Part 11 (1/2)

The French infantry were in terrible earnest, and out to kill. They had old scores to wipe off, and at the outset nothing could stay them.

Figures in blue grey and figures in greeny grey wrestled and fought in the drifting smoke, and what with the hideous gas helmets and their huge goggles, and the mediaeval-looking trench helmets, Dennis seemed to have suddenly found himself in the company of weird demons from some other world.

Men stabbed and hewed and hacked at each other. Others, gripped in tight embrace, were seen revolving in a species of grim waltz, until a chance bullet or a piece of sh.e.l.l ended the dance of death.

The wounded squeezed themselves against the boarded sides, the dead lay where they fell, and the living took no notice of either. If there was any shouting the guns drowned it, and the l.u.s.t of slaughter was in every face.

”I do not think there will be any poison gas,” shouted the Alsatian corporal, whose name was Aristide Puzzeau. ”The wind is in the wrong quarter, but you never know what these Boches are up to.”

He handed him a gas helmet, which he took from a dead comrade, and without waiting for any thanks, Corporal Puzzeau pursued his way.

Dug-out after dug-out he bombed, and when his supply was exhausted he unslung his rifle with its long, thin bayonet, Dennis following upon his heels.

The barrage fire, playing a couple of hundred yards in rear of the German parados, effectually kept the enemy's supports in check, and Dennis wisely possessed himself of a steel helmet, for the shrapnel had a habit of raining down on friend and foe alike, but after they had gone some distance in a northerly direction, they found that the enemy had recovered from the first surprise, and a strong counter-attack was forcing a company of poilus back.

At first it was difficult to find where the enemy sprang from, until Puzzeau located the mouth of a subterranean dug-out from which they poured in rushes, and, crouching down, he waited at one side of the opening like a terrier at a rat-hole, Dennis standing beside him with a revolver in his hand.

”Wait, do you hear that?” said Puzzeau. ”There are plenty more of them inside,” and they waited.

”Good morning, my pig!” said Puzzeau, lunging forward, and the sergeant reeled against the trench boards.

Almost before he could recover his weapon the opening was filled with a surge of men, and Dennis emptied a revolver into the middle of them.

”That is the style!” grunted the corporal approvingly, as a dull shout boomed from the dug-out and those behind paused. ”If there were only half a dozen of us here now, or, better still, a bomb-thrower,” and, lifting up his powerful voice, he bellowed to a man he knew: ”Rabot, surely there are some bombs left?”

”That is all very well,” replied Rabot. ”I have been sent myself for reinforcements. Do you know every officer of our company is down, and the men are falling back?”

”There is something yonder that will serve our purpose,” cried Dennis, pointing to an ugly grey muzzle behind an iron loophole on the parados.

It was almost opposite to the door of the dug-out, and before the Alsatian knew what he was doing, Dennis had scrambled up to the machine-gun emplacement and vanished. The next moment his head appeared round one side of it.

”Stand clear!” he yelled, waving with his arm, and vanished again.

”Who is that?” inquired Rabot. ”He looks English and speaks French like Monsieur le President.”

”You will hear him speak German out of that gun in a moment,” laughed the corporal. ”_Voila!_ there she goes. And to think we were going to shoot that boy less than an hour ago!”

Dennis, who had qualified as a machine-gun officer, had indeed lighted upon a piece of great good fortune, for under the gun he found three Germans recently bayoneted and the cartridge-jacket in position. He had only to depress the muzzle to send a stream of bullets straight into the mouth of the dug-out.

The stream ceased in a moment, and they saw him beckoning to them.

”Look yonder!” he cried, as the corporal and Rabot joined him. ”The rabbits will not bolt again if we can leave someone here, but the company is in difficulties, and we are wanted. Can you take charge, _mon garcon_? See, the mechanism is quite simple; it works like this,” and he loosed half a dozen rounds by way of ill.u.s.tration.

”Stay here and do as the lieutenant has shown you if they show their noses again,” said the corporal, and Rabot took his post at the machine-gun.

The French soldier is intelligent because he has imagination, and Rabot understood. Corporal Puzzeau understood also, and his eyes danced as Dennis bounded along the top of the parados towards the retreating company.

They were bunched up in the trench, and some of them were even scrambling out over the other side, when that slim brown figure in the uniform of their British Allies with one of their own helmets on his head, and the corporal behind him, appeared above them.