or any expert in the psychology of war could
understand how ripe was their mood. "It is the wait under right
conditions that will make men fiends unleashed when the word to storm is
given," an older authority had written. Under sentence of death for six
hours, they welcomed any opportunity to get at grips with those who had
held death suspended over their heads.

You will use hand-grenades, will you? Snug behind sand-bags you will
tear the flesh of our comrades to pieces, will you? They saw red, the
red of raw fragments of flesh; the red of the gush from torn artery
walls--all except Hugo and Peterkin, who might well begin to believe
that there was a measure of art in heroism. Peterkin seemed to share
leadership at the captain's side, but he slipped and fell--he had weak
ankles, anyway--as Fracasse's men pressed the rear of the wedge forward
with the strength of mass, only to be borne back by men, riddled with
bullets, tumbling fairly into their faces.

As we have seen, there was no getting through a breach under the
concentrated blasts of a hundred rifles, and Pilzer, who, by using human
shoulders for steps, had reached the parapet, turned a back somersault
with out his rifle. However, he seized one from a dead man's hand
before the captain had noticed the loss. Some of the company joined in
the flight of the attackers from the town into the open, but Hugo and
Pilzer and their friends remained under cover of the wall. They still
saw red, the red of a darker anger--that of repulse.

When, finally, they burst into the redoubt after it was found that the
Browns had gone, all, even the judge's son, were the war demon's, own.
The veneer had been warped and twisted and burned off down to the raw
animal flesh. Their brains had the fever itch of callouses forming. Not
a sign of brown there in the yard; not a sign of any tribute after all
they had endured! They had not been able to lay hands on the murderous
throwers of hand-grenades. Far away now was the barrack-room geniality
of the forum around Hugo; in oblivion were the ethics of an inherited
civilization taught by mothers, teachers, and church.

But here was a house--a house of the Browns; a big, fine house! They
would see what they had won--this was the privilege of baffled victory.
What they had won was theirs! To the victor the spoils! Pell-mell they
crowded into the dining-room, Hugo with the rest, feeling himself a
straw on the crest of a wave, and Pilzer, most bi