The effect on the Ras was the same. He came out of the turret, propelled high by the blast and he met Gareth at the top of his trajectory. The two of them came down to earth simultaneously, with the Ras seated between Gareth's shoulder blades, and the wonder of it was that neither of them was impaled upon the war sword which went with them and finally pegged deep into the earth six inches from Gareth's ear as he lay face down and feebly tried to dislodge the Ras from his back.
"I warn you, old chap," he managed to gasp. "One day you are going to go too far." The sound of oncoming engines, many of them and all roaring in high revolutions, made Gareth's efforts to dislodge the Ras more determined. He sat up spitting sand and blood from his crushed lips, and looked up to see the remaining Italian transports bearing down on them like the starting grid of the Le Mans Grand Prix.
"Oh my God!" gasped Gareth, his scattered wits reassembling hastily, and he crawled frantically into the shattered and still smoking carcass of the Hump, beginning to shrink down out of sight before he realized that the Ras was no longer with him.
"Rassey, you stupid old bastard come back, he shouted despairingly. The Ras, once again armed with his trusty broadsword, was staggering out on unsteady stork's legs, stunned by the shell burst but still fighting mad, and there was no doubting his intentions. He was going to take on the entire motorized column single-handed, and as he hurried to meet them, shouting a challenge, he loosened up with a few hissing two-handed cuts with the sword.
Gareth had to duck under the swinging blade, going in low in a flying rugby tackle, to bring the old warrior down in an untidy heap.
He dragged him, still shouting and struggling furiously, under cover of the broken steel hull, just as the first Italian truck roared past them. The pale-faced occupants paid them not the slightest attention.
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.
"My God, Greg, "Jake shouted up at the boy in the turret.
"We nearly ran right into them."
"Volleyed and thundered do you remember the poem?"
"Poetry, at a time like this?" growled Jake, and he gave Priscilla the throttle.
"Where are we going?"
"Home, and the sooner the quicker. That's a powerful argument they are pointing at us."
"Jake-" Gregorius began to protest, when there was a bang and a flash that glowed briefly even through the shrouds of dust, and close beside the high turret passed a 100 men. shell. The air slammed against their eardrums and the shriek of it made both of them flinch violently, the air. stank of the electric sizzle of its passing, and it burst half a mile beyond them in a tall tower of flame and dust.
"Do you see what I mean?" asked Jake.
"Yes, Jake oh yes, indeed As he spoke, the dust clouds that had covered them so securely now subsided and drifted aside, exposing them unmercifully to the attentions of the Italian guns, but revealed also was another tempting target. The Ethiopian cavalry were still coming on, and after a few futile volleys had burst around the tiny elusive shape of the speeding car, Castelani resigned himself to the limitations of his gunners and switched targets.
"Shrapnel," he bellowed. "Load with shrapnel fuse for air burst."
He hurried along the battery, repeating the order to each layer, emphasizing his orders with the cane. "New target. Massed horsemen.
Range two thousand five hundred metres, fire at will." The Ethiopian ponies were small shaggy beasts, bred for sure-footed ascent of mountain paths, rather than sustained charges across open plains they had, moreover, been pastured for weeks now on the dry sour grass of the desert, and in consequence their strength was by this time almost expended.
The first shrapnel burst fifty feet above the heads of the leading riders. It popped open like a gigantic pod of the cotton plant, blooming with sudden fearsome splendour the milky blue sky. It bloomed with a crack as though the sky had shattered, and instantly the air was filled with the humming, hissing knives of flying shrapnel.
A dozen of the ponies went down under the first burst, pitching forward abruptly over their own heads and flinging their riders free.
Then the sky was filled with the deadly cotton balls, and the continuous crack of the bursts sent the ponies wheeling and the riders crouching low on their withers or swinging out of the saddle to hang low under the bellies of their mounts. Here and there a braver soul would kick his feet free of the stirrups and pick up a dismounted comrade on each of the leathers, the gallant little ponies labouring under their triple burdens. Within seconds, the entire Ethiopian army its single remaining armoured vehicle and all its cavalry were in a retreat every bit as headlong as that of the motorized Italian column which was still on its way back to the Wells of Chaldi. The field was left entirely to Castelani's artillery and the stranded crew of the Hump.
From the shelter of the shattered hull, Gareth Swales watched his hopes of quick rescue fading rapidly in the shape of the dwindling cavalry.