es and gone over the
parapet--and, almost before I had apprehended all these things, I
had scrambled over the sand-bags, and was in the open beneath a
shower of earth that, blown by the mine into the air, was dropping
in clods and particles. Confound the smoke and the dust! I could
scarcely see where I was running. The man on my right dropped with a
groan. Elsewhere a voice was crying with a blasphemy, "I'm hit!"
Bullets seemed to breathe in my face as they rushed past. I stumbled
into a hole. I picked myself up, for I saw before me a line of
bayonets, glistening where the light caught them. It was my company;
and I must be in front of them--not behind. Revolver gripped, I ran
through and beyond them, only to fall heavily in a deep depression,
which was the Turkish trench. An enemy bayonet was coming like a
spear at my breast just as I fired. The shadowy foe fell across my
legs. From under him I fired into the breast of another who loomed
up to kill me. Then I rose, as a third, with a downward blow from
the barrel of his rifle, knocked my revolver spinning from my hand.
With an agony in my wrist, I snatched at his rifle, and, wrenching
the bayonet free, stabbed him savagely with his own weapon, tearing
it away as he dropped. Heavens! would my company never come? I had
only been four yards in front of them. Was all this taking place in
seconds? One moment of clear reasoning had just told me that this
cold dampness, moving along my knee, was the soaking blood of one of
my victims, when a Turkish officer ran into the trench-bay, firing
backwards and blindly at my sergeant-major. Seeing me, he whipped
round his revolver to shoot me. My fist shot out towards his chin in
an automatic action of self-defence, and the bayonet, which it held,
passed like a pin right through the man's throat. His blood spurted
over my hand and ran up my arm, as he dropped forward, bearing me
down under him.

"Hurt, sir?" asked the sergeant-major, kindly. "We've got the
trench."

"Man the trench," said I, an English voice bringing my wits back,
"and keep up a covering fire for the bombers."

At the mention of the bombers I thought of Doe. Getting quickly up,
I stood on the piled bodies of my victims to see over the top. As I
looked through the rolling smoke for the position of the bombers, I
heard my sergeant-major saying to a man in the next bay:

"Our babe's done orl right. He's killed four, and is now standin' on
'em."

Without doubting