Ray felt himself horribly naked to assault again. But there was a wild, insensate rage in his heart against these men who were dropping his boys as they leaped and yelled behind him. He wanted to tear and rend, to smash them into the earth, to end them one and all. The wavering gleam of the bayonets was deadly close. He had tried to haul out his revolver as he ran. It was gone--his stumble had jerked it out of its case and broken the lanyard. But he had not played Rugger for nothing. At the very edge of the bristling line he hurled himself down and under it along the ground, plucked at the first stolid legs he could grab, and brought two heavy bodies down on top of him in a surprised and cursing heap. It helped to break the line too, and the boys were in on them in a moment, jabbing and stabbing and yelling like fiends out of the pit. They were all mad just then. It was their first actual taste of blood at close quarters, and it was very horrible. None of them cared very much to recall the actual details later on. But it had the desired effect. Such of the enemy as had any powers of locomotion left used them, and the panting Scots were for the moment masters of the field,--but the cost had been heavy. How heavy they did not yet fully know. The machine-gun on their flank had been rushed and was silent. Their rear seemed clear of the enemy. The Scottish picked up all they could find in the dark of their wounded and returned to their trench, and pounded away again at anything that showed in front. This, after the hot mêlée behind, was child’s play and it gave them time to recover themselves. In the dim light of the dawn they took stock again, grieved silently over their losses, and set their faces harder than ever to avenge them if the chance offered. And the chance came quickly. All along the front as far as they could see, the Germans came on again in dense gray masses,--hundreds to one, they seemed, and the prospect hopeless. There was only one thing to be done, and that was to make the enemy foot the bill beforehand and to make it as big a bill as possible. And the clips of cartridges snapped in merrily, and the gray ones in front went down in swathes, and Ray’s rifle barrel grew so hot that he flung it aside and looked about for another. And as he did so, he discovered with a shock that he and his handful were alone in the trench. The order had come to retire but had never got their length. “Give them blazes, boys!--then follow me!” he shouted, and they gave them a full minute of extra rapid, and then stooped and scurried along the trench as fast as they could go. Glancing about for cover in the rear, he saw a haystack a hundred yards away across the open. “There you are!” he panted, and started them off one after the other across the field, and followed himself last of all. “Miracles still happen,” he panted again, as they lay flat for breath behind the stack. “Never thought we’d manage it.”