Slowly, painfully, Angus crawled on, until he found himself within the right angle formed by the corner of the yard.  He could go no further without being seen.  Between him and the German gun lay the cobbled surface of the street, offering no cover whatsoever except one mighty shell-crater, situated midway between Angus and the gun, and full to the brim with rainwater.

A single peep over the wall gave him his bearings.  The gun was too far away to be reached by a grenade, even when thrown by Angus M’Lachlan.  Still, it would create a diversion.  It was a time bomb.  He would—­

He stretched out his long arm to its full extent behind him, gave one mighty overarm sweep, and with all the crackling strength of his mighty sinews, hurled the grenade.

It fell into the exact centre of the flooded shell-crater.

Angus said something under his breath which would have shocked a disciple of Kultur.  Fortunately the two German gunners did not hear him.  But they observed the splash fifty yards away, and it relieved them from ennui, for they were growing tired of firing at nothing.  They had not seen the grenade thrown, and were a little puzzled as to the cause of the phenomenon.

Four seconds later their curiosity was more than satisfied.  With a muffled roar, the shell-hole suddenly, spouted its liquid contents and other debris straight to the heavens, startling them considerably and entirely obscuring their vision.

A moment later, with an exultant yell, Angus M’Lachlan was upon them.  He sprang into their vision out of the descending cascade—­a towering, terrible, kilted figure, bare-headed and Berserk mad.  He was barely forty yards away.

Initiative is not the forte of the Teuton.  Number One of the German gun mechanically traversed his weapon four degrees to the right and continued to press the thumb-piece.  Mud and splinters of brick sprang up round Angus’s feet; but still he came on.  He was not twenty yards away now.  The gunner, beginning to boggle between waiting and bolting, fumbled at his elevating gear, but Angus was right on him before his thumbs got back to work.  Then indeed the gun spoke out with no uncertain voice, for perhaps two seconds.  After that it ceased fire altogether.

Almost simultaneously there came a triumphant roar lower down the street, as Mucklewame and his followers dashed obliquely across into the estaminet.  Mucklewame himself was carrying the derelict Lewis gun.  In the doorway stood the watchful M’Snape.

“This way, quick!” he shouted.  “We have the Gairman gun spotted, and the officer is needing the Lewis!”

But M’Snape was wrong.  The Lewis was not required.

A few moments later, in the face of brisk sniping from the houses higher up the street, James Bogle, officer’s servant,—­a member of that despised class which, according to the Bandar-log at home, spend the whole of its time pressing its master’s trousers and smoking his cigarettes somewhere back in billets,—­led out a stretcher party to the German gun.  Number One had been killed by a shot from Angus’s revolver.  Number Two had adopted Hindenburg tactics, and was no more to be seen.  Angus himself was lying, stone dead, a yard from the muzzle of the gun which he, single-handed, had put out of action.