THERE was a howl of joy from somewhere above. Discipline in the machine-shop tanks was strict enough, but vastly different in kind from the formality of the fighting-machines.
"Contact!" roared the voice again. "General wireless is going again! Our fellows have rolled over their reserves and are smashing their machine-shops and supplies!"
Yells reverberated deafeningly inside the steel walls, already filled with tumult from the running motors and rumbling treads.
"Smashed 'em up!" shrieked the voice above, insane with joy. "Smashed 'em! Smashed 'em! Smashed 'em! We've wiped out their whole reserve and—" A series of detonations came through even the steel shell of the lurching tank. Detonations so violent, so monstrous, that even through the springs and treads of the tank the earth-concussion could be felt. "There goes their ammunition! We set off all their dumps!"
There was sheer pandemonium inside the service-tank, speeding behind the fighting force with only a thin skin of reserve-tanks between it and a panicstricken, mechanically pursuing enemy.
"Yell, you birds!" screamed the voice. "The general says we've won the battle! Thanks to the fighting force! We're to go on and wipe out the enemy line of communications, letting him chase us till his gas gives out! Then we come back and pound him to bits! Our tanks have wiped him out!"
COFFEE managed to find something to hold on to. He struggled to his feet. Corporal Wallrs, recoving from the certainty of death and the torture of sound, was being very seasick from the tank's motion. The prisoner moved away from him on the steel floor. He looked gloomily up at Coffee.
"Listen to 'em," said Coffee bitterly. "Tanks! Tanks! Tanks! Hell! If they'd given us infantry a chance—"
"You said it," said the prisoner savagely. "This is a hell of a way to fight a war."
Corporal Wallis turned a greenish face to them.
"The infantry always gets the dirty end of the stick," he gasped. "Now they—now they' makin' infantry ride in tanks! Hell!"
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