Pen shook his head.
“Don’t think so,” he said. “They have tried it twice. I heard what was being done. Our people were driven back, and—”
He said no more, but turned to the door; and Punch strained his eyes in the same direction, as from away to the right, beyond a group of cottages, came a bugle-call, shrill, piercing, then again and again, while Punch started upright with a cry, catching Pen’s arm.
“I say, hear that? That’s our charge. Don’t you hear? They are coming on again!”
The effort Punch had made caused a pain so intense that he fell back with a groan.
“You can leave me, Pen, old chap,” he said.
“Don’t mind me; don’t look. But—but it’s the English charge. Go to them. They are coming—they are, I tell you. Don’t look like that, and—and— There, listen!”
The two lads were not the only ones in that hut to listen then and to note that the conflict was drawing nearer and nearer.
Punch, indeed, was right, and a short time after Pen crouched down closer to his companion, for now, quite close at hand, came volley after volley, the zip, zip of the ricochetting bullets seeming to clear the way for the charge.
Then more volleys.