The white lights, with all the accusing whiteness of the fingers of a thousand dead, cease their groping and point to the farther side of No Man's Land.
They come!
Black in the whiteness of that intense light, the wave rolls up.
The silent plain crawls with running, staggering, falling, crawling men. The gray-white expanse speckles rapidly with its spotting of dead.
Into the barrage of fire the wave plunges. It is the end, surely, nothing can get through.
The miracle of escape is demonstrated again. If the masses be large enough, you cannot kill them all. With two-thirds dead, ten thousand men break through. They plunge forward with lowered heads and bristle of bayonets. Every third man is a bomb-thrower.
"Let them come nearer, boys!"
Every man holds his breath.
"Fire!"
A solid blast of flame outlines the fire trench. In the white glare of searchlights and star-shells illumining the scene as though by a continuous river of lightning, the wave is seen to waver. Some fall flat, others sink down quietly, others, again, drop to hands and knees and crawl on, yet others, clutched by the wounded in their death-grip, free themselves with a bayonet thrust—their brothers, their comrades!—and rush on.