"This is all very well," thought Dennis, finding himself between two fires. "I had better lie doggo for a bit while they get on with it." And, stepping inside the ruins of a small shop, he flung himself down on a heap of bricks in the posture of a wounded man.
It would have been madness to do otherwise, for the machine-guns were raining bullets everywhere; and, trembling with excitement, he lay unnoticed for a good half-hour, until a hoarse cheer in German told him that Biaches had passed into the enemy's hands. At almost the same moment the modern château, surrounded by its park of fine trees on the hill of La Maisonette, had been retaken by the Germans from Péronne.
But Dennis smiled quietly to himself.
"My chance will come when the counter-attack begins," he thought. "Those brave Frenchmen don't take this sort of thing lying down."
As the firing died away cheer after cheer rent the air, followed by a babel of voices in German as every man worked hard to consolidate the position; and as the dusk drew down Dennis thrust his rifle grenades inside the broken chimney of the little shop, and ventured out into the open air.