A wave of thrilling enthusiasm swept over Private Setley. The chance of actually doing something, of getting clear of the imprisoning walls of slimy mire and coming to grips with the Hun had come. The studiously polite and law-abiding bank-clerk was transformed into a fighting Tommy. The lust of primeval combat was upon him. He saw red. Of what happened during the next two minutes Setley had but a faint and hazy notion. Bombs hurled by the retreating Huns fell around him. Once the blast from an exploding missile lifted his steel helmet from his head. He remembered putting it straight with his left hand and noticing that the fingers were covered with a dark, moist, warm fluid. A man, keeping pace with him, suddenly dropped his rifle and fell on his face. Setley leapt over the slightly inclined bayonet and held on, the desire to stop and assist a fallen comrade being hardly existent. For the time being his sole desire was to overtake one of those field-grey forms showing dimly through the smoke. The enemy first-line trenches at last--and the Huns were making a stand. A machine-gun, one of many, was pumping out nickel almost on Setley's immediate front. Hostile bombers were redoubling their efforts. In cold blood the lad would have thought twice, perhaps many times, before facing that deadly menace, but carried away in the mad rush he pressed forward, scarce noticing the weight of his rifle and bayonet. A severed, coiled strand of barbed wire caught the puttee of his left foot. With a vicious jerk he freed himself from the encumbrance, leaving half a yard of mud-plastered cloth upon the sharp barb. Two yards in front of him was a burly German bomber with a bomb poised ready to hurl. Regardless of the fact that the explosion of the missile would to an almost certainty annihilate him, the Hun threw the bomb. Setley caught it on the flat blade of his bayonet and threw it aside, where it burst ten yards to the right under a tall, bearded Prussian. The next instant the thrower received six inches of cold steel right in the centre of his chest. Setley had made a mistake. It was a matter of considerable difficulty to withdraw the blade. He remembered too late the warning of the drill-instructors--when delivering a body thrust aim below the ribs. Before he could disengage the steel another German commenced a furious blow with the butt-end of his rifle. In the midst of the swing of the weapon a shot rang out within a few inches of Setley's ear, and the Hun, with a curious look of surprise on his sullen features, staggered forward. The descending rifle-butt struck Setley's helmet a glancing blow and, missing his left shoulder, sank deeply into the mud. "So much for Buckingham: off with his head," yelled Alderhame, as he ejected the still smoking cartridge-case from the breach of his rifle. "How's that, my festive?"