"How do we go now?" inquired Wetherby, as another bunch of star-shells went up. "Do we wait until they're on top of us?"
"That depends on Bob's judgment," replied Dennis, making himself heard with some difficulty through the flannel folds of his mask; and while he was speaking there came the shrill signal for "ten rounds rapid."
As the Lee-Enfields crashed out our machine-guns began to hammer, and the boy fresh out from England felt a fierce thrill of exultation seize him, for this was the real thing at last—the thing he had been longing for so eagerly!
The long grey line seemed to shiver in front of the machine-guns, and great swathes of the enemy went down. But our trench was on a ridge, and the rear ranks filling up the gaps with a precision that astonished young Wetherby, the German line began to mount the slope, breaking into the double.
Dennis suddenly gripped his arm.
"Yes, what is it?" cried the boy, as the "Cease fire" blew and was immediately followed by another signal.
"Reedshires, get over!" shouted Dennis. "That's what it is. Good old Bob! He's a beggar for the cold steel. Come on, Wetherby! There's a fine bit of free wheel for us—all down hill and a walk over at the bottom. Charge, boys, charge!"
Looking like demons suddenly gone mad, the battalion let go a muffled yell, and tore down the slope to meet those other demons, still more hideous in the steel-faced masks they wore as a protection against their own gas; and at the end of a dozen strides brown and grey mingled with a terrific shock.
"Jove, what a ripping scrum!" laughed Wetherby, as he and Dennis plunged into the struggling mass of men; and when his revolver was empty he wrenched a Mauser and bayonet from one of the enemy and used them.
The Reedshires were fresh, and made up for that lost time in billets, yielding not an inch, but forcing the Germans farther and farther down the slope, until they broke and ran.