One minute to 10 o'clock!
Chester, lying in a shell hole with, his bag, of grenades open before him, felt a shock on his back. A bit of shell or shrapnel had struck him, but he moved his arms and, except for the stinking pain, he was all right. He choked—and instantly held his breath. A bit of metal, flying from somewhere, had pierced his gas mask. The tear was right before his mouth. He thrust the fabric into his mouth and bit it, holding it tight between his lips. That patched the hole; there was no other. He breathed again without choking.
Ten o'clock!
From over the German front-line trenches, a half mile or more forward, the storm of the French artillery fire had lifted—lifted to add to the cyclone of shells sweeping the reserve lines. The German star-shells, rising and floating and glaring constellations, spread their garish light over the front, and showed the French charging forward in the open.
They rushed onward, few falling, almost unopposed. For the Germans in the front-line trenches—those who had not been withdrawn under that hurricane of shells-were dead or crouched down, stunned, and in stupor.
The French took the advanced trenches, the second supporting, and came on.
Now, from the "pill-boxes"—the few scattered points for machine-gun support which the artillery had not found—resistance came. The French, though fewer, came on.
Before Chester, lying with his bag of grenades open at the edge of a shell crater, the ground suddenly opened and, a great causeway gaped down into the earth. Where solid ground had seemed to be, men were rushing forth—German infantrymen with rifles and bayonets fixed to the counter-attack.
Off to the right twenty yards another such gap yawned in the ground.
And Chester, rising, hurled a missile from the bag he had carried.
It burst among the emerging men; he hurled another. A leap of blue flame, which flared high and blinding, followed its detonation. He hurled at the other causeway, first halting by a bomb the out rush of men; and thus he marked the mouth of this second causeway the next instant by a sheet of blue game.