"Carry on, lads!" cried Dennis. "And you stay here with them, Wetherby. I'll be back in a brace of shakes." And he ran round the gallery until he came opposite to the machine-guns, which were pouring their hail of death into the darkness of the garden.
"This has got to be stopped," he muttered grimly between his teeth. And, groping in his bomb wallet, he took one out, withdrew the pin, and pitched the missile to the other side of the hall.
It dropped where he had intended it should drop—immediately beneath the machine-gun at the open door, one of the gun crew trying to pick it up with a shout of warning to his comrades; but he was too late, and as his fingers grasped it there was a terrific explosion.
The man who was firing fell backwards on to the marble floor, both his legs blown off, and a circle of grey-green heaps surrounded him.
Before another man could spring into his place there was a heartening yell from the darkness, and the Reedshires poured in, their bayonets flashing in the candlelight.
Dennis had hoped to put the second gun out of action, but the thing was too risky for his own men, who were smashing their way into the crowd of Germans that filled the hall.
Besides, something closer at hand claimed his attention, for, in spite of A Company's fire, the head of the storming party had reached that slender barrier, and were already laying hands on the piled-up furniture at the top of the staircase.
He had two bombs left, and, with a shout of warning, he flung them one after another on to the crowded stair. The effect was appalling, for they burst almost simultaneously, rending the gilded balustrade into a hundred pieces, and pouring an avalanche of mangled bodies on to the heads of the rest below.
Harry Hawke signalised his delight by hurling a heavy chair down the staircase, and in a trice the barricade was torn aside, and A Company went down with the bayonet to do their bit.
Taken in the rear, the crew of the second machine-gun fought gamely enough; but the thing was a matter of moments, and, seized with excusable panic, the Prussian battalion fled back again into the passage behind the fireplace.