Among the stock situations of the melodrama, one of the most worked to death is that of the beleaguered garrison at the last gasp, and the thrilling arrival of the rescuing force at the critical moment. It is so old and threadbare now that probably no theater would dare stage it; but in the war the same situation has been played again and again in the swaying and straining lines of battle in every variety of large and small scale. What the theater has rejected as too theatrical, the artificial as too artificial, the real has accepted as so much a commonplace that it is hardly remarked. Actually the battle line is one long series of critical situations on one side or the other, the timely arrival, or failure to arrive, of assistance at the critical moment. The great difference is that in the theater the rescue never fails to arrive, in war it often does. Certainly the Stonewalls were as near the last gasp as ever dramatist would dare bring his crisis; but when their rescue came they were too busy helping it, too busy pushing the Germans back into what they hoped would be a similar unpleasant situation (without the timely rescue) to bother about it being a “dramatic situation” at all. The Scot and the three Stonewalls shooting from the shell crater a little in front of the thin and scattered line were close enough to the front groups of the advancing German line to distinguish the features of the men’s faces, when they were suddenly aware that the groups were going down: were vanishing from before their eyes, that the charging line came no nearer, that its front, if anything, receded. The front lines were being cut down now faster than they could advance, and the lines which fell dropped out of the low vision line of the defenders, and were hidden in the low-hanging smoke haze and in the welter of shell-pits, furrows, and heaps of earth over which the advance moved. The sound of the rifle fire swelled suddenly and heavily; the air grew vibrant with the hiss and zipp of bullets. The four in the shell pit continued to give all their attention to rapid shooting until the sound of running footsteps and shouting voices made them turn. All along the line to right and left of them they could see figures running forward in short rushes, halting to fire, running on again, dropping into holes and opening a rapid fire from their cover. Into the pit beside the four tumbled three men one after another, panting and blowing, but shouting and laughing. “Cheer oh, mates,” called one. “Give us a bit o’ room on the front edge there, will you?” Each of the three carried some burden. They clustered closely together a moment, but with a delay of no more than seconds stood up and began to hoist into position on the pit’s edge a light machine gun. “Let ’er rip, Bill,” said one, who wore the tunic of an officer; and Bill, crouching behind his gun, started to “let ’er rip” in a stream of fire jets and clattering reports.