Something hard grazed Ralph's cheek and struck the German on the point of his chin with a dull hideous thud. With a muttered "Wot's yer game, old sport?" Ginger Anderson had planted a terrific left-hander on a vulnerable part of the Boche's anatomy. The fellow's resistance collapsed, and he dropped inertly at the little corporal's feet. Recovering his disturbed senses, Ralph shouted to the men to open fire; then turning the Tank in as small a curve as possible he steered the monster up the steep side of the ravine, where hundreds of the enemy, assisted by the natural defence of the ground, awaited with complete confidence the capture of the trapped Tank. CHAPTER XXII TANK VERSUS LOCOMOTIVE THE tactics of the landship that, according to their belief, was as good as captured, puzzled the Germans considerably. They waited, expecting to be hailed by the Prussian captain, whom they knew was inside the Tank. The Huns were quickly undeceived. A withering fire from the Tank's machine-guns catching them unawares played havoc with the soldiers who had rashly left their shelter trenches. At the same time, the landship, heeling over until she appeared to be on the point of capsizing, lumbered bravely up the steeply shelving side of the valley. The ground, though rocky and irregular, afforded a good grip to the tractor-bands. Small and medium sized boulders she crushed into the softer soil, the larger ones she pushed aside. Brushwood and saplings were rent, the few stunted pine trees in her course were simply uprooted. "By Jove!" ejaculated Setley delightedly. "She's doing it. I was rather doubtful whether she would tackle that gradient. Now, you bounders, how's that?" The Tank was astride the first trench--a deep and narrow excavation, but, unlike those on flat ground, following the contour of the hillside in a fairly straight line. With her nose resting on the parados and her tractor-bands scooping up sand-bags like a dog scratching at the mouth of a rabbit-hole the landship remained practically stationary for nearly a minute, the maxims each letting loose the best part of a belt of ammunition. Fortunately there were no field-guns in this section. The Huns, recovering from their surprise, were, however, letting fly with machine-guns, rifles and bombs, all of which had no appreciable effect upon the armoured mastodon. The Tank was nearly the cause of her own destruction by remaining astride the trench, for some of the maxim bullets striking a can of detonating powder that had been left over from the amount required to charge the landmines went off with a roar that completely dominated the rattle of musketry.