That evening a select party of sight-seers were driven to a secluded
spot behind the battle line. Here they were met by Master Osborne,
obviously inflated with some important matter.
"I've got leave from my C.O. to show you the sights, sir," he
announced to Colonel Kemp. "If you will all stand here and watch that
wood on the opposite side of this clearing, you may see something.
We don't show ourselves much except in late evening, so this is our
parade hour."
The little group took up its appointed stand and waited in the
gathering dusk. In the east the sky was already twinkling with
intermittent Verey lights. All around the British guns were thundering
forth their hymns of hate--full-throated now, for the hour for the
next great assault was approaching.
Wagstaffe's thoughts went back to a certain soft September night
last year, when he and Blaikie had stood on the eastern outskirts of
Béthune listening to a similar overture--the prelude to the Battle of
Loos. But this overture was ten times more awful, and, from a material
British point of view, ten times more inspiring. It would have
thrilled old Blaikie's fighting spirit, thought Wagstaffe. But Loos
had taken his friend from him, and he, Wagstaffe, only was left. What
did fate hold in store for him to-morrow? he wondered. And Bobby? They
had both escaped marvellously so far. Well, better men had gone before
them. Perhaps--
Fingers of steel bit into his biceps muscle, and the excited whinny of
Angus M'Lachlan besought him to look!
_Down in the forest something stirred_. But it was not the note of a
bird, as the song would have us believe. From the depths of the wood
opposite came a crackling, crunching sound, as of some prehistoric
beast forcing its way through tropical undergrowth. And then,
suddenly, out from the thinning edge there loomed a monster--a
monstrosity. It did not glide, it did not walk. It wallowed. It
lurched, with now and then a laborious heave of its shoulders. It
fumbled its way over a low bank matted with scrub. It crossed a ditch,
by the simple expedient of rolling the ditch out flat, and waddled
forward. In its path stood a young tree. The monster arrived at the
tree and laid its chin lovingly against the stem. The tree leaned
back, crackled, and assumed a horizontal position. In the middle of
the clearing, twenty yards farther on, gaped an enormous shell-crater,
a present from the Kaiser. Into this the creature plunged blindly, to
emerge, panting and puffing, on the farther side. Then it stopped. A
magic opening appeared in its stomach, from which emerged, grinning, a
British subaltern and his grimy associates.
And that was our friends' first encounter with a "Tank." The
secret--unlike most secrets in this publicity-ridden war--had been
faithfully kept; so far the Hush! Hush! Brigade had been little more
than a legend even to the men high up. Certainly the omniscient
Hun received the surprise of his life when, in the early mist of a
September morning some weeks later, a line of these selfsame tanks
burst for the first time upon his incredulous vision, waddling
grotesquely up the hill to the ridge which had defied the British
infantry so long and so bloodily--there to squat complacently down on
the top of the enemy's machine-guns, or spout destruction from her
own up and down beautiful trenches which had never been intended for
capture. In fact, Brother Boche was quite plaintive about the matter.
He described the employment of such engines as wicked and brutal,
and opposed to the recognised usages of warfare. When one of these
low-comedy vehicles (named the _Crême-de-Menthe_) ambled down the main
street of the hitherto impregnable village of Flers, with hysterical
British Tommies slapping her on the back, he appealed to the civilised
world to step in and forbid the combination of vulgarism and
barbarity.
"Let us at least fight like gentlemen," said the Hun, with simple
dignity. "Let us stick to legitimate military devices--the murder of
women and children, and the emission of chlorine gas. But Tanks--no!
One must draw the line somewhere!"
But the ill-bred _Crême-de-Menthe_ took no notice. None whatever. She
simply went waddling on--towards Berlin.
"An experiment, of course," commented Colonel Kemp, as they returned
to headquarters--"a fantastic experiment. But I wish they were ready
now. I would give something to see one of them leading the way into
action to-morrow. It might mean saving the lives of a good many of my
boys."