There were shots from behind him; apparently there had been a lot of Frenchmen hidden in these woods, and the enemy was not finding it easy to advance. Jimmie's companion jumped up and ran again, and Jimmie followed, and a hundred yards or so back they came to a shell-hole with half a dozen poilus in it. Jimmy tumbled in, and the men chattered at him, and gave him more cartridges, so that when the Germans appeared again he did his part. A bullet took a lump of hair off his temple, and shrapnel exploding near by almost split his ear-drums; but still he went on shooting. His heart was really in the job now, he was going to stop these Bosh or bust. With five Frenchmen, two of them wounded, he held the shell-hole for an hour; one of them ran back and staggered up with a supply of ammunition, and loaded up a rifle for Jimmie, and laid it so that he could manage it with one hand. So Jimmie went on shooting, half-dead, half-blind, half-choked with powder smoke. The sockray Bosh made another charge, and this was the end, every man in the shell-hole knew. There were literally swarms of the grey figures, their bullets came like a shower of hail. Jimmie decided to wait till the enemy was near enough for him to aim the revolver with effect. He crouched, watching a Frenchman with the life-blood oozing out of a hole in his chest; then he raised up and emptied his automatic, and still there were Germans rushing on. Jimmie was so very tired now, he really did not care very much what happened; he knelt in the hole, looking up, and suddenly he saw the huge figure of a German looming above him, his rifle poised. Jimmie closed his eyes and waited for the blow, and suddenly the German came down with a crash on top of him. Jimmie thought for sure he must be dead; he lay wondering, was this immortality? But it did not seem like either heaven or hell as he had imagined them, and gradually he realized that the German was writhing and moaning. Jimmie wriggled from under, and looked up, just in time to see another German loom over the shell-hole and pitch forward and hit on his face. It was evident that somebody farther back was attending to these Germans; so Jimmie lay still, with a feeble flicker of hope in his heart. The rattle of shots went on, a battle that lasted ten or fifteen minutes, but Jimmie was too tired to peer out and see how matters were going. Presently he heard someone running up behind him, and he looked around and up, and saw two men jump into the shell-hole. He took one glance, and his heart leaped. The doughboys! VIII