Grandfather Fragini, impelled by the hysterical call of the Hussar spirit, also sprang up, waving his hat and trembling and swaying with the emotion that racked his old body.

“Give it to ’em!  Aim low!  Give it to ’em—­give it to ’em, horns and hoofs, sabre and carbine!” he shouted in a high, jumpy voice.  “Give it to ’em!  Make ’em weep!  Make ’em whine!  Make ’em bellow!”

Both appeals were drowned in the cracking of the rifles working as regularly as punching-machines in a factory.  Every soldier was seeing only his sight and the running figures under it.  Mechanically and automatically, training had been projected into action, anticipation into realization.  A spectator might as well have called to a man in a hundred-yard dash to stop running, to an oarsman in a race to jump out of his shell.

So centred was Dellarme in watching his men and the effect of their fire that he did not notice the two silhouettes on the sky-line, making ridicule of all his care about keeping his company under cover, until the doctor, who alone had nothing to do as yet, touched him on the arm.  At the moment he looked around, and before he could speak a command, a hospital-corps man who was near Grandfather Fragini threw himself in a low tackle and brought the old man to earth, while the company sergeant sprang for Stransky with an oath.  But Stransky was in no mood to submit.  He felled the sergeant with a blow and, recklessly defiant, stared at Dellarme, while the men, steadily firing, were still oblivious of the scene.  The sergeant, stunned, rose to his knees and reached for his revolver.  Dellarme, bent over to keep his head below the crest, had already drawn his as he hastened toward them.

“Stransky,” said Dellarme, “you have struck an officer under fire!  You have refused to fight!  Within the law I am warranted in shooting you dead!”

“Well!” answered Stransky, throwing back his head, his face seeming all big, bony nose and heavy jaw and burning eyes.

“Will you get down?  Will you take your place with your rifle?” demanded Dellarme.

Stransky laughed thunderously in scorn.  He was handsome, titanic, and barbaric, with his huge shoulders stretching his blouse, which fell loosely around his narrow hips, while the fist that had felled the sergeant was still clenched.

“No!” said Stransky.  “You won’t kill much if you kill me and you’d kill less if you shot yourself!  God Almighty!  Do you think I’m afraid?  Me—­afraid?”

His eyes in a bloodshot glare, as uncompromising as those of a bull in an arena watching the next move of the red cape of the matador, regarded Dellarme, who hesitated in the revulsion of the horror of killing and in admiration of the picture of human force before him.  But the old sergeant, smarting under the insult of the blow, his sandstone features mottled with red patches, had no compunctions of this order.  He was ready to act as executioner.