In the middle of the ferocious individual hand-to-hand fighting a counter-attack was launched against the captured trench. A swarm of the enemy leaped from the next trench and rushed across the twenty or thirty yards of open to the captured front line. But the counterattack had been expected. The guns caught the attackers as they left their trench and beat them down in scores. A line of riflemen had been installed under cover of what had been the parapet of the enemy front trench, and this line broke out in 'the mad minute' of rifle fire. The shrapnel and the rifles between them smashed the counter-attack before it had well formed. It was cut down in swathes and had totally collapsed before it reached half-way to the captured trench. But another was hurled forward instantly, was up out of the trench and streaming across the open before the infantry had finished re-charging their magazines. Then the rifles spoke again in rolling crashes, the screaming shrapnel pounced again on the trench that still erupted hurrying men, while from the captured trench itself came hurtling bombs and grenades. Smoke and dust leaped and swirled in dense clouds about the trenches and the open between them, but through the haze the ragged front fringe of the attack loomed suddenly and pressed on to the very lip of the trench. Beyond that point it appeared it could not pass. The British infantry, cramming full cartridge-clips into their magazines, poured a fresh cataract of lead across the broken parapet into the charging ranks, and the ranks shivered and stopped and melted away beneath the fire, while the remnants broke and fled back to cover. With a yell the defenders of a moment before became the attackers. They leaped the trench and fell with the bayonet on the flying survivors of the counter-attack. For the most part these were killed as they fled; but here and there groups of them turned at bay, and in a dozen places as many fights raged bitterly for a few minutes, while the fresh attack pushed on to the next trench. A withering fire poured from it but could not stop the rush that fought its way on and into the second-line trench. From now the front lost connection or cohesion. Here and there the attackers broke in on the second line, exterminated that portion of the defence in its path or was itself exterminated there. Where it won footing it spread raging to either side along the trench, shooting, stabbing, flinging hand grenades and bearing down the defenders by the sheer fury of the attack. The movement spread along the line, and with a sudden leap and rush the second line was gained along a front of nearly a mile. In parts this attack overshot its mark, broke through and over the second line and, tearing and hacking through a network of wire, into the third trench. In part the second line still held out; and even after it was all completely taken, the communication trenches between the first and second line were filled