They lay there laughing and joking and watching the uncouth antics of
the monster waddling across the shell-riddled ground, cheering when
it appeared to trip and recover itself, cheering when it floundered
sideways into a hole and crawled out again, cheering most wildly of
all when it reached the barbed-wire entanglements, waddled through,
bursting them apart and trailing them in long tangles behind it, or
trampling them calmly under its churning caterpillar-wheel-bands. It
was little wonder they cheered and less wonder they laughed. The Here
We Are's motions were so weirdly alive and life-like, so playfully
ponderous, so massively ridiculous, that it belonged by nature to
nothing outside a Drury Lane Panto. At one moment it looked exactly
like a squat tug-boat in a heavy cross sea or an ugly tide-rip,
lurching, dipping, rolling rail and rail, plunging wildly bows under,
tossing its nose up and squattering again stern-rail deep, pitching
and heaving and diving and staggering, but always pushing forward.
Next minute it was a monster out of Prehistoric Peeps, or a new patent
fire-breathing dragon from the pages of a very Grimm Fairy Tale, nosing
its way blindly over the Fairy Prince's pitfalls; next it was a big
broad-buttocked sow nuzzling and rooting as it went; next it was a
drunk man reeling and staggering, rolling and falling, scrabbling and
crawling; next it was--was anything on or in, or underneath the earth,
anything at all except a deadly, grim, purposeful murdering product of
modern war.
The infantry pushed out after it when it reached the barbed wire,
and although they took little heed to keep cover--being much more
concerned not to miss any of the grave and comic antics of their giant
joke than to shelter from flying bullets--the line went on almost
without casualties. "Mighty few bullets about this time," remarked
Kentucky, who with Pug had moved out along with the others "to see the
fun." "That's 'cos they're too busy with the old Pepper-pots, an' the
Pepper-pots is too busy wi' them to leave much time for shootin' at
us," said Pug gayly. It was true too. The Pepper-pots--a second one
had lumbered into sight from the center of the horseshoe curve--were
drawing a tearing hurricane of machine-gun bullets that beat and
rattled on their armored sides like hail on a window-pane. They waddled
indifferently through the storm and Here We Are, crawling carefully
across a trench, halted half-way over and sprinkled bullets up and
down its length to port and starboard for a minute, hitched itself
over, steered straight for a fire-streaming machine-gun embrasure. It
squirted a jet of lead into the loophole, walked on, butted at the
emplacement once or twice, got a grip of it under the upward sloped
caterpillar band, climbed jerkily till it stood reared up on end like
a frightened colt, ground its driving bands round and round, and--fell
forward on its face with a cloud of dust belching up and out from the
collapsed dug-out. Then it crawled out of the wreckage, crunching over
splintered beams and broken concrete, wheeled and cruised casually down
the length of a crooked trench, halting every now and then to spray
bullets on any German who showed or to hail a stream of them down the
black entrance to a dug-out, straying aside to nose over any suspicious
cranny, swinging round again to plod up the slope in search of more
trenches.
The infantry followed up, cheering and laughing like children at a
fair, rounding up batches of prisoners who crawled white-faced and with
scared eyes from dug-out doors and trench corners, shouting jests and
comments at the lumbering Pepper-pots.
A yell went up as the Here We Are, edging along a trench, lurched
suddenly, staggered, side-slipped, and half disappeared in a fog of
dust. The infantry raced up and found it with its starboard driving
gear grinding and churning full power and speed of revolution above
ground and the whole port side and gear down somewhere in the depths of
the collapsed trench, grating and squealing and flinging out clods of
earth as big as clothes-baskets. Then the engines eased, slowed, and
stopped, and after a little and in answer to the encouraging yells of
the men outside, a scuttle jerked open and a grimy figure crawled out.
"Blimey," said Pug rapturously, "'ere's Jonah 'isself. Ol' Pepper-pot's
spewed 'im out."