edded by the storm of bullets, that German mass
still came charging uphill. Nothing stopped it. Suffering appalling
losses, their front blown in in fifty different places, the enemy yet
re-formed their ranks, and though, perhaps, retarded in their charge,
were not definitely halted. Shouts were coming from that mass, shouts
of men worked into a fever, of men crazy with terror or with hatred; of
men perhaps drugged for this terrible ordeal, and who, having
determined to capture the position, were prepared to welcome death
rather than fail in their object.

"And what if they reach us, what then?" asked Henri of the officer
still beside him, who in the meanwhile had seized the rifle of a
wounded soldier and was emptying it into the ranks of the enemy. "What
then, mon Capitaine? A charge with the bayonet--eh?"

"Yes, a charge with the bayonet! Make ready for it; pass the word to
right and left! Fix your bayonets and make ready!"

But every bayonet along the line was already fixed, for indeed it is
the habit of French troops to carry them so. Only, the men who wielded
them, were they ready? Were they as full of courage and determination
as were those Germans now so close to them? They, the handful of
_poilus_ whom the French High Command had alone spared for the
protection of their front lines, had they the nerve, the grit, for a
hand-to-hand combat? Shouts came from many a man, loud cheers burst
from the throat of many a bearded veteran, while one young officer
sprang on the battered parapet of a trench, and stood there facing his
friends, calling to them, exhorting them, as the rays of a search-light
played on his figure; indeed, for more than a minute he stood there,
sharply outlined, a sight for all eyes, a figure which attracted the
attention of every _poilu_ within reach of him. And then, what a yell
burst from the throats of the soldiers; they leapt from the trenches,
and as the scattered beams, falling for just a few seconds here and
there amongst them, lit up their figures, they could be seen massing on
the pitted and furrowed ground in front, prepared for a last encounter.

"Charge! At them with the bayonet! Bravo, mes enfants!"

A tall, lithe officer--a colonel--was in front of the men already, his
sword waving overhead, his head turned towards the men as he led them.

"Charge!" he shouted, though the sound was swept away and lost in the
turmoil of cheers from the French soldiers who heard him,