TANK VERSUS LOCOMOTIVE
THE tactics of the landship that, according to their belief, was as
good as captured, puzzled the Germans considerably. They waited,
expecting to be hailed by the Prussian captain, whom they knew was
inside the Tank.
The Huns were quickly undeceived. A withering fire from the Tank's
machine-guns catching them unawares played havoc with the soldiers
who had rashly left their shelter trenches. At the same time, the
landship, heeling over until she appeared to be on the point of
capsizing, lumbered bravely up the steeply shelving side of the
valley.
The ground, though rocky and irregular, afforded a good grip to the
tractor-bands. Small and medium sized boulders she crushed into the
softer soil, the larger ones she pushed aside. Brushwood and saplings
were rent, the few stunted pine trees in her course were simply
uprooted.
"By Jove!" ejaculated Setley delightedly. "She's doing it. I was
rather doubtful whether she would tackle that gradient. Now, you
bounders, how's that?"
The Tank was astride the first trench--a deep and narrow excavation,
but, unlike those on flat ground, following the contour of the
hillside in a fairly straight line. With her nose resting on the
parados and her tractor-bands scooping up sand-bags like a dog
scratching at the mouth of a rabbit-hole the landship remained
practically stationary for nearly a minute, the maxims each letting
loose the best part of a belt of ammunition.
Fortunately there were no field-guns in this section. The Huns,
recovering from their surprise, were, however, letting fly with
machine-guns, rifles and bombs, all of which had no appreciable
effect upon the armoured mastodon.
The Tank was nearly the cause of her own destruction by remaining
astride the trench, for some of the maxim bullets striking a can of
detonating powder that had been left over from the amount required to
charge the landmines went off with a roar that completely dominated
the rattle of musketry.
In spite of her weight and bulk the landship reeled under the
terrific blast. Huge rocks were hurled against her sides. When the
smoke had cleared away Ralph could form a hasty idea of the nature of
the damage. Where the trench had been was a huge semi-crater nearly
fifty yards in length. A large portion of the hillside had been blown
away, forming an almost perpendicular semicircular cliff. The
corresponding half of the circle of displaced earth had crashed into
the valley--a vast jumble of rocks, stones, earth and sand-bags,
mingled with the corpses of a hundred Germans. And within her own
length of the newly formed precipice the Tank rocked on the unstable
soil. It was touch-and-go whether she would slither, like a
side-slipping motor-car, into the abyss.
Once more mechanical ingenuity triumphed over the forces of nature.
Resisting the attraction of gravity and overcoming the tendency to
slip on the crumbling, moving soil, the Tank drew steadily away from
the danger zone, until gaining firm ground she resumed her upward
climb and approached the second line of trenches.
Not a shot came from this part of the defences. The Huns, bewildered
and demoralized by the nerve-racking catastrophe and the sight of
their comrades being hurled like stones from a catapult, had fled.
Even their officers made no effort to keep them back. Not knowing the
cause of the explosion they had formed the erroneous idea that the
British landship possessed some terrific and hitherto unknown means
of destruction and had used it with annihilating results upon the men
in the first trench.
"We're through," ejaculated Alderhame. "'Ware the summit, sir; that
skunk of a Hun evidently spoke the truth for once in his life when he
said we would be shelled if we showed up on the skyline."
"I will," replied Ralph. "I had forgotten. Suppose it was in the
excitement of the minute. Any casualties?"
"Private Saunderson has got a gash over the left eye, sir," reported
the sergeant. "A splinter of steel must have come in through the
sighting aperture. It's not at all a serious wound."
Skirting the rounded top of the hill of Nôtre Dame Ralph brought his
command in sight of the undulating country beyond, an expanse of
fertile land dotted with numerous valleys, all of which were fated to
be destroyed by the retreating enemy within the next few days. Right
in the foreground was the railway line, the viaduct being less than
half a mile from the moving Tank. Detached parties of Germans and
isolated individuals were hurrying away from the approaching British
troops, who were now at least three miles off.
In the distance a column of white vapour stood out clearly against
the clouds of black and brown smoke and announced the fact that a
train was on the move, making in a north-westerly direction. It was
one of many bringing up the German reserves to launch their
formidable counter-attack upon the men who had broken Hindenburg's
line.
"Whack her up for all she's worth," ordered Ralph, addressing the
motor mechanic. "Now, lads, it's a race. It's up to us to get to that
viaduct before the train can cross."
The bridge, although not marked on Ralph's military map, was in the
position indicated by the impersonator of Captain Cludderborough. It
crossed a small stream at a point one hundred yards or thereabouts to
the north of the original structure that had been bombed and
demolished by British airmen. The temporary viaduct was made of huge
baulks of timber supporting a central span of only thirty feet. The
banks of the stream that flowed underneath were low, the ground
sloping gently on the near side but rising with considerable
abruptness on the remote side.
With a succession of jolts and bumps the Tank plunged downhill at a
greater rate than she had ever done before in her brief yet
strenuously exciting career; but notwithstanding the hot pace Setley
was forced to come to the conclusion that the troop train would be
the first to reach the bridge.
He thought hard. The time for decisive action, bordering on
self-sacrifice, was at hand. Unable to destroy the bridge before the
train rumbled across he decided to try conclusions with the
locomotive.
"Pass the word that any man who wishes may get out," he said to
Sergeant Alderhame. "I'm going to ram that engine."
Alderhame bellowed out his superior officer's permission. It would be
a comparatively easy matter for the men to alight from the moving
Tank, but one and all elected to take their chances with their
youthful officer.
Gripping the nearest object that formed a likely hold the men awaited
with grim faces and tightly closed lips the impact with an equal
target of metal moving at five or six times the rate of the landship.
The driver of the locomotive had spotted the Tank. To Ralph's
satisfaction he saw that the German was applying his brakes and
shutting off steam. Had he maintained his speed there was a chance
that he might have escaped a collision. By easing down he not only
played into the hands of his enemy but mitigated the chance of the
Tank's destruction.
Had there been time Ralph would have merely steered his Tank across
the lines, in which case the weight of the landship would have
twisted the track and caused the train to leave the metals. But there
was not. To attempt to do so would result in the engine striking the
Tank fairly on her side.
Meeting at an aggregate rate of nearly thirty miles an hour the
Tank's nose struck the locomotive a glancing blow somewhere in the
region of the driver's cab. With a terrific rending of metal and the
hiss of escaping steam the engine toppled over on its side, while the
carriages either telescoped or lurched over the slight embankment.
As for the Tank, she began to climb upon the wreckage of the
vanquished; then turning began to describe a small circle.
It was some minutes before the bruised and shaken crew could realize
what had occurred. The tractor-bands on the right-hand side had been
shattered by the impact, the left-hand one was intact and still
moving. Like a bird wounded in one wing the landship was unable to
keep a straight course and could only crawl round and round almost on
her own axis.
Although crippled the Tank still retained certain of her powers of
offence. Her maxims were trained upon the swarm of dazed and shaken
Huns who were emerging from the wrecked carriages. There was no need
to open fire. The Germans had a wholesome dread of British landships,
a fear based solely upon hearsay since none of these had previously
seen a Tank. With upraised hands and cries of "Mercy, Kamerad!" the
majority now approached the now motionless landship. The remaining
survivors of the collision were either hiding behind the overturned
carriages or else scurrying across the fields, in order to put a safe
distance between them and the frightful engine of warfare.
"What's to be done with this crush?" enquired Ralph. "We can't fire
on the blighters, we can't take them prisoners."
"And if we let them go they'll soon tell their pals, sir," added
Alderhame. "The best thing, I take it, is to hold them under the
cover of our guns and await events. Our cavalry patrols may be here
shortly."
Setley shook his head.
"Won't do," he objected. "More than likely the limits of to-day's
gains are already fixed, in which case we may have to wait until next
week. I'll order the Boches to clear out. It will leave us free for
another task; after that we must take our chances."
The Huns obeyed Ralph's peremptory order with evident hesitation Some
of them, perhaps, wanted to be taken prisoners. Fresh from the
Russian front they dreaded the horrors of the Ypres salient and the
regions of the Somme and Ancre. Others were under the impression that
the order to clear out was merely a ruse on the part of the Tank and
that directly they were at a certain distance from the latter they
would be shot down by her machine-guns.
"Now," declared Ralph, as the handful of Britons were left alone with
the dead and dying victims of the deliberate collision. "A couple of
men, with a charge of explosive and a two-minute fuse: we're going to
settle the bridge."