They reached the wide flattened crest of the slope they were attacking and were pushing on over it when a rapid stutter of machine-gun fire broke out on their left flank, and a stream of bullets came sheeting and whipping along the top of the slope. The line was fairly caught in the bullet-storm, and suffered heavily in the next minute. There was some shooting from shell holes in front, too, but that was nothing to the galling fire that poured on them from the flank. Jake heard suddenly the long, insistent scream of a whistle, looked round and saw an officer signalling to take cover. He dropped promptly into a shell crater, and, hearing presently the bang of rifles round him, peered out over the edge for a mark to shoot at. Out to his left he caught sight of a sparkle of fire, and heard the rapid clatter of the machine-guns. He could just make out the rounded top of a buried concrete emplacement, and the black slit that marked the embrasure, and began to aim and fire steadily and carefully at it. The emplacement held its fire more now, but every now and then delivered a flickering string of flashes and a venomous _rat-at-at-at_. Jake kept on firing at it, glancing round every little while to be sure that the others were not moving on without him. The noisy banging raps of close-by machine-gunning broke out suddenly, and on Jake looking round from his shell hole he found a gun in action not more than a dozen yards away; and while he looked another one began to fire steadily from another shell crater fifty or sixty yards farther along. Jake crawled out of his hole, slithered over the rough ground and down into the crater where the nearest machine-gun banged rapidly. A sergeant was with the team, and Jake bawled in his ear, “If you’ll keep pottin’ at him every time he opens fire, I’ll try’n sneak over an’ out him with a bomb in the letter-box.” “Please yerself,” returned the sergeant. “My job’s to keep pumpin’ ’em down ’is throat every time ’e opens ’is mouth.” “Watch you don’t plug me in mistake when I get there,” said Jake, and crawled out of the hole. He ducked hastily into another as he heard the enemy bullets spatter about him, shift and begin to smack and splash about the gun he had just left. That gun ceased fire suddenly, but the one fifty yards farther round kept on furiously. “Got him in the neck, I s’pose,” said Jake, “worse luck.”