The trenches were lined with the defenders in an instant. The rifle fire redoubled in intensity and the artillery, which had come up to stem the tide, or assault when the supporting batteries of the attack were compelled to hold their fire for fear of obliterating their own attacking lines, barked at four-second intervals, opening great gaps in the racing line at every discharge.
In rear of the supporting lines of the assault, which were closing up at a dead run, galloped the batteries which were to make a rallying point in case the assault failed, or occupy the trenches, should the defenders be driven out, and the cannoneers clutched the side rails as the pieces swayed and rocked across the rough ground and clustered bodies which strewed the field.
At the crest of the parapet the lines, attack and defense met with a ring of steel. Bayonets flashed, darted, parried and struck. Rifle butts whirled above bare heads and the stocks crashed down through bone and flesh. From both sides came a rain of hand grenades, bombs which exploded upon touch. From the rear of the trenches there came running formed troops, to assist in the repulse of the Russians, and as the supporting lines of the attack threw themselves into the fray, the whirling, struggling, fighting lines on the trenches’ top thickened and swayed.
The line sagged, bulged, trembled, and broke in huge gaps. Into the splaying breaches there rushed fresh troops from front and rear, and the lines thickened and swayed again. Men discarded their arms to lock in one another’s embrace, fighting to the last.
The din was deafening, yet above it there rang out the detonation and shock of a great explosion, where a delayed mine belched upward under the pressure of the hastening troops coming up with the attacking reserve. Earth, stones, wire entanglements, arms and men shot upward in a dense geyser of death, and came down in the midst of the fierce fighting.
Then the line broke again, and the shattered reserves of the attack, summoning the last resources, poured into the breach with bayonet and magazine.
The defense gave way.
Crumpled under the last despairing hurling of last reserves, the entrenched line shuddered along its length, then the line lost its cohesion, stood irresolute for a moment, then fled precipitately to the rear.
The whistles of the Russian officers blew again and again. Officers had fallen until corporals and sergeants commanded platoons and companies; yet they, too, had their whistles and knew their duties; and out of the scramble of the attack, regardless of company, regiment or brigade, the Russians fell into rough line, knelt, and opened fire upon the routed enemy, while the supporting batteries dashed to the trenches, unlimbered and belched fire and iron into the fleeing mass.
The standards of the Russians, which had changed hands a dozen times, during the course of the assault, were planted on the works; the troops themselves, exhausted and spent by the might and fury of their efforts, threw themselves into tired heaps as other brigades came up to hold the position.