20th
Corps, a crack corps, to whom the task had been assigned of recapturing
the fortress. A gun opened far behind, a rocket soared, and then a
wave of figures poured over the parapet of the trenches and ten
thousand shouting, furious Frenchmen streamed down upon the debris of
Douaumont--that "corner-stone" of the defences of the salient, of the
capture of which the Kaiser had boasted so loudly.

"What's that? French shouts! French bugles! A counter-attack! Get
up," Henri whispered in Jules's ear. "We've got to take our chance to
join them'."

CHAPTER XVIII

A Sinister German

What a sight that 20th French Corps--those noble Bretons--would have
presented had it been daylight when they leapt from their trenches and
advanced in one stupendous rush upon the captured fort of Douaumont!
Filled with elan, determined to throw the invader backward, stung by
the loss of trenches which had been French but a little while before,
and eager beyond all words to bring assistance to that gallant yet
sadly-thinned line which had staved off the Kaiser's hordes, this 20th
Corps--the first of the reserves which General Petain had been able to
rush to the scene of action--hurled itself impetuously at the Germans.
Star-shells burst into flame overhead, showing dashing _poilus_,
flickered from the tips of bayonets and lit up the smoke from exploding
shells, where a canopy of it hung about the devoted heads of that
gallant corps. In the darkness, in the fitful light cast by those
shells, now and again augmented by the flashing beams of an electric
search-light, a desperate hand-to-hand conflict took place.

The line of Bretons was halted for a few moments as it met the Germans,
it wavered, perhaps, here and there just a trifle, and then it swept on
as a flood sweeps down a road, washing the debris of the 6th Brigade of
the Brandenburg Corps before it, submerging hundreds, and trampling not
a few into the mud and into the pit-holes and craters dug everywhere by
German shells.

"They come! A counter-attack! Prepare to receive the enemy!"

It was Max, that snappy little German officer, who gave the command and
called his men about him.

"Man every loophole! And hold on at whatever cost! You--you are fit
to fight," he suddenly snapped, turning upon one of the wounded
wretches who had suffered from that explosion caused by the bomb tossed
by Henri. "You are skulking, my friend. Up! Seize a rifle! Get to
your loophole