Men stabbed and hewed and hacked at each other. Others, gripped in tight embrace, were seen revolving in a species of grim waltz, until a chance bullet or a piece of shell ended the dance of death.
The wounded squeezed themselves against the boarded sides, the dead lay where they fell, and the living took no notice of either. If there was any shouting the guns drowned it, and the lust of slaughter was in every face.
"I do not think there will be any poison gas," shouted the Alsatian corporal, whose name was Aristide Puzzeau. "The wind is in the wrong quarter, but you never know what these Boches are up to."
He handed him a gas helmet, which he took from a dead comrade, and without waiting for any thanks, Corporal Puzzeau pursued his way.
Dug-out after dug-out he bombed, and when his supply was exhausted he unslung his rifle with its long, thin bayonet, Dennis following upon his heels.
The barrage fire, playing a couple of hundred yards in rear of the German parados, effectually kept the enemy's supports in check, and Dennis wisely possessed himself of a steel helmet, for the shrapnel had a habit of raining down on friend and foe alike, but after they had gone some distance in a northerly direction, they found that the enemy had recovered from the first surprise, and a strong counter-attack was forcing a company of poilus back.
At first it was difficult to find where the enemy sprang from, until Puzzeau located the mouth of a subterranean dug-out from which they poured in rushes, and, crouching down, he waited at one side of the opening like a terrier at a rat-hole, Dennis standing beside him with a revolver in his hand.
"Wait, do you hear that?" said Puzzeau. "There are plenty more of them inside," and they waited.
"Good morning, my pig!" said Puzzeau, lunging forward, and the sergeant reeled against the trench boards.
Almost before he could recover his weapon the opening was filled with a surge of men, and Dennis emptied a revolver into the middle of them.