Corporal Owens rose
beside him, bareheaded, to call low and fiercely to his men.

The gray dots and shiny spots leaped up magically and appallingly into
men. German soldiers! Boches! Huns on a charge! They were many, but wide
apart. They charged, running low.

Machine-gun rattle, rifle-fire, and strangled shouts blended along the
line. From the charging Huns seemed to come a sound that was neither
battle-cry nor yell nor chant, yet all of them together. The gray
advancing line thinned at points opposite the machine-guns, but it was
coming fast.

Dorn cursed his hard, fumbling hands, which seemed so eager and fierce
that they stiffened. They burned, too, from their grip on the hot rifle.
Shot after shot he fired, missing. He could not hit a field full of
Huns. He dropped shells, fumbled with them at the breech, loaded wildly,
aimed at random, pulled convulsively. His brain was on fire. He had no
anger, no fear, only a great and futile eagerness. Yell and crack filled
his ears. The gray, stolid, unalterable Huns must be driven back. Dorn
loaded, crushed his rifle steady, pointed low at a great gray bulk, and
fired. That Hun pitched down out of the gray advancing line. The sight
almost overcame Dorn. Dizzy, with blurred eyes, he leaned over his gun.
His abdomen and breast heaved, and he strangled over his gorge. Almost
he fainted. But violence beside him somehow, great heaps of dust and
gravel flung over him, hoarse, wild yells in his ears, roused him. The
boches were on the line! He leaped up. Through the dust he saw charging
gray forms, thick and heavy. They plunged, as if actuated by one will.
Bulky blond men, ashen of face, with eyes of blue fire and brutal mouths
set grim--Huns!

Up out of the shallow trench sprang comrades on each side of Dorn. No
rats to be cornered in a hole! Dorn seemed drawn by powerful hauling
chains. He did not need to climb! Four big Germans appeared
simultaneously upon the embankment of bags. They were shooting. One
swung aloft an arm and closed fist. He yelled like a demon. He was a
bomb-thrower. On the instant a bullet hit Dorn, tearing at the side of
his head, stinging excruciatingly, knocking him down, flooding his face
with blood. The shock, like a weight, held him down, but he was not
dazed. A body, khaki-clad, rolled down beside him, convulsively flopped
against him. He bounded erect, his ears filled with a hoarse and
clicking din, his heart strangely lifting in his breast.

Onl