Major Falkins stood by, coaching the three swimmers as a trainer coaches his jockey when the saddling bugle sounds in the paddock. "Watch the rope," commanded the major briefly. "Swim in single file, and not too close together." He turned to Newt, who happened to be standing nearest him. "It's going to be mean work, Spooner," he said in a low voice; "I hate to order it." Corporal Spooner saluted, but his eyes narrowed and glittered with a light venomously serpent-like. "I reckon," he said in a guardedly low voice, which only the major heard, "you'd like to see me peg out, wouldn't you? But I ain't goin' to do it. I'm goin' to live long enough to finish a job I've got to attend to yet. I reckon you know what it is." Then he slipped without a splash into the water, for he was to lead the little procession. The major raised his hand in signal, and the spattering roar became a solid thunder. Rapid-fire guns, mortar and Krags played on the earth-works. Every Shirt-tailer was sighting as though for a sharp-shooter's medal--carefully, deliberately. A scathe of lead raked the trench tops, under which every brown head went down and stayed cautiously invisible. With strong, sure strokes the three naked men shot out into the stream and past its center--seemingly unobserved. It began to look as though they would gain the other side unseen by the enemy. But suddenly, from the loop-holed section, came spiteful little squirts of fire. Against that fire only the mortar could cope--and the mortar had turned its attention elsewhere. Tiny geysers kicked themselves up where the Mauser bullets struck and skipped on the water. The roar from the Shirt-tailers rose in louder indignation, and the crew serving the mortar was feverishly refinding the range. A few more strokes, and the three men fighting the current would be safe in the lee of the steep bank--but the little geysers were multiplying. The third man suddenly turned his face backward over his shoulder, and shook his head. He raised a hand as one who waves farewell at a railroad station, and went down. Corporal Spooner and the other man were reaching out to grasp the projecting roots that fringed the opposite shore, but, as the second man crawled up on the bank, there appeared on his naked flesh a constantly spreading splotch of crimson. Corporal Spooner paused to drag him under cover, then proceeded to tie the rope and--safe, because of his very proximity--sat down, panting, to wait. CHAPTER XX