The question wouldn't let him asleep. Lambert, Wandel, and Squibs between them had made him for the first time in his life thoroughly, uncomfortably, abominably afraid--physically afraid--afraid of being killed. For all at once there was more than Sylvia to make him want to live. He didn't see how he could die without knowing what the deuce he was fighting this man's war for, anyway. XI He hadn't learned any more about it when Lambert and he were caught on the same afternoon a week later. In the interminable, haggard thicket the attack had abruptly halted. Word reached George that Lambert's company was falling back. To him that was beyond belief if Lambert was still with his men. He hurried forward before regimental headquarters had had a chance to open its distant mouth. There were machine-gun nests ahead, foolish stragglers told him. Of course. Those were what he had ordered Lambert to take. The company was disorganized. Little groups slunk back, dragging their rifles as if they were too heavy. Others squatted in the underbrush, waiting apparently for some valuable advice. George found the senior lieutenant, crouched behind a fallen log, getting the company in hand again through runners. "Where's Captain Planter?" The lieutenant nodded carelessly ahead. "Hundred yards or so out there. He ran the show too much himself," he complained. "Bunch of Jerries jumped out of the thicket and threw potato mashers, then crawled back to the guns. When the captain went down the men near him broke. Sort of thing spreads like a pestilence." "Dead?" George asked. "Don't know. Potato mashers!" "Why haven't you found out?" George asked, irritably. The complaining note increased in the other's voice. "He's at the foot of that tree. Hear those guns? They're just zipping a few while they wait for someone to get to him." "Pull your company together," George said with an absurd feeling that he spoke to Mrs. Planter. "I'll go along and see that we get him and those nests. They're spoiling the entire afternoon." The lieutenant glanced at him, startled. "I can do it----" "You haven't," George reminded him. He despatched runners to the flank companies and to regimental headquarters announcing that he was moving ahead. When the battalion advanced, like a lot of fairly clever Indians, he was in the van, making straight for the tree. He had a queer idea that Mrs. Planter quietly searched in the underbrush ahead of him. The machine guns, which had been trickling, gushed. "You're hit, sir," the lieutenant said.