metal in his nostrils. He swung the wheel over and Priscilla responded
as handsomely as ever, turning sharply away from the Italian line.
Jake stood up in his compartment, sticking his head out into the open
and he saw immediately how lucky they had been. The shell had struck
one of the brackets he had welded on to the sponson to carry the arms
crates. It had torn the bracket away, and dented the hull,
leaving the metal glowing with the heat of the strike but the hull was
intact, they had not been penetrated.
'Are you all right, Greg?' he yelled as he dropped back into his
seat.
'They are following, Jake,' the boy called down to him, ignoring the
hit. 'They are after us all of them.'
'Home and mother here we come,' Jake said, and turned directly away
from them, once again changing the range and aim of the Italian gunners
abruptly.
Shot burst close, driving the air in upon their eardrums, and making
them both flinch involuntarily.
'We are pulling too far ahead, Jake,' called Greg, and Jake glancing up
saw that he had his hatch open and his head out.
'Lame bird,' Jake decided reluctantly. If they outstripped the
Italians too rapidly, there was a danger they would abandon the
chase.
Another shell burst close alongside, covering them with a veil of pale
dust, and Jake faked a hit, cutting back the throttle so that their
seed bled off, and he swung Priscilla into an erratic broken pattern of
flight, like a bird with a broken wing.
'They're gaining on us now, 'Greg reported gleefully.
'Don't sound so damned happy about it,' Jake muttered, but his voice
was lost in the whine and crack of passing shot.
'They're still coming,' howled Greg. 'And they're still shooting.'
'I noticed.' Jake peered ahead, still flinging the car mercilessly
from side to side. The ridge of the first dune was half a mile ahead,
but it seemed like an hour later that he felt the earth tilt up under
him and they went slithering and skidding up the slip-face of the dune
and crashed over the crest into safety.
Jake swung Nscilla into a broadside skid, like a skier performing a
christy, bringing her to an abrupt halt in the lee of the dune and then
he backed and manoeuvred up until he was in a hull-down position behind
the sand, with only the turret exposed.
'That's it, Jake,' cried Greg delightedly, as he found his Vickers
would bear again. He crouched over it, and fired short crisp bursts at
the four black tanks that roared angrily towards them across the
plain.
From the stationary position behind the dune, Gregorius made every
burst of fire sweep the oncoming hulls, driving the Latin tempers of
the crews into frenzy, like the sting of a tsetse fly on the belly of a
bull buffalo.
'That's about close enough,' decided Jake, judging the charge of enemy
armour finely. They were less than five hundred yards off now and
