"Any news of the other 'busses?" McKnutt asked eagerly. The Buzzers shook their heads wearily. He rushed up to a couple of men who were being carried to a dressing-station.
"Do you fellows know how the tanks made out?" he asked.
One of them had seen two of the machines on the other side of the German line, he said. In answer to the questions which were fired at him he could only say that the tanks had pushed on beyond the German front line.
Then on the top of the hill, against the sky-line, they saw a little group of three or four men. James recognized them.
"Why, there's Sergeant Browning and Mr. Borwick, sir," he said. "What's happened to their tank, I wonder?" He and McKnutt hurried over to meet them.
"Hullo!" he said in his casual manner.
"What's happened to your 'bus?" "What did you do?" was fired at him.
"We got stuck in the German wire, and the infantry got ahead of us," he said. "We pushed on, and fell into a nest of three machine guns. They couldn't hurt us, of course, and the Boches finally ran away. We knocked out about ten of them, and just as we were going on and were already moving, we suddenly started twisting around in circles. What do you think had happened? A trench mortar had got us full in one of our tracks, and the beastly thing broke. So we all tumbled out and left her there."
"Didn't you go on with the infantry?" asked McKnutt.