At that moment, an open sky-blue and glistening black Rolls-Royce tourer flashed across the front of the Hump. In the rear seat was an Italian officer bedecked with the glittering insignia of rank instantly Gareth Swales and the Ras were in perfect accord once again.
They had found a target eminently acceptable to both of them.
"I say, tally-ho!" cried Gareth, to be answered by a bloodcurdling "How do you do!" like the crowing of an enraged rooster from the turret above him.
Count Aldo Belli was in hysterics, for the driver seemed to have lost all sense of direction; now more than just a little concussed, he had turned at right angles across the line of flight of the Italian column. This was as hazardous as running an ocean liner at full speed through a field of icebergs for the rolling dust-clouds had reduced visibility to less than fifty feet, and out of this brown fog the lumbering troop-carriers appeared without warning, the drivers in no fit condition to take evasive action, all looking back over their shoulders.
Ahead of them, two more monstrous shapes appeared out of the dust; one was an Italian truck and the other was one of the c.u.mbersome camel-backed vehicles with the Ethiopian colours splashed upon its hull and a Vickers machine gun protruding from its turret.
Suddenly the armoured car swerved and crashed heavily into the side of the truck, capsizing it instantly and then swerving back towards the Rolls. It came so close, towering over them so threateningly, that it entered even Giuseppe"s limited field of vision.
The effect was miraculous. Giuseppe shot bolt upright in his seat and, with the touch of an inspired Nuvolari, brought the Rolls round on two wheels, cutting finely across the armoured bows just at the moment that the hatch of the turret flew open and a wizened brown face, filled with the largest, whitest and most flashing teeth the Count had ever seen, popped out of the turret and emitted a war cry so shrill and heart-chilling that the Count"s bowels flopped over like a stranded fish.
As the barrel of the Vickers swung on to the Rolls, the Ethiopian gunner ducked down into the turret, and the barrel elevated slightly until the Count found himself staring stupidly into its dark round aperture but Giuseppe had been watching also in the driving mirror, and now he spun the wheel and the Rolls flashed aside like a mackerel before the driving charge of the barracuda. The blast of shot from the Vickers tore down its left side lifting a storm of dirt and pebbles in spurting fountains high into the air.
The armoured car swung heavily to follow the Rolls" manoeuvre, the leaping dust fountains swinging with it, closing in mercilessly.
However, Giuseppe, faced with the prospect of death, hit the brakes so hard that the Count was catapulted forward, howling protests, to hang over the front seat, his ample black-clad b.u.t.tocks pointing at the heavens and his glistening boots kicking wildly as he fought for balance.
The sheet of bullets from the swinging Vickers pa.s.sed mere inches ahead of the Rolls, and Giuseppe swung the wheel to hard opposite lock, released the brakes and trampled hard on the throttle. The Rolls kicked over hard, wheels spinning for purchase, then bounded ahead with such impetus that the Count was thrown backwards again, crashing into a sitting position on the rear leather seat, his helmet falling over his eyes.
"I"ll have you shot," he gasped, as he struggled weakly to adjust the helmet. Giuseppe was too busy to hear him. His duck and swerve had beaten the Ethiopian gunner, and the superior speed of the Rolls was carrying it swiftly out of harm"s way. just a few more seconds then the ancient but splendidly toothed head of the gunner appeared once more in the turret, and the bows of the armoured car and the questing muzzle of the Vickers swung back. The gunner dropped back behind the gun and the roaring clatter of bullets sounded high above the bellow of straining engines.
Once again, the dust storm of bullets tore up the earth, swinging rapidly towards the Rolls.
Slightly ahead of the two vehicles, another growling, labouring troop-carrier loomed out of the dust on a parallel course with them, but travelling at only half the speed under its heavy load of terrified troopers.
Giuseppe touched the wheel, swaying out slightly away from the stream of bullets, then he swung hard the opposite way and as the armoured car turned to follow him he ducked neatly behind the troop-carrier, screened by its high unstable bulk from the deadly machine gun. The Ethiopian kept firing.
As the solid hose of fire tore through the canvas hood of the truck, ripping and shredding the men crowded shoulder to shoulder beneath it, the Rolls was pulling away swiftly in its lee. Suddenly, it was out of the dust clouds into the crystal desert air, with a vista of open land stretching away to the horizon a horizon which was the pa.s.sionate destination of every man in the Rolls. The lumbering troop carriers were left behind, and the Rolls could make a clean run of it. The way the Count felt at that moment, they would only stop once he was safely into his defensive positions above the Wells of Chaldi.
Then quite suddenly, he was aware of the guns on the open plain ahead of him. They were drawn up neatly in s.p.a.ced-out triangular batteries, three vees of three guns each, with the gunners grouped about them and the long fit barrels covering the approaching ma.s.s of fleeing vehicles.
There was a parade-ground feeling of calm and good order about them that made the Count blubber with relief after the nightmare from which he had just emerged.
"Giuseppe, you have saved us," he sobbed. "I am going to give you a medal. "The threat of capital punishment made a few minutes earlier was forgotten. "Drive for the guns, my brave boy. You have done good work and you"ll find me grateful." At that moment, emboldened by talk of safety, Gino lifted himself from the floorboards where he had been resting these last few minutes. He looked cautiously over the rear of the Rolls, and what he saw caused him to let out a single strangled cry and to drop once more into his original position on the floor.
Behind them the Ethiopian armoured car had burst out of the dust clouds and was bounding determinedly after them.
The Count took one look also, and immediately resumed his encouragement of Giuseppe, beating on his head with a fist like a judge"s gavel.
"Faster, Giuseppe!" he shrieked. "If he kills us, I"ll have you shot." And the Rolls raced for the protection of the guns.
ready now!" intoned Major Castelani gravely, trying by the tone of his voice to quiet their nerves.
"Steady, my lads. Hold your fire. Hold your fire.
"Remember your drill," he said. "Just remember your range drill, soldier." He paused a moment beside the nearest gun layer lifting his binoculars and sweeping the field ahead.
The dust cloud was rolling rapidly towards them, but all the action was confused and indistinct.
"You are loaded with high explosive?" the Major asked quietly, and the gun-layer gulped nervously and nodded.
"Remember, the first shot is the only one you can aim with care.
Make it count."
"Sir." The man"s voice was unsteady, and Castelani felt a stab of anger and contempt. They were all un blooded boys, unsteady and nervous. He had been forced to push them to their places and put the trails of the guns in their hands.
He turned abruptly, and strode to the next battery.
"Steady now, lads. Hold your fire until it counts." They turned strained, pale faces to him; one of the layers looked as though he would burst into tears at any moment.
"The only thing you have to be afraid of is me! growled Castelani. "Let one of you open fire before I give the order and you"ll-" A cry interrupted him, as one of the loaders stood up and pointed out on to the field.
"Take that man"s name," snapped Castelani, and turned with dignity, making a show of polishing the lens of his binoculars on his sleeve before raising them to his eyes.
Colonel Count Aldo Belli was leading his men back so enthusiastically that he had outstripped them by half a mile, and every moment was widening the gap. He was driving directly at the centre of the artillery batteries, and he was standing tall in the back seat of the Rolls, with both arms waving and gesticulating as though he was being attacked by a swarm of bees.
Even as Castelani watched, from out of the brown curtains of dust beyond the Rolls burst a machine that he recognized instantly, despite its new camouflage paint and the unfamiliar weapon in the turret. It did not need the gay pennant that flew above it to identify his enemy.
"Very well, lads," he said quietly. "Here they come. High explosive, and wait for the order. Not a moment before." The speeding armoured car fired, a long tearing ripping burst. Much too long, Castelani thought with grim satisfaction. That gun would be overheating, and they could expect a jam. An experienced gunner laid down short, s.p.a.ced bursts of fire the enemy were green also, Castelani decided.
"Steady, lads, "he snapped, watching his men stir restlessly at the sound of gunfire and exchange nervous glances.
The car fired again, and he saw the fall of shot around the Rolls, kicking up swift jumping spurts of dust and earth another long ripping hail of fire. That ended abruptly and was not repeated.
"Ha!" snorted Castelani, with satisfaction. "She has jammed." His wavering gunners would not have to receive fire. It was good. It would steel them, give them confidence to shoot, without being shot at.
"Steady now. All steady. Not long to wait. Nice and steady now." His voice lost its jagged, emery-paper tone and became soothing and crooning like a mother at the cradle.
"Wait for it, lads. Easy now." The Ras did not understand what had happened, why the gun remained silent, despite all the strength of both his hands on pistol grip and triggers. The long canvas belt of ammunition still drooped from the bins and fed into the breech of the Vickers but it no longer moved.
The Ras swore at the gun, such an oath that, had he hurled it at another man, would have led immediately to a duel to the death, but the gun remained silent.
Armed with his two-handed battle sword, the Ras climbed half out of the turret and brandished it about his head.
It is doubtful if he would have realized what three batteries of modern 100 men field guns would have looked like from the business end, or, if he had recognized them, whether they would have daunted his determined pursuit of the fleeing Rolls. As it was, his reason and vision were clouded with the red mists of battle rage. He did not see the waiting guns.
Below him, Gareth Swales leaned forward in the driver"s seat peering shortsightedly through the visor, which narrowed his field of vision and partially obscured it as though he was looking through the perforated bottom of a kitchen colander. His eyes were swimming from the cordite smoke, the engine fumes and the dust-motes so that he blinked rapidly as he concentrated all his efforts in following the speeding ethereal shape of the Rolls. He did not see the waiting guns.
"Shoot, d.a.m.n you," he shouted. "We are going to lose him." But above him the Vickers was silent, and from his seat low down in the hull, the slight fold of ground so carefully chosen by Major Castelani half-hid the batteries.
He raced towards them, drawn on inexorably by the fleeting shape of the Rolls dancing elusively ahead of him.
Good." Castelani allowed himself a bleak little smile as he watched the enemy vehicle come on steadily.
Already it was within comfortable range for an experienced gunner, but he knew it must be half as close again before his own crews could make any certainty of their practice.
The Rolls, however, was a mere two hundred metres in front of the guns, and coming on at a speed that could not have been less than sixty miles an hour. Three terrified and chalky faces were turned towards him in dreadful appeal and three voices were raised in loud cries for succour. The Major ignored them and swiftly turned his professional eye back to the enemy. He found it was still two thousand metres out across the plain but closing satisfactorily. He was on the point of uttering another rea.s.surance to his edgy gunners, when the Rolls roared through the narrow gap in the centre of his batteries.
The Count had at that moment temporarily found his feet and replaced his helmet on his head. Standing on the high platform of the Rolls, his voice, powered with adrenalin and shrill with terror, carried clearly to every gunner.
"Open fire!" shrieked the Count. "Open fire immediately! or I will have you all shot!" and then, realizing that they should be encouraged to remain at their posts and cover his withdrawal, he reached frantically for inspiration and flung over his shoulder one rousing "Death before dishonour!" before the Rolls bore him away, still at sixty miles an hour, towards the long distant horizon.
The Major lifted his voice in a great bugling bellow to countermand the order, but even his lungs were no match for the thunderous volley of nine field guns fired in as close to unison as they had never been in training. Each gunner took his Colonel at his literal word when he said "immediately" and such refinements as laying and aiming were forgotten in the dire urgency of firing as furiously and as fast as possible.
In the circ.u.mstances, it was nothing short of a miracle that one high-explosive sh.e.l.l found a mark. This was a Fiat troop-carrier which emerged at that moment from the dust clouds a quarter of a mile behind the Ethiopian armoured car. The sh.e.l.l was fused to a thousandth of a second delay; it went in through the radiator, shattered the engine block, disintegrated the driver, then burst in the midst of the group of terrified infantrymen huddled under the canvas hood.
The engine and front wheel of the truck kept going forward for a few seconds before beginning to roll and bounce over the irregular ground the rest of the truck and twenty men went straight upwards, fifty feet in the air like a troupe of maniacal acrobats.
Only one other sh.e.l.l came close to hitting the enemy. It burst ten yards in front of the Hump, emptying in a towering pillar of flame and yellow earth, and gouging a deep round crater, four feet across, into which the speeding car plunged.
The Ras, whose head was protruding from the turret, and whose mouth and eyes were wide open, had all three of these body apertures filled with flying sand from the explosion and his war whoops were cut off abruptly, as he choked for breath and tried frantically to wipe his streaming eyes.
Gareth also had his vision abruptly closed by the pillar of flame and sand, and he drove blindly into the sh.e.l.l crater.
The impact threw him out of his seat, and the steering wheel hit him in the chest, driving the wind out of his lungs before snapping off short at the floorboards.
With another bound, the Hump bounced jauntily out of the sh.e.l.l crater with streamers of dust and sh.e.l.l smoke swirling about her. She was hanging over on one side with her springs snapped off by the jolt, and her front wheels locked firmly to one side, yet her engine still bellowed at full power and she went into a tight right-hand circle, around and around like a circus animal.
Wheezing for breath, Gareth dragged himself back into the driver"s seat, only to find that there was no longer a steering column and that the throttle had jammed at the fully open position. He sat there for long seconds, shaking his head to clear it, and struggling desperately for breath, for the hull was filled with dust and smoke.
Another sh.e.l.l, bursting somewhere close beside the hull, roused him from the stupors of shock, and he reached up, unlatched the driver"s hatch and stuck his head out into the open air. At what seemed like point-blank range, three full batteries of Italian field guns were firing at him.
"Oh my G.o.d!" he gasped painfully, as another volley of high explosive erupted around the rapidly circling car, the blast jarring his eyeb.a.l.l.s and rattling his teeth in his head.
"Let"s go home!" he said and began to hoist himself out of the narrow hatch-way. His feet came clear of the steel flooring of the hull only just in time to save every bone below his knees in both legs from being shattered into small fragments.
a thousand yards away across the plain Major Castelani was fighting for control against the panic that the Count had instilled in his gunners. They were loading and firing with such single-minded pa.s.sion that all the other refinements of gunnery were completely forgotten. The layers were no longer making a pretence of seeking a target, but merely jerking the lanyard at the very moment the breech block clanged shut.
Castelani"s bellows made no impression on the half deafened and almost completely dazed gunners. The Count"s last injunction to death had shattered their nerves completely and they were all of them beyond reason.
Castelani dragged the nearest layer from his seat behind the gun shield, and prised open the man"s death grip on the lanyard. Cursing bitterly at the quality of the men under his command, he pedalled the traverse and elevating handles of the gun with a smooth expert action.
The thick barrel dropped and swung until the insect speck of the armoured car loomed suddenly large in the magnifying prism of the gunsight. It was tearing in a crazy circle, clearly out of control, and Castelani picked up the rhythm of its circle and hit the lanyard with a short hard jerk of the wrist. The barrel flew back, arrested at last by the hydraulic pistons of the shock absorber, and the fifteen-pound cone-shaped steel sh.e.l.l was hurled on an almost flat trajectory across the plain.
It was aimed fractionally low. It pa.s.sed inches below the tall shuttered bows of the car, between the two front wheels, and struck the earth directly below the driver"s compartment.
The released energy. of the blast was deflected by the earth"s surface up into the soft underbelly of the hull. It blew the engine block off its seating, tore off the big front wheels like wings from a roast chicken, and stove in the steel floor of the hull with a great Thor"s hammer stroke.
If Gareth Swales"s feet had been in contact with the steel floor of the hull, the shock would have been transmitted directly into the bones of his feet and legs, and he would have suffered that dreadful but characteristic wound of the tank man below the knees his legs would have been transformed into bags of shattered bone.
He was, however, suspended half in and half out of the driver"s hatch with both legs kicking frantically in the air, and the shock of the blast came up like carbon dioxide in a bottle of freshly opened champagne. He was the cork and he was shot out of the hatch, still kicking.
The effect on the Ras was the same. He came out of the turret, propelled high by the blast and he met Gareth at the top of his trajectory. The two of them came down to earth simultaneously, with the Ras seated between Gareth"s shoulder blades, and the wonder of it was that neither of them was impaled upon the war sword which went with them and finally pegged deep into the earth six inches from Gareth"s ear as he lay face down and feebly tried to dislodge the Ras from his back.
"I warn you, old chap," he managed to gasp. "One day you are going to go too far." The sound of oncoming engines, many of them and all roaring in high revolutions, made Gareth"s efforts to dislodge the Ras more determined. He sat up spitting sand and blood from his crushed lips, and looked up to see the remaining Italian transports bearing down on them like the starting grid of the Le Mans Grand Prix.
"Oh my G.o.d!" gasped Gareth, his scattered wits rea.s.sembling hastily, and he crawled frantically into the shattered and still smoking carca.s.s of the Hump, beginning to shrink down out of sight before he realized that the Ras was no longer with him.
"Ra.s.sey, you stupid old b.a.s.t.a.r.d come back, he shouted despairingly. The Ras, once again armed with his trusty broadsword, was staggering out on unsteady stork"s legs, stunned by the sh.e.l.l burst but still fighting mad, and there was no doubting his intentions. He was going to take on the entire motorized column single-handed, and as he hurried to meet them, shouting a challenge, he loosened up with a few hissing two-handed cuts with the sword.
Gareth had to duck under the swinging blade, going in low in a flying rugby tackle, to bring the old warrior down in an untidy heap.
He dragged him, still shouting and struggling furiously, under cover of the broken steel hull, just as the first Italian truck roared past them. The pale-faced occupants paid them not the slightest attention. they were intent on one thing only and that was following their Colonel.
"Shut up!" growled Gareth, as the Ras tried to provoke them with some of the foulest oaths in the Amharic language. Finally he had to hold the Ras down, wrap his sham ma around his head, and sit on it while the Italian Fiats thundered past, and the rolling clouds of dust spread over them as though driven by the khamsin.
Once through the dust and confused stampede of trucks, Gareth thought he glimpsed the hump-backed shape of Priscilla the Pig, and he released the Ras for a moment to wave and shout, but the car disappeared almost instantly, hard on the trail of a lumbering Fiat, and Gareth heard the short crashing burst of the Vickers clearly, even above the thunder of many engines.
Then suddenly they were all past, streaming away, the engine sounds fading, the dust settling and then there was another sound, faint yet but growing with every second.
Although most of the Harari and Galla hors.e.m.e.n had long ago given up the pursuit in favour of the more enjoyable and profitable occupation of looting the capsized and damaged Italian trucks, a few hundred of the more hardy souls still flogged on their foundering mounts.
This thin line of hors.e.m.e.n came sweeping forward, ululating and casually cutting down the Italian survivors from the destroyed trucks who fled before them on foot.
"All right, Ra.s.sey." 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sed a 100 men. sh.e.l.l. 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 pa.s.sing, 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."