Striking the front wall obliquely the Tank smashed her way into the building. Stones and bricks were flung asunder, beams began to crash from the upper floors. The Huns, uttering yells of terror, either tumbled headlong upon the roof of the Tank and thence rolled off and were crushed between her sides and the tottering brickwork, or else they clung desperately to the remaining walls and beams. The liquid-fire apparatus fell with the men, the cylinder bursting and discharging its contents all over the Tank and the surrounding debris. Had any of the Boches seized the opportunity and applied a light to the inflammable fluid it would have resulted in Ralph and his men being roasted alive in their steel cage; but, fortunately for them, the disaster did not take place. It had been Ralph's intention to force his Tank completely through the building, but this task was beyond the powers of the motor-propelled fortress. Vainly the tractor-bands revolved, grinding to powder the brick rubble, yet without gaining another inch. Failing to forge ahead the Tank endeavoured to back out of the blind alley in which she found herself. With the reversing of her motors the landship jerked back a couple of feet or more and then sank perpendicularly for a distance of seven or eight feet, so that its roof projected only a couple of feet above the level of the street. For a few seconds the sickening thud knocked the stuffing out of the Tank's crew. Used to bumps and jars though they were they had never before experienced the effect of falling with a hideous thud for a vertical distance of nearly three yards. They were in total darkness, for so dense were the clouds of dust and smoke that the daylight was completely obscured. When the dust had subsided sufficiently to allow the murky light to penetrate, Ralph took stock of the position. Through the gap in the outer wall that the Tank had made he could see a considerable extent of the village street. Crowds of Germans were rushing up to reinforce the men at the partly demolished barricade, from which Ralph concluded that the British infantry had begun to make the attempt to rush the village. "If only we had a gun able to bear upon that mob, sir," exclaimed Sergeant Alderhame, "we could enfilade the whole crowd." It was a vain wish, for in falling the muzzles of the quickfirers had been held up by the brickwork, with the result that they had been wrenched from their mountings, while the mound of rubble was a few inches too high to enable the maxims to be depressed sufficiently to bear upon the Huns in the street. None of the enemy paid any attention to the stranded Tank. Perhaps the imminent danger of the attacking infantry exercised the prior claim. At any rate, the crew of the landship were passive spectators of the combat, unable to bring a gun to bear upon their foes yet in a position to see most of what was taking place at the commencement of the village street.