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As illustrating a period of transition in which heavy armoured troopers each one a human iron-clad fortress moving at speed and furnished with the most formidable portable artillery then known could overcome the resistance of almost any number of foot-soldiers in light marching gear and armed with the antiquated pike, the affair may be worthy of a moment's attention; and for this improvement itself now as obsolete as the slings and cataphracts of Roman legions the world was indebted to Maurice.
The vehicle itself is practically identical with the armoured motor-car, which has played such an important part during the present campaign, the driver being protected by a bullet-proof steel screen similar in design to the ordinary glass wind-screen fitted to touring automobiles.
And along that noble line of wall which spanned England from sea to sea, might they not perchance foregather some dark and stormy night, when snow drives down before a north-east wind with the dim forms of armoured men, wraiths of the Roman legions, patrolling once more the line that they died to defend? Dicky of Kingswood was making for home one day in early spring.
"So I must strive to please you by writing with elegance befitting, yet permitting you to perceive the ardent heart of her who thinks of you through every blessed moment of the day. "I pray, as my dear mother prays, that God, all armoured, and with His bright sword drawn, stand sentinel on your right hand throughout the dangers and the trials of this most just and bloody war.
The second line was composed of the armoured cruisers, Duke of Edinburgh, Black Prince, Henry the Fourth, Warwick, Edward the Third, Cromwell, all of over thirteen thousand tons, and twenty-two knots speed; the Drake, King Alfred, Leviathan and Good Hope, of over fourteen thousand tons and twenty-four knots speed; and the reconstructed Powerful, and Terrible, of fourteen thousand tons and twenty-two knots.
The production of a machine specially adapted for this purpose, armoured underneath, perhaps, and carrying guns that fire downward through the fuselage, is worth the careful attention of aeroplane designers.
They saw the armoured mass of the great ant evidently undisturbed, while the bodies of its victims were already shining skeletons, and raised a small cairn of stones in memory of the struggle they had had there. "We should name this place Kentucky," said Bearwarden, "for it is indeed a dark and bloody ground," and, seeing the aptness of the appellation, they entered it so on their charts.
After the disastrous affair near Herenthals, in which Prince Henri de Ligne was mortally wounded while engaged in a raid into the German lines for the purpose of blowing up bridges, it was seen that the crew of the auto-mitrailleuses, as the armoured cars were called, was insufficiently protected, and, to remedy this, a movable steel dome, with an opening for the muzzle of the machine-gun, was superimposed on the turret.
The car being a large and powerful one, it was promptly commandeered by the Austrian military authorities; the hat-manufacturer and his family, thus dumped unceremoniously by the roadside, made their way as best they could to England; and Van Calck, who was a Belgian by birth, though a naturalized American, enlisted in the Belgian army and was detailed to drive one of the armoured motor-cars which so effectively harassed the enemy during the early part of the campaign in Flanders.
The swaying forward of that mighty body, the outward thrust of the jaws, the ring of the voice, was like the crashing of an ax when armoured men meet in battle. The flicker in the eyes of Anthony was the rapier which swerves from the ax and then leaps at the heart. For a critical second their glances crossed and then the habit of obedience conquered. "I suppose you know, sir."
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