks of the Italian rear guard had not joined the mad, tear a.r.s.e helter-skelter stampede after the Ethiopian hors.e.m.e.n. This small group had halted, seemingly under some strict control, and now they had been left two miles behind the roaring, dusty avalanche of heavy vehicles. Jake could spare no more attention to this group, for now the slaughter was being continued, the wildly flying hors.e.m.e.n being cut down by the crack rifleman from the Rolls.
The temptation to intervene now overwhelmed Jake. He knew it was not the correct tactical moment, but he thought, "The h.e.l.l with it, I"m not a general, and those poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds out there need help." He shoved his right foot down hard on the throttle and the engine bellowed, but before he could pull forward and run at the bank, he was forestalled by Gareth Swales. He had been watching Jake, and the play of emotion over his face was plain to read. At the moment he revved the engine, Gareth swung the front end of the Hump across his bows, blocking him effectively.
"I say, old chap, don"t be an idiot," Gareth called across the narrow s.p.a.ce. "Calm the savage breast, you"ll spoil the whole show."
"Those poor, Jake shouted back angrily.
"They"ve got to take their chances. "Gareth cut him short.
"I told you once before your sentimental old-fashioned ideas would get us both into trouble." At this stage the argument was drowned by the Ras. He was standing tall in the turret above Gareth. He had armed himself with the broad, two-handed war sword, and now the excitement became too much for him to bear longer in silence. He let out a series of shrill ululating war cries, and swung the sword in a great hissing circle around his head both the silver blade and his brilliant set of teeth catching the sun and flashing like semaph.o.r.es.
He punctuated his shrill war cries with wild kicks at his driver, urging him in heated Amharic to have at the enemy, and Gareth ducked and twisted out of the way of his flying feet.
"A bunch of maniacs!" protested Gareth as he dodged.
"I"ve got myself mixed up with a bunch of maniacs!"
"Major Swales!" shouted Gregorius, unable to stay out of the argument a moment longer. "My grandfather orders you to advance!"
"You tell your grandfather to-" but Gareth"s reply was cut short as a foot caught him in the ribs.
"Advance!" shouted Gregorius.
"Come on, for chrissake," yelled Jake.
"Yaahooo!" hooted the Ras, and swung around in the turret to wave on his men at arms. They needed no further invitation. In a loose mob, they spurred their ponies past the stymied cars and, brandishing their rifles above their heads, robes streaming in the wind like battle ensigns, they lunged up the steep bank into the open and galloped furiously on to the flank of the scattered Italian column.
"Oh my G.o.d," sighed Gareth. "Every man a b.l.o.o.d.y general-"
"Look!"
shouted Jake, pointing back down the course of the dry river-bed, and they all fell abruptly silent at the spectacle.
It seemed as though the very earth had opened, disgorgeing rank upon rank of wildly galloping hors.e.m.e.n. Where a moment before the sweep of land below the mountains had been empty and silent, now it swarmed with men and horses, hundreds upon hundreds of them, dashing headlong upon the lumbering Italian column.
The dust hung over it all, rolling forward like the fog off a winter sea, shrouding the sun, so that horses and machines were dark infernal shapes below the sombre clouds, and the ruddy sun glinted dully on the steel of rifle and sword.
"That does it," Gareth agreed bitterly, and reversed his car to clear Jake"s front, before swinging away, engine roaring and the wheels spinning for purchase in the steep loose earth of the river-bank.
Jake turned wide of the other car and took the bank at an angle to lessen the gradient, and the two c.u.mbersome machines burst out into the plain, wheel to wheel.
Before them was the open flank of ma.s.sed soft-skinned vehicles, as tempting a target as they had ever been offered in their long and warlike careers. The two iron ladies swept forward together, and it seemed to Jake that there was a new tone to the deep engine note as though they sensed that once again they were fulfilling the true reason for their existence. Jake glanced quickly at the Hump as she sailed along beside him. Her angular steelwork, with its flat abrupt surfaces from which rose the tall turret, still gave her the ugly old-maidish silhouette, but there was a new majesty in the way she plunged forward her bright Ethiopian colours fluttered gaily as a cavalry pennant and the high thin, rimmed wheels spurned the sandy earth like the hooves of a thoroughbred. Beneath him, Priscilla drove forward as gamely, and Jake felt a warm flood of affection for his two old ladies.
"Have at them, girls!" he shouted aloud, and Gareth Swales, head protruding from the driver"s hatch of the Hump, turned towards him.
There was a freshly lit cheroot clamped in the corner of his mouth, seeming to have sprouted there miraculously of its own accord, and Gareth grinned around it.
"n.o.b Xegitind carbomndum!" Jake caught the words faintly above the roar of wind and motor, then turned his full attention back to controlling the racing machine, and bringing her as swiftly as possible into the gaping breach in the Italian line.
Abruptly the pattern of movement ahead of him changed. The exultantly pursuing Italian warriors had realized belatedly that the roles had been neatly switched.
The Count picked up the horseman in the sight, and led off just a touch, a hair"s breadth, for the Marmlicher was a high-velocity rifle and the range was not more than a hundred metres.
He saw the hit clearly, the man lurched in the saddle and sprawled forward over the horse"s neck, but he did not fall. The rifle dropped from his hands and cartwheeled across the earth, but the man clung desperately to the horse"s mane while quick crimson spread across the shoulder of his dirty white robe.
The Count fired again, aiming for the junction of the horse"s neck and shoulder, and saw the jarring impact spin the animal off its feet, so that it fell heavily upon its wounded rider, crushing the air from his lungs in a short high wail.
The Count laughed, wild with excitement. "How many, Gino? How many is that?"
"Eight, my Colonel."
"Keep counting. Keep counting," he urged, as he swung the rifle, seeking the next target, peering eagerly over the open vee sight. Then suddenly he froze, the rifle barrel wavering and sinking to point at his glossy toe caps His lower jaw unhinged and slowly sank, as if in sympathy with the rifle barrel. His recent affliction, forgotten in the excitement of the chase, returned suddenly with a force that turned his bowels to water and his legs to rubber.
"Merciful Mary!" he whispered.
The entire horizon was moving, an Unbroken line from one edge of his vision to the other. It took him many seconds to a.s.similate what he was seeing, to realize that instead of fifteen hors.e.m.e.n, there were suddenly thousands upon thousands, and that rather than running before him they were now moving towards him at a velocity which he would not have believed possible. As he stared, he saw rank upon rank of the enemy seemingly rising from the very earth ahead of him, and rushing towards him through a curtain of fine pale dust. He saw the lowering sun glint red as blood upon the naked blades, and the drumming of galloping hooves sounded like the thunder of a giant waterfall. Yet faintly through the thunder, he heard the blood-freezing war shrieks of the hors.e.m.e.n.
"Giuseppe," he gasped. "Take us away from here fast!
Very fast." This was the sort of appeal that went directly to the driver"s heart. He spun the big car so nimbly that the Count"s considerably weakened legs collapsed and he fell backwards onto the leather seat.
Spread over a front of a quarter of a mile behind and on each side of the Rolls came thirty of the dun coloured Fiat troop-carriers.
Despite their most fervent efforts, they had lost ground steadily to the thrusting Rolls and they now lumbered along almost a thousand yards behind. However, the excitement of the chase had affected the occupants and they had climbed up on the cabs and cupolas, and hung there hooting and yelling as they watched the sport, like runners at a fox hunt.
This solid phalanx of vehicles, advancing almost wheel to wheel over the rough ground, at a speed which would have horrified the manufacturers, was suddenly faced with the urgent necessity of reversing its headlong career without any loss of speed.
The drivers of the two leading trucks whose need was most critical solved the problem by spinning_ the wheels to hard lock, one left and the other right, and they came together radiator to radiator at a combined speed in excess of sixty miles per hour. In a roaring cloud of steam, splintering gla.s.s and rending metal, their cargoes of black shirted infantry men were scattered like wheat upon the earth, or impaled on various metal projections of the vehicle bodies. The trucks, inextricably locked into each other, settled slowly on their shattered suspensions, and no sooner had the dust begun to drift away than there was a belly baking thump as the contents of their shattered fuel tanks ignited in a tall volcanic spout of flame and black smoke.
The other vehicles managed to reverse their courses without serious collision and streamed away into their own dust-clouds, pursued by a horde of galloping, gibbering cavalry.
Count Aldo Belli could not bring himself to glance back over his shoulder, certain that he would find a razor-edged sword swishing inches from his cringing rear, and he leaned over his driver, spurring him to greater speed by beating on his unprotected head and shoulders with a fist clenched like a hammer.
"Faster!" shouted the Count, his fine baritone rising to an uncertain contralto. "Faster, you idiot or I will have you shod" and he hit the driver again behind one ear, experiencing a small spark of relief as the Rolls overtook the rear vehicles in the disordered herd of fleeing trucks.
Now at last he judged it safe to look back, and his relief was more intense when he realized that the Rolls was easily capable of out -running a mounted man. He experienced a warm flood of returning courage.
"My rifle, Gino," he shouted. "Give me my rifle." But the Sergeant was trying to focus his camera on the pursuing horde, and the Count hit him a blow over the top of his head.
"Idiot. This is war," he bellowed. "And I am a warrior give me my rifle!" Giuseppe, the driver, hearing him, reluctantly decided that he was expected to slow the Rolls to give the Count an opportunity to follow his warlike intentions but, at the first diminution of speed, he received another l.u.s.ty crack on the centre of his pate and the Count"s voice went shrill again.
"Idiot," he screeched. "Do you want to get us killed?
Faster, man, faster!" and with unbounded relief the driver pushed his foot flat on the throttle and the Rolls leapt forward again.
Gino was down on his hands and knees at the Count"s feet, and now he came up with the Mannlicher in his hands and handed it to the Count.
"It"s loaded, my Count."
"Brave boy!" The Count braced himself with the rifle held at his hip, and looked about for something to shoot at.
The Ethiopian cavalry had fallen well behind at this stage, and the Rolls had overtaken most of the troop-carriers they were between the Count and the enemy. The Count was considering ordering Giuseppe to work his way out on to the flank, and thus give him an open field of fire weighing the pleasure of shooting down the black riders at a respectable range against any possible physical danger to himself and he turned on his precarious perch in the back seat to look out in that direction.
He stared incredulously at what he saw. Two great humpbacked shapes were sailing in across the open gra.s.sland. They looked like two deformed camels, coming on swiftly with a curious loping progress that was at once comical and yet dreadfully menacing.
The Count stared at them uncomprehendingly, until with a sudden jolt of shock and a new warm flood of adrenalin into his bloodstream, he realized that the two strange vehicles were moving fast enough and at such an angle as to cut off his retreat.
"Giuseppe!" he shrieked, and hit the driver with the b.u.t.t 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 G.o.d!" 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 hors.e.m.e.n.
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 gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.ses 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 att.i.tudes of trepidation and alarm.
At that moment, Castelani heard something which he recognized instantly, his skin p.r.i.c.kling 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 ma.s.s 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 followed its violent efforts to dislodge him, closing in rapidly until he was twenty yards behind it.
The back of the truck was packed with black-shirted infantry men. Some of them were directing wild but rapid rifle fire at the pursuing car, the bullets clanging and whining off the hull, but most of them clung white-faced to the sides of the truck and stared back with stricken eyes as the armoured death carrier bore down inexorably upon them.
"Shoot, Greg!" called Jake. Even through the cold anger that gripped him, he was pleased that the boy had obeyed his orders and held his fire until this moment. There would be no wastage now, at so short a range every round ripped into the Italian truck, tearing through canvas, flesh, bone and steel at the rate of seven hundred rounds a minute.
The truck swerved violently and its front end collapsed; it went over broadside, crashing over and over, flinging the men high in the air, the way a spaniel throws off the droplets from its back as it leaps from water to land.
"Driver, right," called Gregorius immediately. "Another truck, right, a little more right that"s it, you"re on." And they roared in pursuit of another panic-stricken load of Italians.
A hundred yards away on their flank the Hump scored its first success. Gareth Swales was no longer able to accept the indignity of the Ras"s flying feet, and his frenzied and completely unintelligible commands. He left the controls of the racing car to swing an angry punch at the Ras.
"Cut that out, old chap," he snapped. "Play the game I"m on your side, d.a.m.n it." The car, no longer under control, jinked suddenly.
Almost side by side with them sped a Fiat truck, filled with Italians, and the driver had not yet realized that there was another enemy apart from the pursuing hordes of Ethiopian hors.e.m.e.n. His head was twisted around over his shoulder at an impossible angle, and he drove by instinct alone.
The two uncontrolled vehicles came together at an acute angle and at the top of their combined speeds. Steel met steel in a storm of sparks and they staggered away from the blow, both of them veering over steeply. For a moment it" seemed that the Hump would go over; she teetered at the extreme end of her centre of gravity and then came back on to all four wheels with a crash that threw the men inside her unmercifully against her steel sides, before racing on again with Gareth wrestling at the wheel for control.
The Fiat truck was lighter and stood higher; the armoured car had caught her neatly under the cab and she did not even waver, but flipped over on her back, All four wheels still spinning as they "pointed at the sky, and the cab and canvas-covered hood were torn away instantly, the men beneath them smeared between steel and hard earth.
It was all too much for the Ras. He could no longer contain his frustration at being enclosed in a hot metal box from which he could see almost nothing, while all around hundreds of his hated enemies were escaping with complete impunity. He flung open the hatch of the turret and stuck out his head and shoulders, yipping shrilly with bloodl.u.s.t, frustration, anger and excitement.