If they had been empty the bullets would have gone through and killed the boys behind them. But they were filled with woolen clothing, which while light enough to enable the boys to push the barrels with comparative ease was just the thing to stop the bullets. The whizzing missiles thudded into the clothing and there they stopped. It was on the same basis as the sandbag which stops a cannon ball that would go through an iron plate. Steadily the boys kept on, pushing the barrels before them. They did not go on hands and knees, for then they would be exposed to the enemy bullets. It was a caterpillar motion, drawing their bodies along the ground, and was a tremendous tax on their muscles, for they could get no purchase. One thing in their favor was that the ground sloped a trifle toward the enemy position and this made the barrels roll more easily. By this time the enemy was growing frantic at this novel method of attack. They could not see their enemy, and they could not kill him. And the sight of those barrels coming toward them, as inexorably as fate, got on their nerves, already tense with the fury of the combat. Nearer and nearer came the barrels to the guns until they were not more than twenty feet away. Then they stopped. The German gunners drew fresh hope from this. Had their bullets found their mark in the bodies of their daring enemies? But there were two very live boys behind those motionless barrels. Frank and Bart had drawn a handful of grenades from their sacks. At a given signal they drew back their arms and hurled them over the barrels in quick succession. They fell right in the midst of the machine guns. There was a tremendous explosion that killed some of the gunners and threw the rest into wild confusion. "Now!" shouted Frank, and he and Bart leaped to their feet and rushed toward the guns. There was a wild melee for a moment, and then the surviving Germans turned and ran in panic down the slope. The boys slued the captured guns around and sent a stream of bullets after their wildly fleeing enemies. The rout was complete, and the next minute the whole company, that had charged the instant the grenades were thrown, came tearing up, and there was a scene of hilarity and enthusiasm that passed description. "The finest thing I ever saw!" declared the captain. "You boys are the stuff of which heroes are made." But there was no time then to dwell on the exploit. The enemy was on the run and they must keep him going. And they did, so well and so thoroughly, that when the day was over they had swept the whole ridge that had been their objective in the fight and planted Old Glory on its highest crest. And their victory was shared by the rest of the Allied line, who not only regained all the losses of the day before, but swept the Germans out of their first and second lines on a five-mile front, inflicting on them a defeat which they were long to remember.