proar on the enemy's left.

Every man ran, hard, tense, breathless. When they reached the foot of
the hills, they thought they had won the charge already, but they were
electrified to see officers above them waving their swords and yelling
with anger, surprise, and shame. With a long murmurous outcry the
Twelfth began to climb the hill; and as they went and fell, they could
hear frenzied shouts--"Kim up, the Kickers!" The pace was slow. It was
like the rising of a tide; it was determined, almost relentless in its
appearance, but it was slow. If a man fell there was a chance that he
would land twenty yards below the point where he was hit. The Kickers
crawled, their rifles in their left hands as they pulled and tugged
themselves up with their right hands. Ever arose the shout, "Kim up, the
Kickers!" Timothy Lean, his face flaming, his eyes wild, yelled it back
as if he were delivering the gospel.

The Kickers came up. The enemy--they had been in small force, thinking
the hills safe enough from attack--retreated quickly from this
preposterous advance, and not a bayonet in the Twelfth saw blood;
bayonets very seldom do.

The homing of this successful charge wore an unromantic aspect. About
twenty windless men suddenly arrived, and threw themselves upon the
crest of the hill, and breathed. And these twenty were joined by others,
and still others, until almost 1100 men of the Twelfth lay upon the
hilltop, while the regiment's track was marked by body after body, in
groups and singly. The first officer--perchance the first man, one never
can be certain--the first officer to gain the top of the hill was
Timothy Lean, and such was the situation that he had the honour to
receive his colonel with a bashful salute.

The regiment knew exactly what it had done; it did not have to wait to
be told by the Spitzbergen newspapers. It had taken a formidable
position with the loss of about five hundred men, and it knew it. It
knew, too, that it was great glory for the Kicking Twelfth; and as the
men lay rolling on their bellies, they expressed their joy in a wild
cry--"Kim up, the Kickers!" For a moment there was nothing but joy, and
then suddenly company commanders were besieged by men who wished to go
down the path of the charge and look for their mates. The answers were
without the quality of mercy; they were short, snapped, quick words,
"No; you can't."

The attack on the enemy's left was sounding in great rolling crashes.
The sh