The other two dropped at the same moment, Dennis smothering a groan as his head seemed to open and shut from the jar. "It'll save time, sir, if you'll carry my pack," said Harry Hawke, with a backward glance at the brewery. "Make a chair, Tid, and look slippy"; and before he quite knew what was happening the two privates had joined hands, and Bob Dashwood was being carried forward at a run across that deadly No Man's Land. "First stop, British trench, Tiddler!" sang out the irrepressible Hawke, as they blundered along the side of a crater. "We'd given you up as a bad job, sir. Lord! You ought to see A Company. Don't believe there's more than thirty of us left." And a strain of gloomy seriousness vibrated in the speaker's voice. "Yes, I know," said Captain Bob savagely, adding sharply, "Bear away to the left here." "Beg pardon, sir, but that's our trench yonder," expostulated his bearers. "Quite so," said Bob Dashwood. "But do you hear that?" Under the perpetual thunder of the guns a sudden low roar came out of the darkness at right angles to the trench for which they had been making--the eager clamouring of hoarse voices, and many of them. "That's the Australian Division on its way to storm that infernal brewery, and we must stop them at any cost." "Lumme! They'll want a bit of stopping," muttered Tiddler through his nose. "They're more likely to stop us. Them Anzac blokes don't let much grass grow in front of their bayonets." "Dennis," sang out the Captain, "get on ahead and see what you can do with them; and you, lads, put me down and go forward with my brother. I'm only an incubus." "No, sir," replied Harry Hawke firmly. "You ain't no nincompoop. It's only an orficer's voice those chaps will listen to. We'll carry you right enough." The trench from which the Australian Division was advancing branched off northward, and as Dennis sprinted forward to meet them he could make out the first rush tearing across the broken ground, yelling like fiends. Still running, he shrilled out the order to halt on his whistle again and again, without result, and then as a hand gripped his throat, he felt the cold barrel of a revolver clapped to his throbbing forehead, and an angry voice with a colonial twang in it cried, "Who are you, blowing calls on our front? Is this another German wheeze?" "I am an officer of the Reedshires, and we've had it badly!" shouted Dennis, as he clutched his opponent in his turn. "We're pretty well wiped out, but it's nothing to what you'll get if you don't stop your men. That building you're making for is mined. The moment you reach it they'll blow the whole show sky high." "Nonsense, you're pulling my leg," said the voice incredulously. "Don't you know we're making history?" "History be blowed! You're making fools of yourselves!" cried the lad. "Loose my throat, or I'll let you have it!"