ndertake a more
daring journey than the skippers of the tanks. The cavalryman who
charges the enemy's guns in an impulse knows only a few minutes of
suspense. A torpedo destroyer bent on coming within torpedo range in
face of blasts from a cruiser's guns, the aviator closing in on an
enemy's plane, have the delirium of purpose excited by speed. But the
tanks are not rapid. They are ponderous and relatively slow. Columbus
had already been to sea in ships. The aviator and the commander of a
destroyer know their steeds and have precedent to go by, while the
skippers of the tanks had none. They went forth with a new kind of ship
on a new kind of sea, whose waves were shell-craters, whose tempests
sudden concentrations of shell fire.

The Germans might have full knowledge of the ships' character and await
their appearance with forms of destruction adapted to the purpose. All
was speculation and uncertainty. Officers and crew were sealed up in a
steel box, the sport of destiny. For months they had been preparing for
this day, the crowning experiment and test, and all seemed of a type
carefully chosen for their part, soldiers who had turned land sailors,
cool and phlegmatic like the monsters which they directed. Each one
having given himself up to fate, the rest was easy in these days of
war's superexaltation, which makes men appear perfectly normal when
death hovers near. Not one would have changed places with any
infantryman. Already they had _esprit de corps_. They belonged to an
exclusive set of warriors.

Lumberingly dipping in and out of shell-craters, which sometimes half
concealed the tanks like ships in a choppy sea, rumbling and wrenching,
they appeared out of the morning mist in face of the Germans who put up
their heads and began working their machine guns after the usual
artillery curtain of fire had lifted.

XXVII

THE TANKS IN ACTION

How the tanks attacked--A tank walking up the main Street of a
village--Effect on the Germans--Prussian colonel surrenders to a
tank--Tanks against trees--The tank in High Wood--The famous Creme de
Menthe--Demolishing a sugar factory--Germans take the tanks
seriously--Differences of opinion regarding tanks--Wandering
tanks--German attack on a stranded tank--Prehistoric turtles--Saving
twenty-five thousand casualties.

With the reverse slope of the Ridge to conceal their approach to the
battle line, the tanks squatting among the men at regular in