When fairly on it we hear round us, on all sides and quite close, a
terrible pit-pat, and the long low hiss of mown grass. There is a
crackling afar in the sky, and they who glance back for a second in the
awesome storm see the cloudy ridges catch fire horizontally. It means
that the enemy have mounted machine guns on the summit we have just
abandoned, and that the place where we are is being hacked by the
knives of bullets. On all sides soldiers wheel and rattle down with
curses, sighs and cries. We grab and hang on to each other, jostling
as if we were fighting.

The rest at last reach the top of the rise; and just at that moment the
lieutenant cries in a clear and heartrending voice:

"Good-by, my lads!"

We see him fall, and he is carried away by the survivors around him.

From the summit we go a few steps down the other side, and lie on the
ground in silence. Some one asks, "The lieutenant?"

"He's dead."

"Ah," says the soldier, "and how he said good-by to us!"

We breathe a little now. We do not think any more unless it be that we
are at last saved, at last lying down.

Some engineers fire star-shells, to reconnoiter the state of things in
the ground we have evacuated. Some have the curiosity to risk a glance
over it. On the top of the first hill--where our guns were--the big
dazzling plummets show a line of bustling excitement. One hears the
noises of picks and of mallet blows.

They have stopped their advance and are consolidating there. They are
hollowing their trenches and planting their network of wire--which will
have to be taken again some day. We watch, outspread on our bellies,
or kneeling, or sitting lower down, with our empty rifles beside us.

Margat reflects, shakes his head and says:--

"Wire would have stopped them just now. But we had no wire."

"And machine-guns, too! but where are they, the M.G.s?"

We have a distinct feeling that there has been an enormous blunder in
the command. Want of foresight--the reinforcements were not there;
they had not thought of supports. There were not enough guns to bar
their way, nor enough artillery ammunition; with our own eyes we had
seen two batteries cease fire in mid-action--they had not thought of
shells. In a wide stretch of country, as one could see, there were no
defense work, no trenches; they had not thought of trenches.

It is obvious even to the common eyes of common soldiers.

"What could we do?" says one of us; "it