"Platoons One and Two, line the edge of that crater on your front, and hold your fire until they reach the water. Three and Four, form up at the hedge here, and if a man of you touches a trigger until he gets the word I'll give him four days' field punishment." Then he added, "Go to your own platoon, Dennis, and keep your eye on me. As soon as the beggars have felt our fire we'll try the cold steel on them." As Dennis reached his men the Bavarians were already entering the water, which took them to the waist, and the two platoons delivered a burst of rapid fire as Bob had ordered. The result was appalling, and for an instant the Bavarians seemed to waver, but those behind urged the rest on, and they came splashing through the brook, whose course was choked and reddened by at least a couple of hundred dead and wounded. It seemed an age before the other platoons at the hedgerow fired, but the welcome crash of their volley suddenly rang out, followed by a shrill blast on Bob's whistle. "That's 'Cease fire,'" said Hawke; "and there goes the 'Charge.'" "A Company, make ready!--go!" yelled their Company Commander, and he might very well have said "Come," for he was the first off the mark, and with a yell of wild delight, out of the crater, through the hedge, and across the half-dozen strides that divided them from the determined enemy, went the eager lads after their leader. Dennis was conscious of a feeling of uncertainty as he raced forward, for he had not seen two things that had caught his brother's eye. One was a row of Kilmarnock bonnets bobbing up over a communication trench a hundred yards away on the left flank of the company, and the other, three little brown dots at the corner of a wrecked barn considerably in advance of their right--little brown dots very busy about a Lewis gun. If A Company could only succeed in holding back the advancing line for eighty seconds, their leader knew what would happen, and it was worth the effort. Bob Dashwood's speciality was bayonet fighting, and every man of his command was a past-master in the art. Brother officers had smiled indulgently at the Captain's enthusiasm for inter-company contests in that war of trench and dug-out, but Bob Dashwood had persisted on every possible opportunity, and it would be hard now if he did not reap his reward. With a clash, Lee-Enfield and Mauser met on the bank of the stream, and Bob Dashwood scored first blood with the cold steel. Three Bavarians went down before him with lightning rapidity, and as a fourth fired at the Captain from the hip and missed him, the Company Sergeant-Major was on him like a knife. "Let 'em have it, boys!" shouted Bob, and as a voice replied, "Look to yourself, sir, we're all right," the foremost rank of the enemy was hurled into the water, through which the khaki lads splashed to the opposite bank.