Running side by side, they went into it at the top of their speed and
were destroyed effectively as though they had been demolished by a
100 kilo, aerial bomb, the riding wheels ripped away by the impact and
the heavy steel tracks flying loose and snaking viciously into the air
like living angry cobras. The revolving turrets were torn from their
seatings, neatly bisecting the men at the waist, who stood in the
hatches, as though with a gigantic pair of scissors.
Clinging to the rim of his own turret and peering backwards,
Gareth saw the two machines disappear into the earth, and the great
leaping towers of dust that rose high into the air to mark their
destruction.
'Two down' he shouted.
'But another four to go,' Jake shouted back grimly, fighting
Priscilla over the rough earth. 'And how about that jumbo?'
'How indeed!' The elephant, goaded on by the roar of engines and crash
of steel behind and by the buzzing bouncing car ahead of it, was making
incredible speed over the broken scrubby plain.
'He's right here with us,' Gareth told Jake anxiously. So close was
the great beast that Gareth had to look up at it, and he saw the thick
grey. trunk uncoiling from its chest and reaching out to pluck him
from the turret.
'As fast as you like, old son, or you'll have him sitting on your
head.'
'I have told that idiot not to run the game down on the guns so hard,'
snapped the Count petulantly. 'I -have told him a dozen times,
have I not, Gino?'
'Indeed, my Count.'
'Run them hard at the beginning,
then bring them in gently for the last mile or so. 'The Count took an
angry gulp at his glass. 'The man is a fool, an insufferable fool
and
I can't abide fools around me.' 'Indeed not, my Count. I shall send
him back to Massawa-' the rest of the threat trailed away, and the
Count sat suddenly upright, the canvas chair creaking under his
weight.
'Gino,' he murmured uneasily. 'There is something very strange taking
place out there.' Both of them peered anxiously out through the rifle
slots in the thatched wall of the blind at the billowing dust clouds
that raced down upon them with quite alarming speed.
'Gino, is it possible?' asked the Count.
'No, my Count,' Gino assured him, but without any true conviction.
'It is the mirage. It is not possible.'
'Are you certain, Gino?' The
Count's voice 'took on a strident edge.
'No, my Count.'
'Nor am I, Gino. What does it look like to you?'
'It looks like,- Geno's voice choked off. 'I do not like to say, my
Count,' he whispered. 'I think I am going mad.' At that moment the
Captain of tanks, whose efforts to catch up with the fleeing armoured
