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 horsemen 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 horsemen came sweeping forward, ululating and
casually cutting down the Italian survivors from the destroyed trucks
who fled before them on foot.
'All right, Rassey.' 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 shells 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 pass 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.