Suddenly a grey-coated figure dashed through the asphyxiating smoke. Temporarily blinded by the vapour, well nigh suffocated, the Prussian floundered into the open air, until his bent head came into violent contact with the side of the Tank. Like a felled ox he dropped upon the ground.
"Blessed if he isn't the very image of Little Willie, sir," remarked the sergeant, turning the Prussian over with his boot.
"He certainly looks a mental degenerate," agreed Ralph. "Here, stop those men. Let them carry him in."
A batch of thirty prisoners, under the escort of an imperturbable Tommy, came trudging across the open. They were Saxons; perhaps that accounted for the rough handling they accorded the Prussian officer.
"I've seen the last of that gentleman, I hope," remarked Setley. "You've found a rope? And ladders, too, I see. Look alive there."
Danvers and his men were soon extricated from the pitfall. With them was a German colonel, a tall, sparely built man, who was trembling violently in every limb.
"We hauled him out of a dug-out on our way up," explained Danvers. "The old bus squatted right over the entrance, and this cheerful Hun surrendered. We couldn't send him back. There were no men available for that job. Besides, there was a pretty hot machine-gun fire just then; so we hauled him on board. We hadn't gone a couple of hundred yards when the colonel josser began to get jumpy. He jabbered away as hard as he could, but as I don't understand the beastly Hun jargon I told him to shut up. After all, he was trying to tell me we were blundering into a trap—not out of consideration for us, you understand, but because he didn't relish the big bump. It was his own cowardly carcase of which he was thinking.
"Then came the big bump. Talk about peas in a box. They weren't in it. Thought the Tank was going to turn upside down, but she pitched on her nose with a terrific whump, and then settled down on an even base.
"For nearly an hour the Boches bombed us. At first it was a jolly disconcerting experience, and our Hun started shouting to the bombers to stop it—the skunk! Imagine our fellows doing that. Finding that nothing happened he quieted down a bit, until he suddenly danced up and down regardless of the fact that he was bumping his pig-headed skull against the roof girders. In his raving I caught the word Flammenwerfer several times, so I was forced to come to the unpleasant conclusion that the Huns were going to strafe us with liquid fire. Then your bus rolled up and put the lid on. The rest you know."