Soon after Kentucky rejoined them the Stonewalls were moved forward a little clear of the village they had helped to take, just as one or two heavy shells whooped over from the German guns and dropped crashing on the ground that had been theirs. The men were spread out along shell holes and told to dig in for better cover because a bit of a redoubt on the left flank hadn’t been taken and bullets were falling in enfilade from it.

“Dig, you cripples,” said the sergeant, “dig in. Can’t you see that if they counter-attack from the front now you’ll get shot in the back while you’re lining the front edge of those shell holes. Get to it there, you Pug.”

“Shot in the back, linin’ the front,” said Pug as the sergeant passed on. “Is it a conundrum, Kentuck?”

“Sounds sort of mixed,” admitted Kentucky. “But it’s tainted some with the truth. That redoubt230 is half rear to us. If another lot comes at us in front and we get up on the front edge of this shell hole, there’s nothing to stop the redoubt bullets hitting us in the back. Look at that,” he concluded, nodding upward to where a bullet had smacked noisily into the mud above their heads as they squatted in the hole.

The two commenced wearily to cut out with their trenching tools a couple of niches in the sides of the crater which would give them protection from the flank and rear bullets. They made reasonably secure cover and then stayed to watch a hurricane bombardment that was developing on the redoubt. “Goo on the guns,” said Pug joyfully. “That’s the talk; smack ’em about.”

The gunners “smacked ’em about” with fifteen savage minutes’ deluge of light and heavy shells, blotting out the redoubt in a whirlwind of fire-flashes, belching smoke clouds and dust haze. Then suddenly the tempest ceased to play there, lifted and shifted and fell roaring in a wall of fire and steel beyond the low slope which the redoubt crowned.

With past knowledge of what the lift and the further barrage meant the two men in the shell-231pit turned and craned their necks and looked out along the line.

“There they go,” said Pug suddenly, and “Attacking round a half-circle,” said Kentucky. The British line was curved in a horse-shoe shape about the redoubt and the two being out near one of the points could look back and watch clearly the infantry attack launching from the center and half-way round the sides of the horse-shoe. They saw the khaki figures running heavily, scrambling round and through the scattered shell holes, and presently, as a crackle of rifle fire rose and rose and swelled to a sullen roar with the quick, rhythmic clatter of machine guns beating through it, they saw also the figures stumbling and falling, the line thinning and shredding out and wasting away under the withering fire.

The sergeant dodged along the pit-edge above them. “Covering fire,” he shouted, “at four hundred—slam it in,” and disappeared. The two opened fire, aiming at the crest of the slope and beyond the tangle of barbed wire which alone indicated the position of the redoubt.

They only ceased to fire when they saw the advanced fringe of the line, of a line by now woefully thinned and weakened, come to the edge of232 the barbed wire and try to force a way through it.

“They’re beat,” gasped Pug. “They’re done in ...” and cursed long and bitterly, fingering nervously at his rifle the while. “Time we rung in again,” said Kentucky. “Aim steady and pitch ’em well clear of the wire.” The two opened careful fire again while the broken remnants of the attacking line ran and hobbled and crawled back or into the cover of shell holes. A second wave flooded out in a new assault, but by now the German artillery joining in helped it and the new line was cut down, broken and beaten back before it had covered half the distance to the entanglements. Kentucky and Pug and others of the Stonewalls near them could only curse helplessly as they watched the tragedy and plied their rifles in a slender hope of some of their bullets finding those unseen loopholes and embrasures.

“An’ wot’s the next item o’ the program, I wonder?” said Pug half an hour after the last attack had failed, half an hour filled with a little shooting, a good deal of listening to the pipe and whistle of overhead bullets and the rolling thunder of the guns, a watching of the shells falling and spouting earth and smoke on the defiant redoubt.

“Reinforcements and another butt-in at it, I233 expect,” surmised Kentucky. “Don’t see anything else for it. Looks like this pimple-on-the-map of a redoubt was holdin’ up any advance on this front. Anyhow I’m not hankering to go pushin’ on with that redoubt bunch shootin’ holes in my back, which they’d surely do.”

“Wot’s all the buzz about be’ind us?” said Pug suddenly, raising himself for a quick look over the covering edge of earth behind him, and in the act of dropping again stopped and stared with raised eyebrows and gaping mouth.

“What is it?” said Kentucky quickly, and also rose, and also stayed risen and staring in amazement. Towards them, lumbering and rolling, dipping heavily into the shell holes, heaving clumsily out of them, moving with a motion something between that of a half-sunken ship and a hamstrung toad, striped and banded and splashed from head to foot, or, if you prefer it, from fo’c’sl-head to cutwater, with splashes of lurid color, came His Majesty’s Land Ship “Here We Are.”

“Gor-strewth!” ejaculated Pug. “Wha-what is it?”

Kentucky only gasped.

“’Ere,” said Pug hurriedly, “let’s gerrout o’234 this. It’s comin’ over atop of us,” and he commenced to scramble clear.

But a light of understanding was dawning on Kentucky’s face and a wide grin growing on his lips. “It’s one of the Tanks,” he said, and giggled aloud as the Here We Are dipped her nose and slid head first into a huge shell crater in ludicrous likeness to a squat bull-pup sitting back on its haunches and dragged into a hole: “I’ve heard lots about ’em, but the seein’ beats all the hearin’ by whole streets,” and he and Pug laughed aloud together as the Here We Are’s face and gun-port eyes and bent-elbow driving gear appeared above the crater rim in still more ridiculous resemblance to an amazed toad emerging from a rain-barrel. The creature lumbered past them, taking in its stride the narrow trench dug to link up the shell holes, and the laughter on Kentucky’s lips died to thoughtfully serious lines as his eye caught the glint of fat, vicious-looking gun muzzles peering from their ports.

“Haw haw haw,” guffawed Pug as the monster lurched drunkenly, checked and steadied itself with one foot poised over a deep hole, halted and backed away, and edged nervously round the rim of the hole. “See them machine guns pokin’ out,235 Kentucky,” he continued delightedly. “They won’t ’arf pepper them Huns when they gets near enough.”

Fifty yards in the wake of the Here We Are a line of men followed up until an officer halted them along the front line where Pug and Kentucky were posted.

“You blokes just takin’ ’im out for an airin’?” Pug asked one of the newcomers. “Oughtn’t you to ’ave ’im on a leadin’ string?”

“Here we are, Here we are again,” chanted the other and giggled spasmodically. “An’ ain’t he just hot stuff! But wait till you see ’im get to work with his sprinklers.”

“Does ’e bite?” asked Pug, grinning joyously. “Oughtn’t you to ’ave ’is muzzle on?”

“Bite,” retorted another. “He’s a bloomin’ Hun-eater. Jes’ gulps ’em whole, coal-scuttle ’ats an’ all.”

“He’s a taed,” said another. “A lollopin, flat-nosed, splay-fittit, ugly puddock, wi’s hin’ legs stuck oot whaur his front should be.”

“Look at ’im, oh look at ’im ... he’s alive, lad, nobbut alive.” ... “Does every bloomin’ thing but talk.” ... “Skatin’ he is now, skatin’236 on ’is off hind leg,” came a chorus of delighted comment.

“Is he goin’ to waltz in and take that redoubt on his ownsum?” asked Kentucky. “No,” some one told him. “We give him ten minutes’ start and then follow on and pick up the pieces, and the prisoners.”

They lay there laughing and joking and watching the uncouth antics ............