xcept by sheer amazing luck, and they
showered their tiny but powerful bombs everywhere as they went.

At the same instant I ordered the girls to cease sharp-shooting, and lay
their barrages down in the valleys, with their long-guns set for maximum
automatic advance, and to feed the reservoirs as fast as possible, while
the bayonet-gunners leaped along close behind this barrage.

Then, with a Twentieth Century urge to see with my own eyes rather than
through a viewplate, and to take part in the action, I turned command
over to Wilma and leaped away, fifty feet a jump, up the valley, toward
the distant flashes and rolling thunder.

CHAPTER XVI

Victory

I had gone five miles, and had paused for a moment, half way up the
slope of the valley to get my bearings, when a figure came hurtling
through the air from behind, and landed lightly at my side. It was
Wilma.

"I put Bill Hearn in command and followed, Tony. I won't let you go into
that alone. If you die, I do, too. Now don't argue, dear. I'm
determined."

So together we leaped northward again toward the battle. And after a bit
we pulled up close behind the barrage.

Great, blinding flashes, like a continuous wall of gigantic fireworks,
receded up the valley ahead of us, sweeping ahead of it a seething,
tossing mass of debris that seemed composed of all nature, tons of
earth, rocks and trees. Ever and anon vast sections of the mountain
sides would loosen and slide into the valley.

And, leaping close behind this barrage, with a reckless skill and
courage that amazed me, our bayonet-gunners appeared in a continuous
series of flashing pictures, outlined in midleap against the wall of
fire.

I would not have believed it possible for such a barrage to pass over
any of the enemy and leave them unscathed. But it did. For the Hans,
operating small disintegrator beams from local or field broadcasts,
frantically bored deep, slanting holes in the earth as the fiery tides
of explosions rolled up the valleys toward them, and into these probably
half of their units were able to throw themselves and escape
destruction.

But dazed and staggering they came forth again only to meet death from
the terrible, ripping, slashing, cleaving weapons in the hands of our
leaping bayonet-gunners.

Thrust! Cut! Crunch! Slice! Thrust! Up and down with vicious, tireless,
flashing speed, swung the bayonets and ax-bladed butts of the American
gunners as they leaped and dodged, e