“I think we’d all better keep quiet now,” Herbert said, and the deer hunters subsided.
Several minutes passed without any apparent incident; if straining ears caught any sounds they were difficult to distinguish until a stone was displaced on the down hill side of the rock basin. This was hardly a signal, but if an accident it probably precipitated the ensuing action.
There was a sharp, shrill whistle; the yells as of a thousand imps of Satan suddenly filled the night with a fury of sound. With a rush the enemy’s suspected night attack began. Quick orders in German, the leaping forward of heavy feet upon and over the rock parapet, the surging on of men eager to kill marked the arrival of the entire platoon into the Americans’ stronghold. And then a transformation, almost as sudden as the charge, took place.
The yells died down, ceased. Exclamations followed, guttural expressions of evident surprise, announcement, chagrin, at finding the enemy gone. The natural question was: had the Americans quitted their refuge? And the answer was self-evident. Lights were thrown here and there about the rocky floor, into the stone shelters, out among the spruces. Under officers and men gathered in the very center, in hasty conference; twenty, or more, were thus beneath the dim light from a torch stuck in a limb of a spruce tree. Other torches in the hands of the Huns within or on the rocky sides of the basin suffused the place in a pale fight. Only a few men remained without the stronghold. And then, more suddenly than the coming of the platoon, the action, like a well rehearsed drama, took on a vastly changed aspect.
“Fire now!” yelled the shrill voice of Judson, from among the dense herbage ten yards up the hill; the burst of flame and the roar from eleven rifles almost drowned the last word. Nearly as many Huns went down; the second and third irregular volleys followed before the invaders could more than lift a gun and about as many more men dropped. More shooting, fast and furious, sent still others to the earth, a few wounded, most of them done for. Of the reinforced platoon not a dozen men got safely out of the place and disappeared in the darkness. There had not been a single shot fired in answer to the American fusillade.
What followed with the squad was partly mild elation; partly an immediate performance of duty. A detail went about to get the wounded into the shelters, giving them also first aid wherever possible. Another bunch became the undertakers.
Those Huns who had escaped from this virtual massacre in reprisal would, of course, make their way to their divisional headquarters to report and another and stronger body of men would be sent to make short work of the Americans, but all this would take time. Probably, too, hearing the firing at the rear, the officers in command of the new line would also send a reserve detachment to clear the matter up and such a combined force would simply mean annihilation of the squad.
Swiftly the duties of the Americans were performed. Half the night was yet to come. Wilson and Kelly begged leave to inter poor McNabb’s stiffened body and to mark the spot. Lieutenant Whitcomb, after another earnest talk with Don Richards and the corporal, called the men together again. They were cautioned against too much elation now, or self-assurance. Not one of them, Herbert knew, felt any real delight at the defense they had made, except that which was prompted by having once more defeated an implacable foe and of being spared a bayonetting, a blowing up or other almost certain death.
The corporal had made a suggestion: What was the sentiment regarding a breaking up and an attempted escape, every man for himself, through the German lines and back to the American front? Could it be done? Would it be worth trying?