With the smoke clearing, they see twenty or thirty Grays plastered on the slope at the point where the charge was checked.  Every one of those prostrate forms is within fatal range.  Not one moves a finger; even the living are feigning death in the hope of surviving.  Among them is little Peterkin, so faithful in forcing his refractory legs to keep pace with his comrades.  If he is always up with them they will never know what is in his heart and call him a coward.  As he has been knocked unconscious, he has not been in the pell-mell retreat.

His first stabbing thought on coming to was that he must be dead; but, no; he was opening his eyes sticky with dust.  At least, he must be wounded!  He had not power yet to move his hands in order to feel where, and when they grew alive enough to move, what he saw in front of him held them frigidly still.  His nerves went searching from his head to his feet and—­miracle of Heaven!—­found no point of pain or spot soppy with blood.  If he were really hit there was bound to be one or the other, he knew from reading.

Between him and the faces of the Browns—­yes, the actual, living, terrible Browns—­above the glint of their rifle barrels, was no obstacle that could stop a bullet, though not more than three feet away was a crater made by a shell burst.  The black circle of every muzzle on the crest seemed to be pointing at him.  When were they going to shoot?  When was he to be executed?  Would he be shot in many places and die thus?  Or would the very first bullet go through his head?  Why didn’t they fire?  What were they waiting for?  The suspense was unbearable.  The desperation of overwhelming fear driving him in irresponsible impulse, he doubled up his legs and with a cat’s leap sprang for the crater.

A blood-curdling burst of whistles passed over his head as a dozen rifles cracked.  This time he was surely killed!  He was in some other world!  Which was it, the good or the bad?  The good, for he had a glimpse of blue sky.  No, that could not be, for he had been alive when he leaped for the crater, and there he was pressed against the soft earth of its bottom.  He burrowed deeper blissfully.  He was the nearest to the enemy of any man of the 128th, and he certainly had passed through a gamut of emotions in the half-hour since Eugene Aronson had leaped over a white post.

* * * * *

“Confound it!  If we’d kept on we’d have got them!  Now we have to do it all over again!” growled Fracasse distractedly as he looked around at the faces hugging the cover of the shoulder—­faces asking, What next? each in its own way; faces blank and white; faces with lips working and eyes blinking; faces with the blood rushing back to cheeks in baffled anger.  One, however, was half smiling—­Hugo Mallin’s.

“You did your share of the running, I’ll warrant, Mallin!” said Fracasse excitedly, venting his disgust on a particular object.