"Get down, Hawke!" he shouted; "we must be in this." And, leaving the gun where it was, he clambered down, to find Hawke and Tiddler waiting for him.
Before they were clear of the wood, the rearmost files of the Reedshires were in the trench; and when they reached the crest the trench floor was covered with dead and wounded, and the victorious battalion was bombing its way along the sinuous windings which curved off northward.
Far away to the east a tremendous fusillade told where the division on their right was attacking Montauban; but Dennis's anxiety was to pick up A Company again, and that was a difficult matter.
"Seen anything of Captain Dashwood?" he cried to a wounded Reedshire on the fire-step, who was trying to staunch an ugly wound.
"No, sir. They went over on the left there with the Highlanders."
In the distance across the shell-torn ground behind the trench they saw clumps of brown dots growing smaller and smaller, as our successful rush carried us far into the enemy's lines, and there was nothing for it but a long sprint to overtake them.
Even Dennis, fit as he was, and Hawke and Tiddler, both hard as nails, were puffed and blown before they had run very far; and so confusing was the maze of craters and battered trench-lines that Dennis suddenly realised that he was alone.
The sing of bullets passed his ears, and the spurting up of the ground in his immediate vicinity told him that the spot was "unhealthy"; and, seeing an empty communication trench a few yards on the left, he jumped down into it, reloaded his revolver, and went forward cautiously.
The trench, which had somehow escaped our bombardment, had been hastily evacuated when we carried the third line; but, finding that it curved in the direction where he had last seen those running figures, he followed it until a clamour of voices ahead of him made him shrink behind the angle of a bay as a mob of Germans came running towards him.
Dennis felt in his bomb sack and found he had three of those deadly missiles left, and a grim smile twitched the corners of his compressed lips.