“An inch is as good as a mile!” He recollected the captain’s teaching.  “Only one of a thousand bullets fired in war ever kills a man”—­but he was certain that he had heard a million already.  Then one passed very close, its swift breath brushing his cheek with a whistle like a s-s-st through the teeth.  He dodged so hard that he might have dislocated his neck; he gasped and half stumbled, but realized that he had not been hit.  And he must keep right on going, driven by one fear against another, in face of those ghastly whispers which the others, for the most part, in the excitement of a charge, had ceased to hear.

Again he would be sure that his legs, which he was urging so frantically to their duty, were not playing pantomime.  He looked around to find that he was still keeping up with Eugene and felt the thrill of the bravery of fellowship at sight of the giant’s flushed, confident face revelling in the spirit of a charge.  And then, just then, Eugene convulsively threw up his arms, dropped his rifle, and whirled on his heel.  As he went down his hand clutched at his left breast and came away red and dripping.  After one wild, backward glance, Peterkin plunged ahead.

“Eugene!” Hugo Mallin had stopped and bent over Eugene in the supreme instinct of that terrible second, supporting his comrade’s head.

“The bullet is not—­made—.”  Eugene whispered, the ruling passion strong to the last.  A flicker of the eyelids, a gurgle in the throat, and he was dead.

Fracasse had been right behind them.  The sight of a man falling was something for which he was prepared; something inevitably a part of the game.  A man down was a man out of the fight, service finished.  A man up with a rifle in his hand was a man who ought to be in action.

“Here, you are not going to get out this way!” he said in the irritation of haste, slapping Hugo with his sword.  “Go on!  That’s hospital-corps work.”

Hugo had a glimpse of the captain’s rigid features and a last one of Eugene’s, white and still and yet as if he were about to speak his favorite boast; then he hurried on, his side glance showing other prostrate forms.  One form a few yards away half rose to call “Hospital!” and fell back, struck mortally by a second bullet.

“That’s what you get if you forget instructions,” said Fracasse with no sense of brutality, only professional exasperation, “Keep down, you wounded men!” he shouted at the top of his voice.

The colonel of the 128th had not looked for immediate resistance.  He had told Fracasse’s men to occupy the knoll expeditiously.  But by the common impulse of military training, no less than in answer to the whistle’s call, in face of the withering fire they dropped to earth at the base of the knoll, where Hugo threw himself down at full length in his place in line next to Peterkin.

“Fire pointblank at the crest in front of you!  I saw a couple of men standing up there!” called Fracasse.  “Fire fast!  That’s the way to keep down their fire—­pointblank, I tell you!  You’re firing into the sky!  I want to see more dust kicked up.  Fire fast!  We’ll have them out of there soon!  They’re only an outpost.”