"Yes, and a few of them placed like Letty knows how to place 'em will fix their feet good and proper. Hit 'em again, old girl!"
And the old girl did. She was a termagant, altogether too violent of tongue and slap to suit those "laying down the barrage," as they term it, and after a lot of the German machine and rapid-fire gunners, who had believed they were so strafing the Americans as to have rendered the big gun useless, had felt the effects of her bursting shells even fifty feet away, they lay down on their jobs.
But this was only a little sooner than they expected to do it, anyway. As soon as the firing ceased, out of their trench and up the slope came the Boches, more than two hundred of them to oppose less than quarter their number in the pit. But the pit boys were on the job.
It took the clumsy, heavily-booted Huns quite a while to get up the slope and Susan Nipper paid them some compliments as they came, but when ordered to do a certain thing by their superior officers they tried hard to do it, or they died trying.
Yes, they died trying, and the Americans, experienced now in the fighting game, saw to it that this program was carried out.
Two things the Boches had for an objective: the recapture of their general, made a prisoner the night before, and the destruction of the terrible gun of American manufacture.
Lieutenant Jackson lifted the little 'phone in his quarters and spoke quite calmly into it.
"Jackson talking. North side gun pit. The Germans are coming; from the sound and what lights we have been able to use I think there are a great many of them. You heard the barrage, of course. They're hot foot after these prisoners of ours. Better come a-runnin' some of you and if I might be permitted to suggest it, have a company or two make a detour over the hill and below the pit; this might cut off the Huns when they go back and get a good many of them. What's that? Oh, yes. We can hold them awhile. Eh? Sure! Good-by."
Rapid orders quickly followed, the Regulars, however, knowing well their places and having already had experience in repulsing two small raids, much to the enemy's discomfort. But Herbert's squad was a little green in the matter.
"Get your men out there on their bellies, on the hillside, so you can pick off all the Huns you can get a line on! Letty, got your Colt spitters placed? Good! Now, boys, line up at the trench and use your guns first, but hold your bayonets till the very last; they'll outnumber us, as you know. Make use of your revolvers; that's the game! Every man of you ought to be good for about four Germans at close range, counting the misses. A revolver will reach farther than a hand grenade or liquid fire. Give it to them a little before you see the whites of their eyes and make every shot tell! Go to it!"