He had been worrying about his supply of rifle cartridges. There were not enough to take care of another German infantry charge which was surely coming. After repelling two charges, think of failing to repel the third for want of ammunition! Think of Corporal Christy, the bear-hunter, with the Germans thick in front of him and no bullets for his rifle! But appeared again Mr. Thomas Atkins--another platoon of him with twenty boxes of cartridges which were rather a risky burden to bring through the shell fire. The relief as these were distributed was that of having something at your throat which threatens to strangle you removed. Making another tour of his trenches about four in the afternoon, Niven found that there was a gap of fifty yards between his left and the right of the adjoining regiment. Fifty yards is the inch on the end of a man’s nose in trench warfare on such an occasion. He was able to place eight men in that gap. At least, they could keep a lookout and tell him what was going on. It was not cheering news either to learn a little later that the regiments on his left had withdrawn to trenches about three hundred yards to the rear--a long distance in trench warfare. But the P. P’s had no time for retirement. They could have gone only in the panic of men who think of nothing in their demoralisation except to flee from the danger in front without thinking that there may be more danger to the rear. They were held where they were under what cover they had by the renewed blasts of shells--putting the machine guns out of action again--which suddenly ceased; for the Germans were coming on again. Now was the supreme effort. It was as a nightmare in which only the objective of effort is recalled and all else is a vague struggle of all the strength one can exert against smothering odds. No use to ask these men what they thought. What do you think when you are climbing up a rope whose strands are breaking over the edge of a precipice? You climb--that is all. The P. P’s shot at Germans. After a night without sleep, after a day among their dead and wounded, after the torrents of shell-fire, after breathing smoke, dust and gas, these veterans were in a state of exaltation entirely unconscious of dangers of their surroundings, mindless of what came next, automatically shooting to kill as they were trained to do, even as a man pulls with every ounce of strength he has in him in a close finish of a boat race. Corporal Dover had to give up firing his machine gun at last. Wounded, he had dug it out of the earth after an explosion and set it up again. The explosion that destroyed the gun finally crushed his leg and arm. He crawled out of the _débris_ towards the support trench which had become the fire trench, only to be killed by a bullet.