He looked at the solid, desperate mass, and then at the thin, struggling French line feeling its way cautiously forward; and a daring resolve came to him as the drums began to roll and he heard the command "Vorwaerts!" Safe from observation in the ruined hovel, he unslung the festoon of racket bombs, and with all the power of his strong young arm hurled them one after another over the top of the wall among the advancing Germans. Through the aperture where the window had been he marked the effect of the explosions. Officers brandished their swords, but the unexpectedness of the bomb attack produced panic in the broken ranks, which lost their formation and retired precipitately into the cover of the trees. But something closer at hand gave Dennis furiously to think! Led by an officer, half a dozen men ran pluckily forward towards the hovel, but Dennis did not wait for their arrival. Already he was bolting for his life for the shelter of a big shell crater, where he meant to strip off his hated disguise and let the uniform of a British officer act as a passport to the rapidly advancing French. As he reached the lip of the huge hole his laugh of triumph died away, for before he could check himself he had slid down among the remnants of No. 6 Company, huddled together, leaderless, demoralised. At the same moment a shell burst on the other side of the crater, flinging an iron rain into the already terrified mob, and half burying a man who had been descending into the pit. It was the ferret-faced captain who picked himself up, white as a sheet of paper, and then gave a guttural cry of surprise. Drawing his revolver he strode forward and stopped in front of Dennis, covering him with the weapon. "I am looking for you, Carl Heft," he laughed hoarsely. "Possibly you know why they want you at headquarters!" No one knew exactly how it came about, but there was a sharp report, the captain staggered back and fell, shot through the heart; and "Carl Heft" stood like some avenging spirit, looking down at him, with the smoking Webley in his hand. "Kamerads!" he cried to the throng, "there lies the cause of half our troubles! That beast would have driven us on again while he slunk in the rear. Look at this!" And he pointed to the man who had already been wounded five times. A fragment of the shell had just carried away his right hand. "The game is up; we have the right to choose whether we die like sheep, or live to rejoin our families. You can do as you like, but I am going to surrender. I have had enough!" Very erect, he swung round and began to walk up the side of the crater in the direction of the French, and fifty voices cried: "He is right; we have all had enough!" And they sprang forward in his wake, every man with his hands raised above his head.