The elephant was a hundred paces away, coming directly down on top of
them at a loose shambling walk, the great black ears flapping sullenly
and the little piggy eyes alight with malevolence.
Right behind it, fanned out on each side, pressing closely on the great
beast's heels, came the full squadron of Italian tanks. The sun
glittered on the smoothly rounded frontal armour, and caught the bright
festival flutter of their cavalry pennants. From each hatch protruded
the black-helmeted head of the tank commander. Through the
binoculars
Gareth could make out the individual features of each commander, they
were that close.
Within minutes they would be overrun, and there was no chance that they
could escape detection. The elephant was leading the Italians directly
to the ravine, and their scanty camouflage of scrub branches would not
stand scrutiny at less than a hundred yards.
They could not even protect themselves, the Vickers machine gun was
pointed away from the approaching enemy, and the limited traverse of
the ball mounting was not sufficient to bring it to bear. Gareth was
engulfed suddenly by a black and burning rage for the stubborn piece of
machinery beneath his feet. He took a vicious heartfelt kick at the
steel turret.
"You treacherous bitch, he snarled, and at that moment the engine fired
and, without preliminary gulping and popping, roared angrily.
Jake bounded up the side of the hull, droplets of sweat flying from his
sodden hair, red-faced as he gasped at Gareth.
"You've got the gentle touch."
"With all women there is the psychological moment, old son, "Gareth
explained, grinning with relief as he scrambled into the turret and
Jake dropped behind the controls.
Jake gunned the motor, and Priscilla threw off her covering, of cut
thorn branches. Her wheels spun in the loose sand of the ravine,
blowing up a cloud of red dust, and she tore up the steep bank and
lunged out into the open directly under the startled outstretched trunk
of the elephant.
The old bull had by this stage suffered provocation sufficient to take
him to the edge of a blind, black rage. It needed only this new
buzzing frightfulness to launch him over the edge. The leisurely pace
that he had set up until now left his mountainous strength and
endurance untouched, and now he trumpeted, a ringing ear-splitting
challenge that rolled across the vast silences of the desert like the
trumpet of doom. His ears curled back against his skull and with his
trunk coiled against his chest, he crashed forward into a terrible
ground-shaking charge.
His speed over the broken ground was greater than that of
Priscilla the Pig, and he bore down upon her like a cliff of grey
granite huge, menacing and indestructible.
The Captain of tanks had been shepherding the old elephant along
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
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 elepha
nt 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
eighteen inches from the Count's left ear, with a crack of disrupted
air that stunned him, before exiting through the rear wall of the blind
and howling onwards to burst a mile out in the empty desert.
"If the Count no longer needs me-" Gino snapped a hasty salute and
before the Count had recovered his wits enough to forbid it, he had
dived through the shell hole in the rear wall of the blind and hit the
ground on the far side, already running.
Gino was not alone. From each of the blinds along the line leapt the
figures of the other hunters, the sound of their hysterical cries
almost drowned by the roar of engines, the trumpeting of an angry bull
elephant and the continuous thudding roar of cannon fire.
The Count tried to rise from his chair, but his legs betrayed him and
he managed only a series of convulsive leaps. His mouth gaped wide in
his deathly pale face, but no sound came out of it. The Count was
beyond speech, almost beyond movement just the strength for one more
desperate heave, and the chair toppled forward, throwing the Count face
down upon the sunken earth floor of the blind, where he covered his
head with both arms.
At that instant, the armoured car, still under full throttle, came in
through the front wall. The thatched blind exploded around it, but the
impetus of the car's charge was sufficient to carry it in a single leap
over the dugout. The spinning wheels hurled inches over the
Count's prostrate form, showering him with a stinging barrage of sand
and loose gravel. Then it was gone.
The Count struggled to sit up, and had almost succeeded when the huge
enraged form of the bull elephant pounded over the blind. One of its
great feet struck the Count a glancing blow on the shoulder and he
screamed like a hand-saw and once again flung himself flat on the floor
of the dugout while the elephant pounded onwards towards the far
horizon, still in pursuit of the flying car.
The earth shook beneath the approach of another heavy body, and the
Count flattened himself to the floor of the dugout deafened,
dazed and paralysed with terror, until the commander of tanks stood
over him and asked solicitously, "Was the game to your liking, my
Colonel?" Even after Gino returned and Helped the Count to his feet,
dusted him down and helped him into the back seat of the Rolls,
the threats and insults still poured from the Count's choked throat in
a high-pitched stream.
"You are a degenerate and a coward. You are guilty of dereliction of
duty, of gross irresponsibility. You allowed them to escape, sir and
you placed me in deadly peril-" They eased the Count down on the
cushions of the Rolls, but as the car pulled away he jumped up to hurl
a parting salvo at the Captain of tanks.
"You are an irresponsible degenerate, sir! - a coward and a
Bolshevik and I shall personally command your firing squad-" His voice
faded into the distance as the Rolls drew away up the ridge in the
direction of the camp, but the Count's good arm was still waving and
gesticulating as they crossed the skyline.
The elephant followed them far out across the desert, long after the
pursuing tank squadron had been left behind and abandoned the chase.
The old bull lost ground steadily over the last mile or so,
until at last he also gave up and stood swaying with exhaustion but
still shaking out his ears and throwing up his trunk in that
truculent,
almost human gesture of challenge and defiance.
Gareth saluted him with respect as they drew away and left him,
like a tall black monolith, out on the dry pale plains. Then he lit
two cheroots, crouching down into the turret out of the wind, and
passed one down to Jake in the driver's compartment.
"A good day's work, (old son. We pronged two of the godless ones,
and we have put the others in the right frame of mind."
"How's that again? "Jake puffed gratefully at the cheroot.
"Next time those tank men lay eyes on us, they'll not stop to count
consequences, but they'll be after us like a pack of long dogs after a
bitch."
"And that's a good thing? "Jake removed the cheroot from his mouth to
ask incredulously.
"That's a good thing' Gareth assured him.
"Well, you could have fooled me." He drove on for a few more minutes
in silence towards the mountains, then shook his head bemusedly.
Tranged? What the hell kind of word is that?"
"Just thought of it this minute," Gareth said. "Expressive, what?" -"
The Count lay face down upon his cot; he wore only a pair of silk
shorts, of a pale and delicate blue, embroidered with his family coat
of arms.
His body was smooth and pale and plump, with that sleek well-fed sheen
which takes a great deal of money, food and drink to nourish. On the
pale skin his body hair was dark and curly and crisp as newly picked
lettuce leaves. It grew in a light cloud across his shoulders,
and then descended his back to disappear at last like a wisp of smoke
into the cleft of his milky buttocks that showed coyly above the
waistband of his shorts.
Now the smoothness of his body was spoiled by the ugly red abrasions
and new purple bruises which flowered upon his ribs and blotched his
legs and arms.
He groaned with a mixture of agony and gratification as Gino knelt over
him, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and worked the liniment into
his shoulder. His dark sinewy fingers sank deeply into the sleek pale
flesh, and the stench of liniment stung the eyes and nostrils.
"Not so hard, Gino. Not so hard, I am badly hurt."
"I am sorry,
my Colonel," and he worked on in silence while the Count groaned and
grunted and wriggled on the bed under him.
"My Colonel, may I speak?"
"No," grunted the Colonel. "Your salary is already liberal.
No, Gino, already I pay you a prince's ransom."
"My Colonel, you do me wrong. I would not speak of su
ch a mundane
subject at this time."
"I am delighted to hear it," groaned the Count. "Ah!
There! That spot! That's it!" Gino worked on the spot for a few
seconds. "If you study the lives of the great Italian Generals Julius
Caesar and-" Gino paused here while he searched his mind and more
recent history for another great Italian General; the silence stretched
out and Gino repeated, "Take Julius Caesar, as an example."
"Yes?"
"Even Julius Caesar did not himself swing the sword. The truly great
commander stands aside from the actual battle.
He directs, plans, commands the lesser mortals."
"That is true,
Gino."
"Any peasant can swing a sword or fire a gun, what are they but mere
cattle!"
"That is also true."
"Take Napoleon Bonaparte, or the
Englishman Wellington." Gino had abandoned his search for the name of
a victorious Italian warrior within the last thousand years or SO.
"Very well, Gino, take them?"
"When they fought, they themselves were remote from the actual
conflict. Even when they confronted each other at Waterloo, they stood
miles apart like two great chess masters,
directing, manoeuvring, commanding-"
"What are you trying to say,
Gino?"
"Forgive me, my coUnt, but have you not perhaps let your courage blind
you, have not your warlike instincts, your instinct to tear the jugular
from your enemy ... have you not perhaps lost sight of a commander's
true role the duty to stand back from the actual fighting and survey
the overall battle?" Gino waited with trepidation for the
Count's reaction. It had taken him all his courage to speak, but even
the Count's wrath could not outweigh the terror he felt at the prospect
of being plunged once more into danger. His place was at the Count's
side; if the Count continued to expose them both to all the terrors and
horrors of this barren and hostile land, then Gino knew that he could
no longer continue.
His nerves were trampled, raw, exposed, his nights troubled with dreams
from which he woke sweating and trembling.
He had a nerve below his left eye that had recently begun to twitch
without control. He was fast reaching the end of his nervous strength.
Soon something within him might snap.
"Please, my Count. For the good of all of us you must all curb your
impetuosity." He had touched a responsive chord in his master. He had