an
officer in the uniform of the Engineers, with Corporal Sam at his
heels. The sergeant ducked his head and followed, dodging from block
to block of masonry on the other side of which the bullets spattered.

'Forward! Forward the Royals!'

The leaders were shouting it, and he passed on the shout. As yet,
not a man had fallen on the slope of the breach. Two, more agile
than he because by some years younger, overtook and passed him; but
he was the sixth to reach the summit, and might reckon this very good
work for a man of his weight. Then, as he turned to shout again,
three more of the forlorn hope came blundering up, and the nine stood
unscathed on the summit of the gap and apparently with none to oppose
them.

But beyond it--between them and the town, and a sheer twenty feet
below them, lay a pool of blazing tar, the flames of which roared up
against their faces.

'Forward the Royals! Ladders--ladders! Oh, for your life, forward
with the ladders!'

The major started the cry. Corporal Sam, taking it up, screamed
it again and again. In the darkness, behind and below, the
sergeant heard Captain Archimbeau calling to his men to hurry.
One ladder-bearer came clattering up; but the ladders were in
six-foot lengths, and a single length was useless. Nevertheless, in
his rage of haste, Corporal Sam seized it from the man, and was
bending to clamp it over the pit, when from the parapet to the right
a sudden cross-fire swept the head of the breach. A bullet struck
him in the hand. He looked up, with the pain of it, in time to see
Major Frazer spin about, topple past the sergeant's hand thrust out
to steady him, and pitch headlong down the slope. The ladder-bearer
and another tall Royal dropped at the same moment.

'Hi, sergeant!' spoke up the young Engineer officer very sharply and
clearly, at the same time stepping a couple of paces down from the
ridge over which a frontal fire of bullets now flew whistling from
the loopholed houses in the town. 'For God's sake, shout and hurry
up your men, or our chance this night is gone.'

'I know it, sir--I know it,' groaned Wilkes.

'Then shout, man! Fifty men might do it yet, but every moment is odds
against. See the swarm on the rampart there, to the right!'

They shouted together, but in vain. Four or five ladder-bearers
mounted the slope, but only to be shot down almost at their feet.
The Engineer officer, reaching forward to seize one of the
ladder-lengths