Once, when they had just finished their midday meal, the usual order "to stand to arms" came through, and they were hurried along the road that ran parallel to the river, towards Soissons. The march was longer than usual, and they were just beginning to entertain hopes that the deadlock had been broken and that they were once more on the advance, when an abrupt halt was called, and they were ordered to throw themselves hastily behind the bank along the roadside. They could see nothing, neither friend nor foe. The only sound of firing was miles and miles down the line, in the direction of Poussey. The Subaltern's Platoon happened to be the second in the leading Company. Already there was movement in front, and, crawling forward to the end of the line, he climbed up the bank to take stock of the position. To the north was a little copse, the intervening ground a vegetable field. Further off, to the east, there was a big hill, crowned with a dense-looking forest which, as far as he could see, was deserted. The Colonel, who was not to be deceived by a new appearance of quietude, had somehow made his way to the little copse, and was examining the hill with his glasses. The Adjutant, who had followed him, presently rose to his feet. "Bring ... your ... men ... over ... carefully ... in ... extended ... order!" The words floated across on the wind. Feeling that he would like to see his men all safely across before he left any of them, the Subaltern motioned to the Sergeant to lead them, and they set off in a long, dotted and irregular line towards the thicket. "Hurry ... them ... up. Hurry!" shouted the Adjutant. And just as the last man had left the bank, and he had started himself, he realised what the Adjutant meant. "Phwhizz ... phwizz ... phwizz." Like malignant wasps the bullets hummed past him. There was a regularity in the discharge and a similarity in the aim that left him no chance to doubt that a machine-gun had been turned on them. "I was a bit of a fool not to have gone first," he said to himself. But the bullets hummed harmlessly by his head and shoulders, and the thought that struck him most forcibly, as he plunged through the cabbages, was the impossibility of realising the consequences if any one of them had been a few inches nearer his head. It momentarily occurred to him to lie down and crawl through the cabbages, trusting to luck that the machine-gun would lose him; but, of course, the only thing was to run for it, and so he ploughed along. Whether the journey occupied more than a minute or not he is unable to say, but it seemed an incredible lapse of time before he reached the copse--and safety. "We shall have some artillery turned on to us in a minute," said the Colonel; "we had better get on with the operation." They debouched from the copse in open order, and advanced in the usual lines of platoons, to attack the hill.