"How d'you like it?" Philip shouted at him, for the rattle of rifles drowned the ordinary voice. "I hope they won't keep us out here very long, for those Turkish soldiers are fairly good marksmen, and it is hard luck for men to be shot whilst lying here and doing nothing. Looks as though we were going to charge the trenches." "That's the order," Geoff told him. "We're near enough already, and if you look towards the enemy's position you'll see that some of them are already retiring." A glance over the figures of his men showed Phil indeed numbers of Turks crawling from their trenches and fleeing across country. Farther back a team of battery horses swung in behind a gun position, and, raising his glasses, Geoff watched as the gunners endeavoured to hitch the team to their weapon and pull it out of its dug-out. But it was an operation they never accomplished, for a shell sailing over the position spluttered shrapnel in all directions, putting the better part of the team out of action and scattering the gunners. "Charge!" Whistles shrieked down the line. Officers sprang to the front of their companies, while British and Indians, helmeted and turbaned figures, leapt to their feet, and, with bayonets advanced, dashed across the space which intervened between themselves and the enemy positions. Hoarse guttural shouts left the throats of those British warriors who had come to Mesopotamia, while the higher-pitched cheers of the Indians mingled with them; and then, reserving their breath for the assault, heedless of the bullets which picked out numbers of them, and caused men to roll and bowl over, and which laid them out stark and stiff on the desert, the men went on in silence--that British silence, that dour, cold, remorseless calm which before now on many a field has scared the enemies of Great Britain. But it only lasted a few moments, until, in fact, the Turkish trenches were reached, and the men were in amongst the enemy. Yes, in amongst the enemy, for the Turks, to do them justice, had not all of them deserted their position. Many clung to their trenches with reckless bravery, and now crossed bayonets with men of the Expeditionary Force, with reeling, shouting men from the good County of Dorset, with tall, lithe, dusky sons of the race of Mahrattas, with sweltering, cursing white men, with dusky subjects of the King-Emperor who leapt at their enemies with the swift bound of a tiger. There was the crash of steel, the rattle and thud of rifle-butt coming against rifle-butt; there were yells and screams; there was the dull ugly sound of the bayonet-point as it struck some metal object--perhaps a button--and, sheering from it, went silently through its victim. There were the groans of bayoneted Turks; there was the cough of men whose chests had been transfixed, and whose lungs were flooded with blood.