Dennis sprang from his dug-out into the trench, and the first person he encountered was Harry Hawke.
"Where's that wounded Highlander?" he cried, so fiercely that Hawke stared at him open-mouthed.
"If you mean the singing bloke, sir—last I seed of 'im he was doin' a bunk for his own battalion," replied the Cockney private. And Dennis Dashwood's teeth closed with a snap, realising the utter futility of any search for von Drissel just then.
"If you clap eyes on that man again, Hawke!" he exclaimed, "shoot him on sight. He is a German spy!" And, leaving the astonished private to make what he might of the information, he passed along the trench to find his brother.
He came across him in whispered conversation with the Reedshires' colonel in one of the trench bays on the right, and before he could speak Captain Bob took him by the arm.
"It has come at last, old chap," he said, with the mysterious air of one imparting an item of precious information.
"Yes," said Dennis grimly, "I know; we make thegreat attack at half-past seven, and the Germans know it too. Look at this!"
Captain Bob and the C.O. read von Drissel's words by the light of a star-shell, and the trio exchanged glances.
"Well, it can't be helped," said the C.O. "And I don't think the information will do the enemy much good. Do you notice how dull the sound of our guns is? It strikes one as odd."
It had not occurred to them before, but they realised it now as they stood there in the trench bay, and others remarked the fact and wrote of it afterwards. A hurricane of shells of every calibre, from the whiz-bang of the field-guns to the enormous projectile of "Mother," passed continuously overhead in the darkness, to burst in the enemy trenches, and yet the sound was less loud than many a purely local bombardment had been.
It was a trying wait, and the dawn came with provoking slowness, a grey mist veiling the ground until the sun gained power and the sky showed pale-blue flecked with fleecy clouds. Men blew on their fingers, for the morning was cold.
"It ain't 'arf parky," growled Harry Hawke.
"It'll be 'ot enough in a bit," said his pal, Tiddler. "What price Old Street, 'Arry?"
"Chuck it!" replied the marksman of No. 2 Platoon. "No good thinking of love and sentiment now." But for all that, perhaps, a fleeting vision of his Lil passed through his untutored brain, and made him a shade paler about the gills.
Tiddler noticed it and smiled to himself, knowing whatit meant, for when Hawke looked white it was time for his enemy to look out, and the moment was rapidly approaching.
The trench was packed with men, all waiting. Those of the reserves who were not yet in their places were pouring steadily up, and immediately behind the front line Staff cars and motor cycles dashed backwards and forwards; and overhead, where, oddly enough, the larks were trilling, an English aeroplane was flying just above the scream of the shells.
Dennis saw it, and wondered how Claude Laval was faring; and as he looked at his wrist-watch he saw that it was nearly six o'clock.
At that moment the most terrific bombardment the war had witnessed burst with devastating fury upon the German lines. Nothing had been heard like it, and men smiled grimly, knowing that their turn would come soon.
The C.O. left the bay, and walked along the front of his beloved battalion from one end of it to the other; a quiet, keen-eyed English officer, brave as a lion they all knew, but showing no trace of the slightest excitement as his eye scanned the faces of the waiting men.
He had been appointed to the command when the Dashwoods' father was given the brigade, and he realised that the brigadier expected great things of his old battalion.
"I never saw a fitter lot," was his gratified comment as he returned to the two brothers. "Heaven help the enemy yonder if our artillery has only cleared the wire."
"It's sincerely to be hoped they have, sir," saidCaptain Bob dryly. "There was a dickens of a lot of it. But we shall get through without a doubt. Not long to wait now, for there go the trench mortars."
Mingling with the continuous roar of our guns came a still louder and very insistent sound, to which they listened in silence, every officer of the battalion with his eye on his watch.
"Well, good luck, old chap!" said Bob suddenly, gripping Dennis by the hand. And the two brothers looked at each other with the same thought behind the quiet confidence of their smile.
It might be the last time they would ever meet on earth, but they faced the possibility without fear, and already a dense cloud of smoke, released along our whole front, was shrouding the waiting line.
"Seven-thirty to the tick," said the C.O. "Reedshires—Get over!" And in an instant the battalion was swarming out of its trench, and advancing over the two hundred yards of broken ground which separated the brigade from the enemy, with sloped arms.
It was terrible going, for the whole earth was honeycombed by craters large and small; but out of the smoke-cloud rose a ringing cheer, which was still floating on the air when the vicious tac-tac of machine-guns from the German lines told that even high explosives had their limitations, and that some at least of the enemy gun-emplacements remained undestroyed.
"Double!" cried the C.O., seeing that a kilted battalion on his left was racing forward as the best means of escaping the continuous stream of bullets.
"Charge, boys, charge!" yelled Dennis, taking upthe cry; and that brown avalanche of eager, helmeted men poured on clear of the smoke into the bright sunshine, which glinted on their fixed bayonets.
In spite of the carefully prepared staff maps and plans which they had all studied closely, Dennis looked in vain for any sign of a definite objective. There was no sandbagged parapet, nothing but a confused mass of holes and heaps scattered broadcast over the landscape—the result of the terrific spade-work of the guns—which had to be crossed before the village was reached. The village, too, of which he caught a glimpse, was only a pulverised mass of debris, with here and there the angle of a shattered house or the ribs of a roof to mark what had once been human habitations.
But he knew that the strength of the enemy's position lay in the wonderful subterranean works, the deep dug-outs, the covered-in communicating trenches, and for these he and his men rushed with great determination.
Suddenly, from the other side of a chalk heap, a row of heads appeared, wearing flat blue forage caps with white bands round them, and a shout of rapture rose from No. 2 Platoon as they saw at last something to go for.
Between them and the row of heads yawned a huge shell crater, and as the platoon divided automatically to avoid the obstacle, a heavy volley across the crater caught them, and several of the running men pitched forward and lay where they fell.
Perhaps they had orders to retire, perhaps it was our yell that scared them; but the heads disappeared; and when our men reached the spot where they had beenthe Germans had vanished. One stout fellow, dropping into a hole thirty yards away, was the only indication of what had become of them; but it was sufficient, and with a "Come on, boys!" Dennis sprinted for the spot.
He had armed himself with a rifle and bayonet for the advance; but, changing it to his left hand, he opened the bag of bombs he had also brought and, drawing the pin, flung one of them into the hole, a square opening, evidently the entrance to a covered communication trench.
"Wait a moment!" he shouted, shouldering back the next man up, who in his excitement was about to plunge in; and then he heard the bomb burst below, and a shower of earth and fragments of clothing bespattered the pair of them, a piece of the bomb making an ugly gash on the man's cheek.
Then Dennis sprang down, regardless of the fumes. At the bottom of the steps he was conscious of treading on something soft, but did not stay to examine it, for a ray of light filtering in from a fissure in the roof showed him dark forms scurrying away in the distance along the boarded passage.
The hand-grenade had got a move on the enemy, and, followed by a dozen men of the platoon, he led the way, gripping his rifle, and loosing a couple of rounds from the hip as he ran.
One of the bullets evidently found its mark, for a man lay writhing on the ground where another passage turned off at right angles. The man tried to seize his legs, but instantly let go his hold with a hoarse cry asTiddler's bayonet settled all disputes, and Dennis darted round the angle.
The passage ended in a strange place; a large dug-out which had been partially unroofed by one of our shells earlier in the morning, and knee deep amid the loose earth which had poured in, half filling it, twenty Germans turned at bay, under the command of a very tall officer.
There were only eight men with Dennis, for the other four were still groping their way somewhere behind in the darkness of the passage, and the young lieutenant realised in a flash of time that he was seriously outnumbered and must act promptly.
A big sergeant jumped at him with a shout, but before the lunging bayonet had crossed his own, Dennis fired and shot the man dead.
"Put your hands up and surrender!" he said sternly in German to the rest; and the first to obey was the tall officer, who came scrambling over the loose earth with both arms outstretched.
"We are your prisoners, sir," he said, holding his revolver as though he were presenting the butt to Dennis. And the men of the British platoon lowered their bayonets with disappointment in their faces.
It meant some of their number escorting the prisoners to the rear, they knew, and that was not the hope they had had in their hearts.
But their disappointment was short-lived, for, as the tall officer came within a stride of the young lieutenant, he suddenly shouted: "Now you have them, men! Down with these infernal English!" And, reversinghis own weapon, he fired three shots at Dennis Dashwood in rapid succession.
The treachery was so unexpected that Dennis could do no more than duck his head, and even then the third bullet buckled the brim of his trench helmet; but as the barrel of the German's revolver clicked harmlessly round, showing that it was empty, Dennis lunged upward.
"Sorry, sir!" said a voice at his elbow. "He was your bird." And a man of the platoon, who had been a gamekeeper before he joined up, withdrew his own bayonet, which had buried itself simultaneously in the cowardly brute's ribs.
But there was no time for thanks, for the enemy had responded to the treacherous command, and a terrific hand-to-hand fight ensued in the half-demolished dug-out.
When the magazines had been emptied, butt and bayonet came into play at close quarters, and men clutched each other in a death struggle, and rolled over and over, howling like wolves.
Once, indeed, Dennis found himself driven backwards into the mouth of the passage by two beefy fellows attacking him at the same time, and it was only by dropping his rifle and using his revolver that he saved himself from certain death.
As it was, although the Reedshires had taken heavy toll and reduced the odds considerably, three of the platoon were down, and a fourth reeled, badly wounded, against the side of the dug-out.
The four who should have provided a welcomereinforcement had missed the turning, and continued straight along the covered communication, and now nine of the enemy, springing back on to the top of the fallen earth to take breath, collected for a rush that could have but one end.
"Quick, men!" cried Dennis, snatching up the ex-gamekeeper's rifle, which the poor chap would never use again, "get into the passage, and slip in another clip! You've just time, if I can hold them up for a moment!"
The survivors of that little band each told the story afterwards with variations, but all were agreed on two points.
One was the blinding flash as a bomb fell into the middle of the Germans through the shell-hole in the roof. The other was the voice of Captain Bob, sounding strangely distinct in the death-like silence that followed the explosion as he called out: "Have you had enough in there, or would you like another one?"
Then they lifted up their voices in a great shout of "Hold on, sir!" And Dennis yelled: "Bob, you juggins, do you want to do the lot of us in?"
"Oh, it's you, is it?" cried his brother, sliding through the opening with a sergeant and a couple of bombers. "I might have known you'd be mixed up in it somehow. We heard some German jabbering and chanced our arm."
"And a lucky thing for us you did," said Dennis, pointing to the hideously bespattered grey-green uniforms that littered the earth heap. Only one of the nine men was moving, and after a convulsive opening andshutting of his hands the movement ceased altogether. "How is it going up above?"
"Top-hole, so far," said the Captain. "At least, as far as our battalion is concerned, though there seems to be a bit of a check among those chaps on our left. Nobody else down here? Very well; this is the quickest way out, and every minute is an hour. We've got their first-line trench, or all that was left of it." And they scrambled once more up the land slide into the open-air.
The German guns were flinging a terrific barrage fire behind us in a vain attempt to prevent our reserves coming up, and Dennis found that the spot at which they had emerged was close to the entrance of the village, if one could dignify those shapeless heaps of brick and mortar by such a name.
Oddly enough, above his head towered a gilded Calvary, untouched by our previous bombardment or the rain of bullets that sang through the air.
He found the rest of his company lining a low bank on which flowers were growing, and replying to some hot fire from the other side of the street, at the entrance to which a company of the kilted battalion which had gone over on their left was re-forming after suffering severely.
A good score of them were lying face downwards between what had been the first houses of the village, and he recognised the regiment by the green-and-yellow tartan.
There was no need to ask the reason of their pause, for eye and ear told him that machine-guns were trained along the street, into which no man might pass and live.
Somebody gave a tug at the skirt of Dennis's tunic as he knelt on one knee, looking sharply about him, and he saw that it was Private Harry Hawke, lying prone on his stomach, in the act of recharging his magazine, and there was an odd grin on the little Cockney's face.
"I know what you're thinkin' abart, sir," he said. "Them guns is yonder in the church. I got 'em set the moment we took cover 'ere. You and me and Tiddler could do it on our own, if you'd only say the word!"
Dennis had followed the directions of Hawke's dirty finger, and he smiled, for the thing had been in his own mind before the private spoke.
Sixty yards up the village street the ways forked, passing to right and left round what had once been a white-walled church with a square tower, and it was easy to see that, although our guns had played havoc with the sacred edifice and reduced it to a shapeless mass of rubbish, with the mere stump of the tower remaining, the enemy had turned it into a point of vantage.
The door at the foot of the tower had been built up by a great pile of sandbags, leaving a narrow embrasure in the corner—a mere slit like that of an exaggerated slot in a pillar box.
But that slit commanded the street, and from it came that continuous stream of lead which had stayed the Highlanders' attack. It was an isolated fortress, and, so far, none of our troops had reached it; but a few resolute men might accomplish much, and Dennis bent down.
"We'll have a go at it, Hawke," he said. "But we'd better have half a dozen." And as Hawke and Tiddler crawled back out of the firing-line, Dennis called four others by name, and beckoned them to follow him behind the ruins of an adjoining house.
"We're going to take that gun, boys," he said.
"There are two guns, sir," corrected one of the men.
"Then we're going to take both of them," said Dennis; and, stooping down on his hands and knees, he crawled through the ruined gardens, only pausing as they came to a gap where there was no cover, and darting across it to the shelter of the next heap.
Two such openings they negotiated successfully, but as they crossed the third a German bullet smashed the water bottle at Hawke's hip.
"My bloomin' luck!" he grinned. "And me wiv a thirst I wouldn't sell for 'arf a crown, 'cos it's honestly worth three-and-six. Look out, sir! We're coming level with the church now." And, glancing to their left as they lay flat, they saw a curl of smoke wreathing out of the embrasure, and another succession of little puffs above it, which told them that the second gun had been hoisted to the first floor of the ruined belfry.
Dennis raised himself on his hands and reconnoitred carefully. The air was full of sound. The rifle-fire behind them mingled with the continuous rattle of the guns they had planned to capture, and yet not an enemy was to be seen, although they knew that there were thousands of them hidden away in their immediateneighbourhood. Now all depended on their gaining the back of the church unseen.
Far away on the right they could hear an English cheer, and knew that the battalions on that flank of the brigade were making good, while their own portion of the line was held up.
In front of them lay a team of dead horses, attached to the fragments of a wagon, and the flies were buzzing about them. A little farther on was a German reservist on his back with his knees up, and the flies were busy with him too. The rest was an extraordinary wilderness of shattered homes and shell craters, which seemed of no possible value to anybody, but it had to be captured, and time was flying.
"You see that third heap in front of us?" said Dennis. "We'll make for that, and, if we reach it, then dash straight across the open for the back of the church, and leave the rest to chance. It's rotten work fighting broken bricks and mortar, but there it is; it's got to be done."
He jumped up suddenly and ran forward, his companions streaming out behind him, everyone bending double, for bullets were flying in every direction, some from their own battalion, and some no doubt from hidden snipers, who would have to be reckoned with later on.
"Are we all here?" said the lad, as they reached the third heap, which had been an estaminet before a British 9.2 had brought it down like a house of cards. "Now for it!" And they bolted across the open square, and gained their goal at last.
Only the skeleton of the church walls remained, and the sun slanted in through the ruined windows on to a scene of indescribable wreckage.
Where the roof had fallen in the debris formed a barrier across the aisle, and the eastern end of the ruin had evidently been used as a dressing-station. Several stretchers lay on the floor there, and on one of them was a dead man with a tourniquet still clamped on his thigh.
The saw on the ground, and the ugly contents of the bowl beside it, told of an interrupted amputation—perhaps the other man huddled up in the corner had been the surgeon himself!
But they had no time to waste on idle speculation, for beyond the pile of beams and tiles, red bricks and plaster, the machine-guns were still firing; and, motioning his companions to caution, Dennis crept round a broken pillar.
Under what remained of the belfry tower behind the rampart of sandbags the grey-painted 77 mm. showed its square shield, and a crew of five men were busy about it.
Somewhere above them in the bell chamber another and a lighter gun was in full blast, and Dennis made a quick sign to Harry Hawke.
The crack shot of No. 2 Platoon raised his rifle, and the sergeant on the seat behind the gun-shield reeled round and dropped, Hawke's second bullet sending the man who was feeding the breech two feet into the air.
"Charge, boys, charge!" shouted Dennis. And before the three Germans who remained realised what was happening, there was an ugly bit of bayonet work, and the gun was silenced!
Before the Germans realised what was happening..."Before the Germans realised what was happening, there was an ugly bit of bayonet work"ToList
"Before the Germans realised what was happening, there was an ugly bit of bayonet work"ToList
Then Tiddler jumped back with a shout, as the head and shoulders of another German appeared like a Jack-in-the-box from a hole in the floor of the church.
From the box he carried in his arms it was evident that the ammunition supply was stored below; and as the man fell backwards from Tiddler's bayonet with a scream of agony, an answering shout came up from the depths beneath.
"Bombs, quick!" cried Tiddler. But Dennis seized Hawke's arms as he already drew a deadly missile from his bag.
"Do you want to blow us all to smithereens?" shouted his officer. "Close the trap, and haul the gun over it. That will keep them quiet down there until we want them." And everyone lending a hand, as the trap-door shut down with a dull boom, they dragged the gun back until the end of the trail rested upon the covering and effectually secured it.
"Now for those chaps up there," said Dennis, with a thrill of exultation. And they bolted for a little door in the thickness of the tower wall.
A man named Rogerson was the first to enter, and he went pounding up the winding stone steps in his heavy hobnailed boots, followed by Tiddler, Dennis having to content himself with third place.
But their shout, the two rifle shots, and the sudden lull in the firing of the 77 mm. had not been lost upon those above. The boarded floor of the bell chamber was full of cracks and fissures, and through one of them asharp voice cried in German: "What's going on down there?"
"Wait and see!" retorted Dennis at random; and his men laughed at the familiar catchword.
There was a great stamping of feet overhead, and Harry Hawke, who chanced to be the last to reach the little door, cast his eyes upward as he was about to enter.
A man's head was looking down, and Hawke fired at it.
The head remained where it was, but the marksman chuckled, knowing his own powers; and as he stepped inside the doorway something splashed on to the pavement where he had stood, something wet that shone very red in the sunshine.
Their haversacks and water bottles brushed against the narrow sides of the winding stairway; and as Rogerson reached the last step a revolver cracked out, and he threw up his arms.
Tiddler immediately behind him caught the falling body on his head and shoulder, and passed his rifle to Dennis.
"Poor old Jim!" muttered Tiddler, as he gripped the dead weight in both hands, and, using the body as a shield, staggered into the bell chamber.
There, in the full blaze of the sun, the bells still dangled from a huge transverse beam; but everything else had been carried away, and the floor presented an open platform exposed to the sky, with a screen of sandbags at its western edge, through which the Germans had worked a Nordenfeldt.
There were only two men, and the one who had emptiedhis revolver into Jim Rogerson held up his hands, crying in a terrified voice: "Mercy, Kamerad!"
"Yus!" hissed Tiddler, dropping the dead man and snatching his rifle from Dennis's hand before he could interfere. "The mercy you showed to my mate!" And he ran him through.
As the grim khaki figures sprang out on to the platform, the other German clubbed his rifle and made a dart for the head of the stairs, but the man Hawke had shot lay between him and liberty; and, tripping up, he plunged over the edge into space, clutched wildly at a broken beam that still spanned the ruined walls, and dropped with a sickening crash on to the floor below.
"Reckon he won't do that any more, sir," chuckled Harry Hawke; but Dennis had already jumped on to the sandbags, and was semaphoring wildly with both arms.
"Guns captured! Come on, you chaps!" he signalled. And as the message was seen and understood, a wild cheer rose from the other end of the street as the Highlanders and his own battalion jumped from their cover and tore forward at the double.
He would have liked to linger on that point of vantage, which afforded a fine view of the surrounding country; but their work was done, and he followed the others down the stair again, only pausing for a moment to secure poor Rogerson's identification disc as he passed him.
He found Hawke waiting at the stair-foot with a happy smile on his snub-nosed visage, and the pair ran out into the little square to mingle with the platoon which was going by at the double.
"Lumme!" exclaimed Harry Hawke, as a fearful burst of high explosive shook the very ground; and, looking over their shoulders, they saw the ruined tower they had just left sink to the ground amid a huge column of dust!
Their eyes met, but before either of them could speak Bob Dashwood's voice was heard shouting: "Look out, A Company! Ten rounds rapid, and load up for your lives! Here's a whole Bavarian battalion on top of us!"
"Tomkins!" cried the Captain, "bunk back to the C.O. if you can find him, and tell him there's a strong counter-attack on. Say it's a matter of minutes if we're going to hold the village."
Fifty yards beyond the outer fringe of those crumbled heaps a little stream flowed, a shattered willow here and there marking its course, and from the opposite bank the ground rose to what had once been a thick wood.
In front of the wood a solid mass of German infantry had suddenly sprung into view as if by magic, and, forming up elbow to elbow, moved down the slope, breaking into a brisk run. The great grey wave overlapped A Company for a considerable distance on either flank.
A strip of ragged garden hedge on our side of the stream, a well-head, and the wooden ribs of a stable which had somehow survived the bombardment were the only available cover, if one excepted two large shell craters.
"Hadn't we better fall back, Bob?" said Dennis, as he arrived breathlessly at his brother's side. "The thin red line at Balaclava was a fool to this."
"Fall back be hanged!" cried the Captain. "If we give them an inch we shall let them in. No, there's abetter stunt than that. Where on earth are our machine-guns I'd like to know?"
His words were almost lost as the company poured a terrific fusillade into the advancing enemy, and the target being too big and too near to miss, every bullet found its billet. Men in the front rank went down like ninepins, but the rest came on over their bodies, and everyone realised that they meant business.
For once the enemy had resolved to use the bayonet, and less than sixty yards now separated them from the Reedshires.
Bob Dashwood sprang on to a heap of bricks, and his words rang out even among the bang and clatter that filled the morning air:
"Platoons One and Two, line the edge of that crater on your front, and hold your fire until they reach the water. Three and Four, form up at the hedge here, and if a man of you touches a trigger until he gets the word I'll give him four days' field punishment." Then he added, "Go to your own platoon, Dennis, and keep your eye on me. As soon as the beggars have felt our fire we'll try the cold steel on them."
As Dennis reached his men the Bavarians were already entering the water, which took them to the waist, and the two platoons delivered a burst of rapid fire as Bob had ordered.
The result was appalling, and for an instant the Bavarians seemed to waver, but those behind urged the rest on, and they came splashing through the brook, whose course was choked and reddened by at least a couple of hundred dead and wounded.
It seemed an age before the other platoons at the hedgerow fired, but the welcome crash of their volley suddenly rang out, followed by a shrill blast on Bob's whistle.
"That's 'Cease fire,'" said Hawke; "and there goes the 'Charge.'"
"A Company, make ready!—go!" yelled their Company Commander, and he might very well have said "Come," for he was the first off the mark, and with a yell of wild delight, out of the crater, through the hedge, and across the half-dozen strides that divided them from the determined enemy, went the eager lads after their leader.
Dennis was conscious of a feeling of uncertainty as he raced forward, for he had not seen two things that had caught his brother's eye.
One was a row of Kilmarnock bonnets bobbing up over a communication trench a hundred yards away on the left flank of the company, and the other, three little brown dots at the corner of a wrecked barn considerably in advance of their right—little brown dots very busy about a Lewis gun.
If A Company could only succeed in holding back the advancing line for eighty seconds, their leader knew what would happen, and it was worth the effort.
Bob Dashwood's speciality was bayonet fighting, and every man of his command was a past-master in the art.
Brother officers had smiled indulgently at the Captain's enthusiasm for inter-company contests in that war of trench and dug-out, but Bob Dashwood had persisted on every possible opportunity, and it would be hard now if he did not reap his reward.
With a clash, Lee-Enfield and Mauser met on the bank of the stream, and Bob Dashwood scored first blood with the cold steel.
Three Bavarians went down before him with lightning rapidity, and as a fourth fired at the Captain from the hip and missed him, the Company Sergeant-Major was on him like a knife.
"Let 'em have it, boys!" shouted Bob, and as a voice replied, "Look to yourself, sir, we're all right," the foremost rank of the enemy was hurled into the water, through which the khaki lads splashed to the opposite bank.
There was a scramble and a squeeze. One or two slipped back, and the weight of their accoutrements took them to the bottom, but the bulk of them gained foothold, and nothing "made in Germany" could stay the rush.
Then the Lewis gun barked from the barn end, and a tremendous yell from the opposite flank told that the Highlanders were coming.
For the life of him, when he came to think over it afterwards, Dennis could recall nothing of that mad minute but the crack of his own revolver as he emptied it into the closely packed mass before him, and then a sea of terrified faces, growing grey like the uniforms they wore, as the Bavarians broke and went back helter-skelter up the slope.
Somebody shouted "Keep 'em moving, boys!" and the next thing he knew was that the fugitives were flinging themselves into the trench on the hill-top, and that he and A Company were dropping in after them, regardless of all consequences.
Here and there a too eager man was spitted on aGerman bayonet; here and there also a pair of arms went up, and the hated word "Kamerad" smote the ear with a false note. But the Reedshires were taking no prisoners that morning, and having reached the trench on the very heels of the foe, the Bavarians made no attempt to hold it, and went streaming away along the communication that led into the heart of the wood.
Dennis looked back for a moment as he came to the shattered trees, which lay about in all directions in the most extraordinary confusion, and saw that the C.O. and the rest of the battalion had already cleared the stream, and were coming up in support.
"Keep on, old chap!" cried a voice, as Bob ran up. "Are you all right so far?"
"Yes, I'm all right; but, by Jove, you look a pretty beauty!"
The once smart captain, who somehow or other even in the wet trenches had generally managed to appear spotless, like the officers of the French army, who always looked as though they had been turned out of a band-box, now presented a most disreputable appearance.
His helmet was gone, his Bedford cords were torn in seven or eight places, and his left sleeve hung in ribbons. Up to his waist-belt he was soaked by his passage through the stream. Above that his tunic was covered with blood; on the whole, not a man you would have cared to sit next to in a railway carriage or anywhere else.
But he only smiled as Dennis pointed to him. "Yes, I know," he said; "but what's the odds? We've done a big thing, and the rest of the battalion's done a big thing, and we've got to keep the beggars on the go before theydig themselves in. Come on, dear old Den.; you'll hardly believe it, but I haven't got a scratch of my own. All this gore belongs to the enemy, and I don't think we've lost more than a couple of dozen of A Company."
They ran side by side, and soon came up with a khaki mob of their own men and the Highlanders streaming along each side of the German communication trench, up which the Bavarians were still flying. Every now and then they fired into it or threw bombs, but the older hands knew that the walk-over would not last for ever, and kept their eyes skinned.
Suddenly, where the shattered trees thinned out and the still rising ground showed an irregular ridge against the skyline, a sound which they all knew only too well fell upon their ears.
There were two machine-gun emplacements on the ridge, and a murderous fire was opened upon the victorious pursuers.
Bob Dashwood blew the order to take cover, and, as there was plenty of it, A Company promptly flopped down behind the fallen trunks which our bombardment had uprooted in every direction.
"Phew! 'Ot stuff!" ejaculated Harry Hawke, as he made room for Dennis beside him, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.
He was blowing like a grampus, for the pace had been fast.
"When we've got our wind, I reckon there's a little job up there for us, sir," said Hawke, pointing over the top of the fallen beech behind which they crouched.
"You mean the machine-gun, of course," said Dennis, nodding. "But unfortunately, whilst we're getting our wind, so are the enemy, and there's forty yards of open climb before we reach those sandbags up yonder. It isn't like that village behind us, and you may bet your boots the trench on the top of the ridge is packed with Germans like herrings in a barrel, waiting for us. We'll have to lie low until the battalion overtakes us."
Harry Hawke squinted thoughtfully down the short length of his snub nose.
"There's two of those bloomin' tac-tacs of theirs—one covering the communication trench, and t'other one yonder sweeping the front of the wood," he said. "What price that Lewis gun, sir, that chipped in on our right flank? Couldn't I go back and 'urry it up? If we could bring it into action from the other corner of this 'ere wood, it 'ud mean saving a lot of lives, for it's a sure thing the ridge has got to be taken."
While he was speaking they heard men running behind them, and looked round, hoping to see their own people, but it turned out to be a little party of the engineers laying a field telephone; and Dennis crawled on hands and knees towards them.
"What's become of the machine-guns?" he inquired of an intelligent corporal.
"Can't get 'em through the wood, sir. There are half a dozen on the other side hung up. I rather think they're waiting for you to give 'em a lead."
"Oh, are they? Any Lewis guns there?"
"Yes, there's one, sir. They were just starting along a path over yonder when we left."
"I say, do you hear that, Bob?" Dennis called out, as his brother came back, dodging from trunk to trunk, as every now and then one of the German guns on the ridge raked the wood with a stream of bullets. "The corporal says our Lewis is over yonder. What about my going over with a couple of chaps to give them a hand? I believe we could do something."
"Right you are," said Bob. "I've just been talking to that Highland officer, and he agrees with me that we must lie doggo until we are reinforced. I have sent two men back to the C.O. Bunk off and see what you can do."
"Thanks, old man," said Dennis, his face beaming with delight. "Hawke and Tiddler, this way!" And at his call the two inseparables crept back to where he stood.
"We're through now, sir, if you'd like to give them a shout at the other end," said the corporal of the engineers.
"Oh, good business!" cried Captain Bob. "If I can get on to the Governor that will buck things up a bit." And, leaving him kneeling behind a tall poplar, the telephone receiver in his hand, Dennis and his companions ran back a few yards into the shelter of the trees, and struck away at right angles.
In the old Elizabethan days, before scene-painting was invented, they used to hang a placard on a black cloth behind the actors with such inscriptions as "This is the seashore," "This is a wood." And such a description would have well passed for the spot through which they now threaded their way.
Ithadbeen a wood—a wood of tall, straight trees in full summer leaf, with bramble bushes and pleasant undergrowth before the British batteries had flung their devastating hail into it; but now it resembled an old toothbrush more than anything else, with bristles long and short, and sticking out at every angle.
Hundreds of fallen saplings barred their way. Here and there a beech had been uprooted, and a great shell crater yawned where it had stood, and the scarred trunks and bare poles were stained orange and yellow and vivid metallic green by the explosive agents.
A line of Tennyson occurred to Dennis, as odd things will occur at the oddest of moments.
"'I hate the little hollow behind the dreadful wood,'" he murmured, as he made an enforced circuit round a larger crater than usual; and Hawke, who was just aheadof him, stopped short and shrank back with a shout of "Mind your eye, sir!"
Something had crashed among the stumps in front of them, and a German 60-pound shell burst with a deafening roar.
For an instant everything was obscured by a volume of dense black smoke, and a rain of splinters and broken branches fell about them as the smoke curled away.
"That was a near thing," said Dennis. "Another minute, and there would have been three vacancies in the company."
"I'm not sure there ain't some already, sir," said Hawke in a curious, hushed voice. "What's that yonder?"
They hurried forward, for they had all seen a writhing figure in khaki a few yards ahead, and a sickening chill passed over Dennis as he recognised his brother subaltern, young Delavoy-Bagotte, lying on his back with a tree-trunk across his legs. Over the same trunk was another figure, which did not move, and face downwards a yard away lay a third man with his back broken.
Half buried in the chalky soil was the Lewis gun they had been carrying forward when the shell fell.
"By Jove, Bagotte, old man, this is rotten luck!" exclaimed Dennis. "I'm afraid you've got it badly."
The boy—he was only eighteen, but the ribbon of the Military Cross was on the breast of his tunic—set his teeth hard and nodded as they removed the body of the other man and lifted the tree-trunk away from his legs by main force.
"Yes, pretty badly, Dashwood. My thighs aresmashed to a jelly," he said. "But don't worry about me. I believe the Lewis is all right. Get along with it. The stretcher bearers will be up presently. Are my mates dead?"
"Yes," said Dennis—it was no good mincing matters—"but I can't leave you like this."
"Don't be an ass," said Delavoy-Bagotte. "You can do no good by staying, and you will only worry me. Look to the gun, I tell you. Your company would never have crossed that stream behind yonder if I hadn't got on to the beggars' flank with it."
"That's a fact, old man," assented Dennis. "And it won't be forgotten when Bob makes his report." And while he was speaking he picked up that most marvellous of modern weapons, the Lewis gun, and found it unharmed.
"She's all right," he said. "Do you really mean me to go on?"
"Yes, confound you! I shall have to howl in another minute, and I want to do it alone," said the plucky boy between his teeth.
He was suffering untold agonies and they knew it; but they knew also that he was right; and Dennis made a sign to Hawke and Tiddler, who saluted the young lieutenant as they left him.
Keeping just within the fringe of the wood, Dennis shouldering the gun, while Hawke and Tiddler carried the field mount and the spare magazines, the adventurous three soon reached the angle in front of the ridge.
The stump of a well-grown beech stood up there, towering above the ground twenty feet or more. Its cresthad been carried away by a shell, but one stout branch jutted out like the arm of a gallows; and Harry Hawke had a brain wave.
"'Arf a mo, sir," he said, laying his wallet down. And the next moment he was clambering up the tree until he reached the bough, where he supported himself for a minute or two on his elbows, taking stock of the enemy.
When he came sliding down again his eyes were dancing, and his voice was husky.
"If we could only get the gun up there, sir," he whispered excitedly, "the rest's as easy as kiss your hand. You can see the trench and the head of the bloke what's working that tac-tac of theirs. Have a look for yourself, sir." And Dennis made the climb, finding it as Hawke had said.
He saw something else, too—C Company now creeping through the wood, and taking possession of the cover along its northern edge, which told him that the battalion had arrived.
When he descended, after a careful reconnaissance, he found that Hawke and Tiddler had already anticipated his decision, and were buckling their straps together.
"Ain't it a little bit of all right?" grinned Hawke. "That there bough might have been made for it, and foothold on that other branch underneath. She weighs twenty-five pounds; but if you think the strap of your map-case will hold, sir, it's as good as done."
Dennis slipped the map from his shoulder, and, buckling the strap end round the muzzle of the Lewis, Tiddler held the weapon up to the full extent of his armswhile Dennis, taking the other end of the improvised line in his hand, climbed up the beech again.
The straps held, to their great joy, and the pair below watched the thing dangling in mid-air above their heads as Dennis hauled it slowly upwards.
The men of C Company also watched the manœuvre with keen interest; and Hawke, with a couple of charged magazines in his hand, climbed up and clung within arm's reach of his officer.
The Germans were flinging a terrific barrage fire upon the village in our rear, and our own barrage was pulverising the ground beyond the enemy ridge, almost drowning the sound of the two machine-guns which were checking the British advance at that spot.
Dennis could see the gunner behind his sandbags, sweeping the front of the wood, and, laying the gun, he pressed the trigger.
The detachable magazine of a Lewis holds forty-seven cartridges in two layers; and, loosing a couple of trial shots, both of which drew a spurt of earth from the sandbags, he kept his pull on the trigger, and emptied the rest in a continuous stream.
He saw the gunner drop, and several heads peer anxiously round as another man took his place. They were trying to locate the whereabouts of this unseen enemy, but they fell back out of sight before they could place it, and a third and a fourth gunner likewise.
The machine-gun was silenced before Dennis passed his hand down to the delighted Hawke.
"Now's your time!" he yelled to the waiting line beneath, as he fixed the deadly disc in position. And ashe heard the whistles shrilling, he almost lost his balance in the wild excitement that seized him.
"Charge, boys, charge!" was the cry, as the Reedshires sprang over the tree-trunks and rushed up the slope, and a row of forage caps popped up above the parapet.
They made a splendid mark for the lad; and it was a very broken volley that met the khaki rush as Dennis played his weapon along the Bavarian trench.
"Get down, Hawke!" he shouted; "we must be in this." And, leaving the gun where it was, he clambered down, to find Hawke and Tiddler waiting for him.
Before they were clear of the wood, the rearmost files of the Reedshires were in the trench; and when they reached the crest the trench floor was covered with dead and wounded, and the victorious battalion was bombing its way along the sinuous windings which curved off northward.
Far away to the east a tremendous fusillade told where the division on their right was attacking Montauban; but Dennis's anxiety was to pick up A Company again, and that was a difficult matter.
"Seen anything of Captain Dashwood?" he cried to a wounded Reedshire on the fire-step, who was trying to staunch an ugly wound.
"No, sir. They went over on the left there with the Highlanders."
In the distance across the shell-torn ground behind the trench they saw clumps of brown dots growing smaller and smaller, as our successful rush carried us farinto the enemy's lines, and there was nothing for it but a long sprint to overtake them.
Even Dennis, fit as he was, and Hawke and Tiddler, both hard as nails, were puffed and blown before they had run very far; and so confusing was the maze of craters and battered trench-lines that Dennis suddenly realised that he was alone.
The sing of bullets passed his ears, and the spurting up of the ground in his immediate vicinity told him that the spot was "unhealthy"; and, seeing an empty communication trench a few yards on the left, he jumped down into it, reloaded his revolver, and went forward cautiously.
The trench, which had somehow escaped our bombardment, had been hastily evacuated when we carried the third line; but, finding that it curved in the direction where he had last seen those running figures, he followed it until a clamour of voices ahead of him made him shrink behind the angle of a bay as a mob of Germans came running towards him.
Dennis felt in his bomb sack and found he had three of those deadly missiles left, and a grim smile twitched the corners of his compressed lips.
"If they're bolting it means that our chaps are behind them," he thought to himself. "If it's a counter-attack, a friendly dug-out wouldn't be a bad place. But here goes, anyhow!" And, jumping on to the fire-step of the bay, he lobbed a bomb into the trench about fifteen yards higher up, where it burst with a loud report.
Then he sprang down, and, shouting loudly as thoughhe had a whole party at his back, he pitched another bomb, which burst as it touched the ground.
His last bomb struck the side of the trench, dislodging the sandbags; but, covering the terrified mob with his revolver, he stalked boldly forward, calling to them to surrender.
They were big fellows, and they were Prussians; but their unexpected reception had demoralised them, and their hands went up in the air with a shout of "Mercy, Kamerad!"
There must have been twenty at least that had survived the explosions. How many he had killed he never knew; but he realised that he must carry matters with a very high hand, and give them no time to think.
"Come on, then—you are my prisoners," he said in German. "File along the trench; my men will escort you to the rear." And, stepping back a few paces to the angle of the bay, he stood aside to let them go by.
There was terror in their faces, and the sight of the revolver held threateningly in the officer's hand sent them past at a shambling trot.
Dennis had counted seventeen, and there were still four more to pass him, when, from the head of the drove, there came a loud laugh, and a guttural voice shouted back: "Sergeant, the Englishman is alone!"
Dennis saw the speaker jump on to the side of the parados with his hand to his mouth, and he raised his revolver; but the shot was never fired, for the butt of a rifle descended on his trench helmet from behind, and Dennis dropped with a groan.
When he opened his eyes he was lying on his back and it was dark. The action of turning his head caused a terrible spasm of pain, and made him lie quite still again for some moments.
Low cries and a distressing moaning mingled with a voice that spoke in German; and, opening his eyes again, he saw by the light of a lantern three figures bending over a prostrate man, who had been stripped to the shirt. His tunic lay on the ground, so close to Dennis that he could have reached out and touched it, and one of the figures was just rising from his knee.
"You have wasted my time for nothing," he was saying. "The man is dead as a herring. Himmel! That makes eighty-seven I have examined to-night, and not one of them will see the Fatherland again."
He picked up his case of instruments, and, followed by two hospital orderlies, passed by Dennis and out through a doorway.
"Great Scott!" murmured the lad, "I must be a prisoner in a German dressing-station. What's happened?"
He had to piece it all together, until he reached the point in the day's happenings when the Prussians filed past him in the empty trench; then he remembered, and wondered if he were much hurt.
His head felt three times its normal size; but he could move his arms and legs, and presently sat up, holding his head in both hands, for the pulsation within it was so terrific that it seemed the next throb must split it in two.
Guns were still firing in the distance, and as his eyesgrew accustomed to the darkness he saw that he was in an unroofed barn.
"I must get out of this at once," he thought. And, remembering the torn tunic which had belonged to the dead man beside him, he reached carefully for it, slipped his arms into the sleeves, and was buttoning it up when two stretcher bearers entered and dumped their burden down on the other side of him.
"That's two of those English pig officers we've brought in to-night," said the lantern bearer who accompanied them. "This one may think himself lucky if he gets attended to before daylight." And Dennis, who had thrown himself backwards, felt his heart stand still as the orderly flashed his lantern on the new-comer's face.
It was only a glimpse he caught, but he knew that the crumpled figure was his brother Bob!