Two days later his company had orders to hold the trenches before a jungle filled with sharpshooters. All day the sun had blazed down upon them and the humid atmosphere had scalded them. All day the murderous "ping! ping!" of the hidden Mauser in the jungle had stung the air about them. Late in the afternoon Thaine lay crouched behind his low defense with a college comrade on either side. Colonel Funston had just given the command to rid the woods of the sharpshooters, and the force ordered to the attack came racing by. Captain Clarke stood near Thaine's post, and as the soldiers rushed forward, Lieutenant Alford halted beside him. Even in the thrill of the hour, the private down in the trenches felt a sense of bigger manhood as he looked at the young officer, for Alford was every inch a king; his soldier uniform became him like a robe of royalty. His fine face was aglow now with the enthusiasm of the battle and the assurance of victory. Thaine did not hear the words of the two officers, for the jungle was beginning to roar with battle cries and bursting fire from many guns. But he knew the two had been boyhood friends, university chums, and military comrades, and the love of man for man shone in their faces. Alford tarried but a moment with Clarke. As he spied Thaine and his comrades, he gave an instant's glance of kindly recognition to the admiring young privates, and was gone. The three involuntarily rose to their feet, as if to follow him, and from three lusty throats they sent after him the beloved battle yell of the regiment, "Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K. U.!" then dropped to their places again and hugged the earth as the rifle balls whizzed about them. "I'm glad I'm alive and I'm glad I know that man," Thaine said to his neighbors. "Alford's a prince. I'll bet he'll clean that woods before he's through. His work is always well done. Would you listen to that?" his comrade replied. A tremendous crash of rifle shots seemed to split the jungle as the Kansas troops charged into it. The men in the trenches lay flat to the earth while the balls fell about them or sang a long whining note through the air over them. Fiercer grew the fray, and louder roared the guns, and wilder the bullets flew, as the fighting lines swept over the enemy's earthworks and struck with deadly force into the heart of its wooded cover. Then came a lull for shifting the fighting grip. A relief force was hurried to the front and the first companies retired for a brief rest. They fell back in order, while the aids came trooping out of the brush in groups, bearing the wounded to places of shelter. Thaine Aydelot and his comrades lifted their heads above the earthworks for an instant. Captain Clarke sat near on a little knoll staring hard at a stretcher borne toward him by the aids. The manner of covering indicated a dead body on it.