hem," said the Australian corporal. "But it's no good
stirring out of this hole just yet. Look at that!"

A perfect hurricane of shells was going over now, and the air was filled
with a succession of explosions.

"They're firing shrapnel!" shouted Tiddler in Dennis's ear. "You can
tell by the white burst and the sound of the flying balls, but we're
safe enough in here for the present."

He dropped into a sitting position as he spoke, and instantly sprang up
again with a yell.

"Are you hit?" said Dennis, feeling himself turn pale.

"No, I ain't hit, sir, but I'm 'urt. You don't do your jobs 'arf
properly, 'Arry!" And he exhibited the piece of barbed wire on which,
forgetting all about it, Tiddler had sat down heavily.

Hawke's uproarious laughter as he disengaged the offending thing sounded
oddly to Dennis in the midst of that fearful din that shook the ground
and brought the chalk rattling down into the hollow, but it was the
first time he had been under fire, and he was yet to learn the absolute
disregard of danger which the best and worst alike learn in the
trenches.

"What's the strength of the attack?" said Dan Dunn to their prisoner,
while the two privates went through the pockets of the men he had shot.

"Three battalions of us, and we were told the Brandenburgers were to be
brought up in reserve," replied the Saxon. "Look! they are beginning
now. That is a smoke shell that has just burst to cover our advance, and
the other guns have ceased."

A dense white cloud rolled along the ground in front of the crump-hole,
and Hawke and Tiddler instantly faced round, gripping their rifles as
they looked up the jagged slope behind them.

"Don't say no this time, sir," said the Cockney private, "or there'll be
a rare shermozzle darn 'ere if some of the blighters come on top of us
in the dark."

"You can do as you like, Hawke," replied Dennis abstractedly. "But, I
say, Dan, I can't stick this any longer. I wonder if our chaps would
hear us if we shouted together?"

"Don't shout!" said the Saxon, pulling his sleeve. "See, they are going
past now."

Looking up, Dennis made out a bunch of men against the smoke cloud
passing on either side of their hole, and his impulse was to scramble up
out of it and empty his revolver into their midst.

"What's the northernmost limit of the attack just here?" he said to the
Saxon, speaking in such excellent German that the man was obviously
surprised.

"Ten yards this side