dy to start. The petrol was on
and flooding. They waited quietly. Their heavy breathing was the only
sound. The minute-hand reached the half-hour.

With the crash and swish of thousands of shells, the guns smashed the
stillness. Instantly, the flash of their explosion lit up the opposite
trenches. For a fraction of a second the thought came to McKnutt how
wonderful it was that man could produce a sound to which Nature had no
equal, either in violence or intensity. But the time was for action
and not for reflection.

"Start her up!" yelled out McKnutt.

But the engine would not fire.

"What the devil's the matter?" cried James.

A bit of tinkering with the carburetor, and the engine purred softly.
Its noise was drowned in the pandemonium raging around them. James let
in the clutch, and the monster moved forward on her errand of
destruction.

Although it was not light enough to distinguish forms, the flashes of
the shell-fire and the bursts from the shrapnel lit up that part of
the Hindenburg Line that lay on the other side of the barrier. One
hundred and fifty yards, and the tank was almost on top of the
barricade. Bombs were exploding on both sides. McKnutt slammed down
the shutters of the portholes in front of him and his driver.
"Bullets," he said shortly.

"One came through, I think, sir," James replied. With the portholes
shut, there was no chance for bullets to enter now through the little
pin-points directly above the slits in the shutters. In order to see
through these, it is necessary to place one's eye directly against
the cold metal. They are safe, for if a bullet does hit them, it
cannot come through, although it may stop up the hole.

Suddenly a dull explosion was heard on the roof of the tank.

"They're bombing us, sir!" cried one of the gunners. McKnutt signalled
to him, and he opened fire from his sponson. They plunged along, amid
a hail of bullets, while bombs exploded all around them.

McKnutt and James, with that instinctive sense of direction which
comes to men who control these machines, felt that they were hovering
on the edge of the German trench. Then a sudden flash from the
explosion of a huge shell lit up the ground around them, and they saw
four or five gray-clad figures, about ten yards away, standing on the
parapet hysterically hurling bombs at the machine. They might as well
have been throwing pebbles. Scornfully the tank slid over into the
wide trench and landed with a crash in