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
