And another laugh followed, but it was cut short by a shell which tore through the air only a little above the heads of the men, and exploded not a hundred feet behind the last line. It was immediately followed by a second that landed about the same distance from the front of the first line and ricocheted, turning and twisting, then lying still--not ten steps ahead of the line. There was a little squirming, and two fellows were obliged to step almost over the menacing thing. Pulling down their steel helmets and lowering their heads, they veered apart, while some arms went up in front of faces and eyes. But the shell proved a “dud.” Had it exploded it would doubtless have sent half a dozen boys to the graveyard and the hospital. “One back and one front and the next one--” “A clean miss!” shouted Clem. The words were no more than said when his prediction came true. The shell went high and wide. But that which immediately followed was of a far more deadly character than shells. Shrapnel and whiz-bangs could not cover the ground, but it seemed as though the rain of machine-gun bullets that suddenly swept down from the thickets and rocks of the great hillside which loomed ahead must reach every inch of space. “Double quick! Charge!” came the order, echoed from mouth to mouth by under-officers and still, like one man, that khaki-clad host went at it on the run. Every man saw that the more quickly the work was done the better chances he and his fellows had for surviving that leaden hail. “Smash ’em! Tear ’em to pieces!” Clem found himself yelling again and again and he heard similar shouts on all sides of him. “Give ’em ballyhoo!” howled young Giddings. And they did--if that expresses something like annihilation! Before the Huns could do more than fire a round or two from a score of well-placed machine-guns on the hillside the marines, like waves of avenging devils, were upon them with a fury that those long-practised death-dealers of the Fatherland had not before experienced and totally unprepared for. They were used to seeing their accurate shooting from such an array of fire-spitters stop their enemies and drive them back but no such result was in evidence now.