The rifles began to bang steadily, then at a rapidly increasing rate as the fire failed to stop the advance, and more dim figures after figures came looming up hazily and emerging from the smoke. The machine-gunner held his fire until he could bring his sights on a little group, fired in short bursts with a side-ways twitch that sprayed the bullets out fan-wise as they went. The rifle-fire out to right and left of them, and almost behind them, swelled to a long, rolling beat with the tattoo of machine-guns rapping through it in gusts, the explosions of grenades rising and falling in erratic bursts. Farther back, the guns were hard at it again, and the shells were screaming and rushing overhead in a ceaseless torrent, the shrapnel to blink a star of flame from the heart of a smoke-cloud springing out in mid-air, the high explosive crashing down in ponderous bellowings, up-flung vivid splashes of fire and spouting torrents of smoke, flying mud and earth clods. There were German shells, too, shrieking over, and adding their share to the indescribable uproar, crashing down along the line, and spraying out in circles of fragments, the smaller bits whistling and whizzing viciously, the larger hurtling and humming like monster bees. “Them shells of ours is comm’ down a sight too close to us, Sergeant,” yelled the Corporal, glancing up as a shrapnel shell cracked sharply almost overhead and sprayed its bullets, scattering and splashing along the wet ground out in front of them. “All right—it’s shrap,” the Sergeant yelled back. “Bullets is pitchin’ well forrad.” The Corporal swore and ducked hastily from the _whitt-whitt_ of a couple of bullets past their ears. “Them was from behind us,” he shouted. “We’re too blazin’ far out in front o’ the line here. Wot’s the good——” “Here,” said the Sergeant to a man who staggered back from the rough parapet, right hand clutched on a blood-streaming left shoulder, “whip a field dressin’ round that, an’ try an’ crawl back to them behind us. Find an officer, if you can, an’ tell him we’re out in front of ’im. An’ tell ’im I’m going to hang on to the position we have here till my blanky teeth pull out.” “Wot’s the good——” began the Corporal again, ceasing fire to look round at the Sergeant. “Never mind the good now,” said the Sergeant shortly, as he recharged his magazine. “You’ll see after—if we live long enough.” He levelled and aimed his rifle. “An’ we won’t do that if you stand there”—(he fired a shot and jerked the breech open)—“jawin’ instead”—(he slammed the breech-bolt home and laid cheek to stock again)—“o’ shootin’”; and he snapped another shot.