But "Jonah" addressed himself pointedly and at some length to the
laughing spectators, and they, urged on by a stream of objurgation and
invective, fell to work with trenching-tools, with spades retrieved
from the trench, with bare hands and busy fingers, to break down the
trench-side under Here We Are's starboard driver, and pile it down
into the trench and under the uplifted end of her port one. The second
Pepper-pot cruised up and brought to adjacent to the operations with
a watchful eye on the horizon. It was well she did, for suddenly a
crowd of Germans seeing or sensing that one of the monsters was out of
action, swarmed out of cover on the crest and came storming down on
the party. Here We Are could do nothing; but the sister ship could,
and did, do quite a lot to those Germans. It sidled round so as to
bring both bow guns and all its broadside to bear and let loose a
close-quarter tornado of bullets that cut the attackers to rags. The
men who had ceased digging to grab their rifles had not time to fire
a shot before the affair was over and "Jonah" was again urging them
to their spade-work. Then when he thought the way ready, Here We Are
at his orders steamed ahead again, its lower port side scraping and
jarring along the trench wall, the drivers biting and gripping at the
soft ground. Jerkily, a foot at a time, it scuffled its way along the
trench till it came to a sharp angle of it where a big shell hole had
broken down the wall. But just as the starboard driver was reaching
out over the shell hole and the easy job of plunging into it, gaining
a level keel and climbing out the other side, the trench wall on the
right gave way and the Here We Are sank its starboard side level to and
then below the port one. She had fallen bodily into a German dug-out,
but after a pause to regain its shaken breath--or the crew's--it began
once more to revolve its drivers slowly, and to churn out behind them,
first a cloud of dust and clots of earth, then, as the starboard
driver bit deeper into the dug-out, a mangled débris of clothing and
trench-made furniture. On the ground above the infantry stood shrieking
with laughter, while the frantic skipper raved unheard-of oaths and the
Here We Are pawed and hoofed behind, or caught on its driving band and
hoisted in turn into the naked light of day, a splintered bedstead,
a chewed-up blanket or two, separately and severally the legs, back,
and seat of a red velvet armchair, a torn gray coat and a forlorn and
muddy pair of pink pajama trousers tangled up in one officer's field
boot. And when the drivers got their grip again and the Here We are
rolled majestically forward and up the further sloping side of the
shell-crater and halted to take the skipper aboard again, Pug dragged
a long branch from the fascines in the trench débris, slid it up one
leg and down the other of the pink pajamas, tied the boot by its laces
to the tip and jammed the root into a convenient crevice in the Tank's
stern. And so beflagged she rolled her triumphant way up over the
captured redoubt and down the other side, with the boot-tip bobbing
and swaying and jerking at the end of her pink tail. The sequel to
her story may be told here, although it only came back to the men who
decorated her after filtering round the firing line, up and down the
communication lines, round half the hospitals and most of the messes
at or behind the Front.
And many as came to be the Tales of the Tanks, this of the Pink-Tailed
'un, as Pug called her, belonged unmistakably to her and, being so, was
joyfully recognized and acclaimed by her decorators. She came in due
time across the redoubt, says the story, and bore down on the British
line at the other extreme of the horseshoe to where a certain infantry
C.O., famed in past days for a somewhat speedy and hectic career,
glared in amazement at the apparition lurching and bobbing and bowing
and crawling toad-like towards him.
"I knew," he is reported to have afterwards admitted, "I knew it
couldn't be that I'd got 'em again. But in the old days I always had
one infallible sign. Crimson rats and purple snakes I might get over;
but if they had pink tails, I knew I was in for it certain. And I
tell you it gave me quite a turn to see this blighter waddling up and
wagging the old pink tail."
But this end of the story only came to the Stonewalls long enough
after--just as it is said to have come in time to the ears of the Here
We Are's skipper, and, mightily pleasing him and his crew, set him
chuckling delightedly and swearing he meant to apply and in due and
formal course obtain permission to change his land-ship's name, and
having regretfully parted with the pink tail, immortalize it in the
name of H.M.L.S. _The D.T.'s_.