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 buttocks pointing at the
heavens and his glistening boots kicking wildly as he fought for
balance.
The sheet of bullets from the swinging Vickers passed 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
passionate 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 spaced-out triangular batteries,
three vees of three guns each, with the gunners grouped about them and
the long fit barrels covering the approaching mass 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.
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, spaced 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, damn 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 reassurance 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 circumstances, it was nothing short of a miracle that one
high-explosive shell 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 shell 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 shell 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 shell 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 shell crater
with streamers of dust and shell 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 shell, 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 God!" he gasped painfully, as another volley of high explosive
erupted around the rapidly circling car, the blast jarring his eyeballs
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 passion 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 shell was hurled on an almost flat
trajectory across the plain.
It was aimed fractionally low. It passed 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