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.

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