"Catch hold my left arm, Lieutenant!" Mahan was exhorting. "Close up, there, boys--every man's hand grabbing tight to the shoulder of the man on his left! Pass the word. And you, Missouri, hang onto the Lieutenant! Quick, there! And tread soft and tread fast, and don't let go, whatever happens! Not a sound out of any one! I'm leading the way. And Bruce is going to lead me." There was a scurrying scramble as the men groped for one another. Mahan tightened his hold on Bruce's mane. "Bruce!" he said, very low, but with a strength of appeal that was not lost on the listening dog. "Bruce! Camp! Back to CAMP! And keep QUIET! Back to camp, boy! CAMP!" He had no need to repeat his command so often and so strenuously. Bruce was a trained courier. The one word "Camp!" was quite enough to tell him what he was to do. Turning, he faced the American lines and tried to break into a gallop. His scent and his knowledge of direction were all the guides he needed. A dog always relies on his nose first and his eyes last. The fog was no obstacle at all to the collie. He understood the Sergeant's order, and he set out at once to obey it. But at the very first step, he was checked. Mahan did not release that feverishly tight hold on his mane, but merely shifted to his collar. Bruce glanced back, impatient at the delay. But Mahan did not let go. Instead he said once more: "CAMP, boy!" And Bruce understood he was expected to make his way to camp, with Mahan hanging on to his collar. Bruce did not enjoy this mode of locomotion. It was inconvenient, and there seemed no sense in it; but there were many things about this strenuous war-trade that Bruce neither enjoyed nor comprehended, yet which he performed at command. So again he turned campward, Mahan at his collar and an annoyingly hindering tail of men stumbling silently on behind them. All around were the Germans--butting drunkenly through the blanket-dense fog, swinging their rifles like flails, shouting confused orders, occasionally firing. Now and then two or more of them would collide and would wrestle in blind fury, thinking they had encountered an American. Impeded by their own sightlessly swarming numbers, as much as by the impenetrable darkness, they sought the foe. And but for Bruce they must quickly have found what they sought. Even in compact form, the Americans could not have had the sheer luck to dodge every scattered contingent of Huns which starred the German end of No Man's Land--most of them between the fugitives and the American lines.