umps, and hurrahing with the rest.

Then with a flame the breastwork opened before him, and with a shock
as though the whole ridge lifted itself against the sky--a shock
which hurled him backward, whirling away his shako. He saw the line
to right and left wither under it and shrink like parchment held to a
candle flame. For a moment the ensign-staff shook in his hands, as
if whipped by a gale. He steadied it, and stood dazed, hearkening to
the scream of the bullets, gulping at a lump in his throat. Then he
knew himself unhurt, and, seeing that men on either hand were picking
themselves up and running forward, he ducked his head and ran forward
too.

He had gained the abattis. He went into it with a leap, a dozen men
at his heels. A pointed bough met him in the ribs, piercing his
tunic and forcing him to cry out with pain. He fell back from it and
tugged at the interlacing boughs between him and the log-wall,
fighting them with his left, pressing them aside, now attempting to
leap them, now to burst through them with his weight. The wall
jetted flame through its crevices, and the boughs held him fast
within twenty yards of it. He could reach it easily (he told
himself) but for the staff he carried, against which each separate
twig hitched itself as though animated by special malice.

He swung himself round and forced his body backwards against the
tangle; and a score of men, rallying to the colours, leapt in after
him. As their weight pressed him down supine and the flag sank in
his grasp, he saw their faces--Highlanders and redcoats mixed.
They had long since disregarded the order to hold their fire; and
were blazing away idly and reloading, cursing the boughs that impeded
their ramrods. A corporal of the 46th had managed to reload and was
lifting his piece when--a bramble catching in the lock--the charge
exploded in his face, and he fell, a bloody weight, across John's
legs. Half a dozen men, leaping over him, hurled themselves into the
lane which John had opened.

Ten seconds later--but in such a struggle who can count seconds?--
John had flung off the dead man and was on his feet again with his
face to the rampart. The men who had hurried past him were there,
all six of them; but stuck in strange attitudes and hung across the
withering boughs like vermin on a gamekeeper's tree--corpses every
one. The rest had vanished, and, turning, he found himself alone.
Out in the clearing, under the drifted smo