CHAPTER XXII
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."