'Heads,'said Jake.
'Tough luck, old son.' Gareth pocketed the coin and flicked out the
coffee grounds from his mug. Then he went to spread his blanket on the
sandy ravine bottom, under Priscilla the Pig's chassis.
Jake shook him gently in the dawn, and cautioned him with a touch on
the lips. Gareth came swiftly awake, blinking his eyes and smoothing
back his hair with both hands, then rolling to his feet and following
Jake quickly up the side of Priscilla's hull.
The dawn was a silent explosion of red and gold and brilliant apricot
that fanned out across half the eastern sky, touched the high ground
with fire but left the long grey blue shadows smeared across the low
places. The crescent of the sinking moon low on the western horizon
was white as a shark's tooth.
'Listen,' said Jake, and Gareth turned his head slightly to catch the
tremble of sound in the silence of the dawn.
'Hear it?' Gareth nodded, and lifted his binoculars. Slowly he swept
the distant sun-touched ridges.
'There,' said Jake sharply, and Gareth swung the glasses in the
direction of Jake's arm.
Some miles off, a string of dark indefinite blobs were moving through
one of the depressions in the gently undulating terrain. They looked
like beads on a rosary; even in the magnifying lens of the glasses they
were too far off and too dimly lit to afford details.
They watched them, following the almost sinuous line as it snaked
across their front until the leading blob drew the line up the gentle
slope of ground. As it reached the crest, it was struck with startling
suddenness by the low golden sun. In the still cool air there was no
distortion, and the dramatic side-lighting made every detail of its low
profile clear and crisp.
'CV.3 cavalry tanks,' said Gareth, without hesitation.
'Fifty-horse-power Alfa engines. Ten centimetres of frontal armour and
a top speed of eighteen miles an hour.' It was as though he were
reading the specifications from a catalogue, and Jake remembered that
these were part of his stock-in-trade. 'There's a crew of three,
driver, loader gunner and commander and it looks as though they are
mounting the fifty-men. Spandau. They are accurate at a thousand
yards and the rate of fire is fifteen rounds a minute.' As he was
speaking the leading tank dropped from sight over the reverse slope of
the ridge, followed in quick succession by the five others and their
engine noise droned away into silence.
Gareth lowered his glasses and grinned ruefully. 'Well, we are a
little out of our class. Those Spandaus are in fully revolving
turrets. We are out-gunned all to hell.'
'We are faster than they are,' said Jake hotly, like a mother whose
children had been scorned.
'And that, old son, is all we are, 'grunted Gareth.
'How about a bite of breakfast? It's going to be a long hard day to
sit out before it's dark enough to head for home.' They ate tinned
Irish stew, heated over the bucket, and smeared on thick spongy hunks
