ow the
French artillerymen carefully avoided it lest a few old folk and
children might be there. The human wave would sweep it clean enough of
aliens! Yet that wave had come upon a rocky shore, and Jeb imagined he
could hear the metallic clash and rasp of bayonet on bayonet, the gasps
and sobs and curses of men fighting without quarter.

The new division just brought up now scrambled over the top, but No
Man's Land had been largely stripped of dangers. Victory sparkled in the
air; safety smiled at Jeb; with these fellows carrying the battle ever
away from him, performing the unbelievable in pluck and endurance, he
did not so much mind the thought of going for the wounded! But the
uplift was transient--it fled in a panic as Bonsecours called:

"Quick, _mes chere enfants_, be after them! Overlook no one! Let the
walking cases get in alone, and bring the others with all haste!
There's one of your American girls in my unit who bids you God-speed!
Go!"

The time had come! Dripping sweat from every pore, desperately seized
again with trembling, Jeb staggered to his feet and started forward.

CHAPTER XI

Bonsecours' command had been well timed, for up and down the line other
men bearing stretchers bounded forward. Jeb's partner in this work, a
lanky middle-westerner, called "Omaha" for love--although "John
Hastings" was stamped in his identification disk--sprang out at a
dog-trot, crossing the trench bridge and quickly getting into the plain
below as if he were an old hand at this game instead of undertaking it
now for the first time.

Jeb, following closely at his heels, had become utterly terrified. His
flesh was numb and his legs moved automatically, rather than by
conscious effort. The former mite of courage had atrophied. He felt
wretchedly alone and unprotected, as an atom of dust drifting across a
sunbeam. He wanted to clutch at something--to hold himself back--to
scream!

Half a mile to right and left the Germans were plastering No Man's Land
with a pitiless fire, but thus far the ground immediately about him
remained scarcely touched. Shells occasionally burst on the trenches
just behind, but Barrow's unit luckily was being permitted to go without
serious embarrassment. And yet Jeb knew that it was only a matter of
time before he and Hastings would receive a blasting. He shivered,
jabbering words he could not have recalled a minute later; once cursing
himself for a coward, then calling himself a liar