w my men are not very fresh, but
it'll wake them up. They've stood a good lot. I've been talking to 'em.
They want to get a bit of their own back. That trench of theirs is too
near us in any case. They'd be better pushed back."

The general hesitated, but Winn's fiery sunken eyes held and shook him.

"Well, Staines," he said, "you know what you can do with your men, of
course. Have it your own way. When do you want to attack?"

"Soon as they've settled off to sleep," said Winn, "just to give 'em a
night-cap."

"Don't lose too many men," said the general, "and above all come back
yourself."

"That's as may be," said Winn. "If I can get the men over quietly in a
bit of mist, I sha'n't lose too many of 'em. I've told them if they're
too fagged to stand, they'd better fight. They quite agree about it."

Winn led the attack with the last of his strength, and in the fierceness
of his rage with life.

A white fog hung over the fields like the shadow of a valley filled with
snow.

The men fought like demons--strange shapes in the fog, with here and
there as the flames shot up, the flash of their black faces, set to
kill.

Winn's voice rallied and held them above the racket of the spitting
rifles, and the incessant coughing of the guns. It was the Staines voice
let out on a last voyage. To have gone back against it would have been
more dangerous than to go on against the guns.

They seized the trench and held it, there were no prisoners taken in the
dark, and after the first light they ceased to hear Winn's voice.

The sun came out and showed them all they had won, and what they had
lost.

Winn lay peacefully between the old trench and the new, beyond
resentment, beyond confusion, in the direct simplicity of death.

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dark Tower, by Phyllis Bottome

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