“An’ wot’s the next item o’ the program, I wonder?” said Pug half an hour after the last attack had failed, half an hour filled with a little shooting, a good deal of listening to the pipe and whistle of overhead bullets and the rolling thunder of the guns, a watching of the shells falling and spouting earth and smoke on the defiant redoubt.
“Reinforcements and another butt-in at it, I expect,” surmised Kentucky. “Don’t see anything else for it. Looks like this pimple-on-the-map of a redoubt was holdin’ up any advance on this front. Anyhow I’m not hankering to go pushin’ on with that redoubt bunch shootin’ holes in my back, which they’d surely do.”
“Wot’s all the buzz about be’ind us?” said Pug suddenly, raising himself for a quick look over the covering edge of earth behind him, and in the act of dropping again stopped and stared with raised eyebrows and gaping mouth.
“What is it?” said Kentucky quickly, and also rose, and also stayed risen and staring in amazement. Towards them, lumbering and rolling, dipping heavily into the shell holes, heaving clumsily out of them, moving with a motion something between that of a half-sunken ship and a hamstrung toad, striped and banded and splashed from head to foot, or, if you prefer it, from fo’c’sl-head to cutwater, with splashes of lurid color, came His Majesty’s Land Ship “Here We Are.”
“Gor-_strewth_!” ejaculated Pug. “Wha-what is it?”
“’Ere,” said Pug hurriedly, “let’s gerrout o’ this. It’s comin’ over atop of us,” and he commenced to scramble clear.
But a light of understanding was dawning on Kentucky’s face and a wide grin growing on his lips. “It’s one of the Tanks,” he said, and giggled aloud as the Here We Are dipped her nose and slid head first into a huge shell crater in ludicrous likeness to a squat bull-pup sitting back on its haunches and dragged into a hole: “I’ve heard lots about ’em, but the seein’ beats all the hearin’ by whole streets,” and he and Pug laughed aloud together as the Here We Are’s face and gun-port eyes and bent-elbow driving gear appeared above the crater rim in still more ridiculous resemblance to an amazed toad emerging from a rain-barrel. The creature lumbered past them, taking in its stride the narrow trench dug to link up the shell holes, and the laughter on Kentucky’s lips died to thoughtfully serious lines as his eye caught the glint of fat, vicious-looking gun muzzles peering from their ports.