He did not finish the sentence. As he spoke the German bombardment, precedent to the infantry attack, began to comb the western fringes of the town and the railroad line behind, searching for the hurriedly-digged and shallow trenches, the improvised dugouts, the shell holes, the cellars and the embankments where the British lay. The British guns to the rear of the village made answer, and the uproar tore the mists of dawn to tatters. A shell fell short, into the middle of the Grande Place, and McDermott saw the broken motor car against which the sleeping lieutenant had leaned the day before vanish into nothingness; and then a house directly opposite the Hôtel Fauçon jumped into flame and was no more. Looking out across the back of the stooping Gustave at the window, McDermott muttered, “I dunno as I w'u'd want to jine that war.” And then he bellowed in Gustave Schmidt's ear: “Cut loose! Cut loose wid y'rgun! Cut loose!” “I vill not!” shrieked Gustave. “Mein Gott! Dat is mein own regiment!” “Ye lie!” shouted McDermott. “Ye will!” He thrust a bit of bayonet into the fleshiest part of the German's back. “I vill! I vill!” cried Gustave. “Ye will that,” said McDermott, “an' the less damned nonsinse I hear from ye about y'r own rigimint the betther f'r ye! Ye're undher me own ordhers till I c'n make up me mind about this war.” The mists were rising. In the clearing daylight at the eastern end of the square, as if other clouds were moving forward with a solid front, appeared the first gray wave of the German infantry. Close packed, shoulder to shoulder, three deep, they came, almost filling the space from side to side of the Grande Place, moving across that open stretch against the British fire with a certain heavy-footed and heavy-brained contempt of everything before them. Ten steps, and the British machine guns and rifles caught them. The first wave, or half of it, went down in a long writhing windrow, across the east end of the square, and in the instant that he saw it squirm and toss before the trampling second wave swept over it and through it, the twisting gray-clad figures on the stones reminded McDermott of the heaps of heaving worms he used to see at the bottom of his bait-can when he went fishing as a boy. “Hold that nozzle lower, Goostave!” he yelled to his captive. “Spray thim! Spray thim! Ye're shootin' over their heads, ye lumberin' Dutchman, ye!” “_Gott!_” cried Gustave, as another jab of the bayonet urged him to his uncongenial task. And then McDermott made one of the few errors of his military career. Whether it was the French brandy he had drunk to excess the night before, or whether it was the old bung-starter wound on his head, which always throbbed and jumped when he became excited, his judgment deserted him for an instant. For one instant he forgot that there must be no instants free from the immediate occupation of guiding and directing Gustave. “Let me see if I can't work that gun m'self,” he cried.