The Sergeant peered over the edge of the hole he was in, locating a bobbing head or two and the spurting flashes of the gun, and ducked down again. “They’re in a shell-hole not more’n twenty, thirty yards away,” he said rapidly. “Looks like only a handful. We’ll rush ’em out. Here——” and he went on into quick detailed orders for the rushing. Three minutes later he and his men swarmed out of their shelter and went forward at a scrambling run, the bombers flinging a shower of grenades ahead of them, the bayonet men floundering over the rough ground with weapons at the ready, the Sergeant well in the lead. Their sudden and purposeful rush must have upset the group of Germans, because the machine-gun fire for a moment became erratic, the muzzle jerked this way and that, the bullets whistled wide, and during that same vital moment no bombs were thrown by the Germans; and when at last they did begin to come spinning out, most of them went too far, and the runners were well over them before they had time to explode. In another moment the Sergeant leaped down fairly on top of the machine-gun, his bayonet thrusting through the gunner as he jumped. He shot a second and bayoneted a third, had his shoulder-strap blown away by a rifle at no more than muzzle distance, his sleeve and his haversack ripped open by a bayonet thrust. Then his men swarmed down into the wide crater, and in two minutes the fight was over. There were another few seconds of rapid fire at two or three of the Germans who had jumped out and run for their lives, and that finished the immediate performance. The Sergeant looked round, climbed from the hole, and made a hasty examination of the ground about them. “’Tisn’t as good a crater as we left,” he said, “an’ it’s ’way out front o’ the line the others is digging, so we’d best get back. Get a hold o’ that machine-gun an’ all the spare ammunition you can lay hands on. We might find it come in useful. Good job we had the way a Fritz gun works shown us once. Come on.” The men hastily collected all the ammunition they could find and were moving back, when one of them, standing on the edge of the hole, remarked: “We got the top o’ the ridge all right this time. Look at the open flat down there.”