Thirty minutes after the first faint light, dogs, tied to trees by the Bolsheviks, sighting the approaching front attack, gave boisterous, barking alarm, and, on the instant, the woods were made hideous with the rasping rattle of many machine guns. Many of the little band were hit in this first storm, but the rest kept on, dragging themselves through the yielding, four foot snow, while inches over their heads, the air howled hideously with the passage of flying death. In the snow, rifles became clogged in the breeches, so that the bolts would not drive home, and men had to dig them clean with fingers stiffening from cold, but still, a little at a time, the attack wormed on and on. At one hundred yards, the gallant, British captain rose to lead a rush at the machine gun positions and was killed in his tracks; then the second officer was hard hit, and when the delayed Polish company came forward in support, and two of its number got shot through the bowels, the others bolted like sheep and could not be driven to the battle again. Then the Yanks went in and stood manfully to the fight by the side of their distressed comrades, but against heart sickening, desperate, despairing odds, as the merging Bolsheviks came from both sides and massed in a vicious, determined counter attack that would have overcome all, but when doom seemed certain, the lost York Company emerged from the woods, by some act of a benevolent Providence, to meet and stay the fullness of the thrust, until darkness came down to save the valiant, little band on the snows. This last, noble effort of the Onega Detachment had been made with a single thought--that of baring their breasts to the blow that otherwise would have fallen on their tired comrades in the barricades out in the forest from Obozerskaya; and great as the cost, its effect had been the final discouragement to the Bolsheviks who made one more ineffectual effort to gain the Allied Railway flank, then drew back in full retirement to the south. The enemy sustained great losses in these battles of Bolshie Ozerki, upwards of two thousand casualties, many of them from the frost, for the villages could shelter but a fraction of the large forces, and many had to live in such makeshift quarters as could be devised. Time was of the essence in this undertaking of the Bolshevik commander, and he had paused when he should have struck out with every man in his control, but by his dalliance, spring joined the league of his enemies. Soon the freezing clutch of winter would be broken in the warm sun, and, unless he hastened to withdraw to the south, his artillery would be mired in the yielding roads.