Tommaso staggered to the breastworks and stood one man against an army cheering and calling his charge to the field of the dead. The enemy rose in the trenches and cheered the lone figure silhouetted against the darkened heavens until he sank at last exhausted from the loss of blood. CHAPTER XXXII Our observers in a captive balloon had made out before sunrise the massing of machine guns in front. They were still coming on in endless procession of swirling auto-transports that lifted clouds of white dust that swept toward our lines in billows so dense at times the field was obscured. Hood decided to close in on those guns before they could be assembled and mounted. With a savage yell a brigade of regulars led the charge, followed by ten thousand picked men. Pressing forward before a dust cloud the regulars penetrated within a hundred yards of the enemy’s lines before they were discovered. The rush with which they crossed the space was resistless. The splutter of pompoms filled the air and half the line went down. The remaining half reached the first crews. Hand to hand now and man to man they fought like demons--bayonets, revolvers, clubs, fists and stones! Friend and foe mingled in a mad holocaust of death. While still they fought, the second line of our charging men reached the spot and joined the fray. Twenty machine guns had been captured and turned on their foes. An ominous quiet behind the scene of this bloody combat followed the first roar of the clash. The commander of the invaders, seeing that he had lost some guns, instantly drew back his lines and reformed them fan-shaped with each gun bearing on the breach. A tornado of whistling lead suddenly burst on the mass of our victorious troops. Five hundred machine guns had been concentrated with a speed that was stunning. Our men dropped in platoons. They swayed and rallied and once more faced the foe for a second charge. Machine guns seemed to rise from the earth. They were fighting five regiments of men all armed with them. The commander of our charging division tried in vain to rally. In thirty minutes there was nothing to rally. They lay in ghastly moaning heaps while whistling bullets sang their requiem in an endless crackle that came like the popping of straw before the roar of flames in a burning meadow. Whole regiments were literally wiped out with every officer and every man left torn and mangled on the field. The reserves in the trenches saw the hideous butchery in helpless fury. No moving thing could live within the radius of those guns. When the last man had fallen, the spluttering pompoms died away and a green billow of smoke began to roll toward our lines. It swept on in a steady, even wave three miles long. The wind was carrying the cloud straight across the trenches in which our men crouched to receive the charge they expected to follow our failure.