"—lead enemy to believe whole attack centered from your position, but main assault will be a flank move around Hill 20"
At that instant a fusillade of bullets cut the ground all about them, and the six men suddenly realized that they were under a pitiless and well-directed machine-gun fire.
CHAPTER XII
The S O S With Pistol Shots
To move from the position they were in was impossible. All that they could do, imprisoned there as they were within a steel and leaden wall of rapidly falling machine-gun bullets, was to hope that the gunners would not change their aim, even by the fraction of a point, and that neither side would send up a torch rocket to divulge their exact whereabouts and bring sudden death or mortal injury to them all.
They knew now that they had been discovered by the enemy scouting party which they had observed a short time before—as they thought, without the others knowing of their presence there in "No Man's Land."
They also realized now, when it was too late, that the Germans had returned to their own lines, after that brief consultation, in order to procure the machine-gun with which to wipe them out.
And through it all they dared not return the fire, could not even utter a word to each other without fear of giving the enemy a closer range upon them.