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.
