But would they? For listen: as the night grew older, as darkness became denser above the shattered fort of Douaumont, and the fire died down so that the Brandenburgers holding that central hall were no longer visible, figures began to collect behind the French trenches—the active, eager figures of gallant Bretons of the 20th Corps, a crack corps, to whom the task had been assigned of recapturing the fortress. A gun opened far behind, a rocket soared, and then a wave of figures poured over the parapet of the trenches and ten thousand shouting, furious Frenchmen streamed down upon the debris of Douaumont—that "corner-stone" of the defences of the salient, of the capture of which the Kaiser had boasted so loudly.
"What's that? French shouts! French bugles! A counter-attack! Get up," Henri whispered in Jules's ear. "We've got to take our chance to join them'."
CHAPTER XVIII
A Sinister German
What a sight that 20th French Corps—those noble Bretons—would have presented had it been daylight when they leapt from their trenches and advanced in one stupendous rush upon the captured fort of Douaumont! Filled with élan, determined to throw the invader backward, stung by the loss of trenches which had been French but a little while before, and eager beyond all words to bring assistance to that gallant yet sadly-thinned line which had staved off the Kaiser's hordes, this 20th Corps—the first of the reserves which General Petain had been able to rush to the scene of action—hurled itself impetuously at the Germans. Star-shells burst into flame overhead, showing dashing poilus, flickered from the tips of bayonets and lit up the smoke from exploding shells, where a canopy of it hung about the devoted heads of that gallant corps. In the darkness, in the fitful light cast by those shells, now and again augmented by the flashing beams of an electric search-light, a desperate hand-to-hand conflict took place.
The line of Bretons was halted for a few moments as it met the Germans, it wavered, perhaps, here and there just a trifle, and then it swept on as a flood sweeps down a road, washing the debris of the 6th Brigade of the Brandenburg Corps before it, submerging hundreds, and trampling not a few into the mud and into the pit-holes and craters dug everywhere by German shells.
"They come! A counter-attack! Prepare to receive the enemy!"
It was Max, that snappy little German officer, who gave the command and called his men about him.
"Man every loophole! And hold on at whatever cost! You—you are fit to fight," he suddenly snapped, turning upon one of the wounded wretches who had suffered from that explosion caused by the bomb tossed by Henri. "You are skulking, my friend. Up! Seize a rifle! Get to your loophole!"