‘Damn them!’ The corporal, dragging him to solid foothold, cast a look up as a shell burst high overhead, and his face showed white with passion in the glare of it.  ’Can’t any one tell them there’s no sense in it!’

‘Take it easy, lad,’ panted the sergeant, cheerfully.  ’They’re bound to understand in a minute, hearin’ all this musketry.  Accidents will happen—­and anyway they can’t help seein’ us at the breach.  Look at the light of it beyond the tower there!’

They floundered on together.  The tower, not fifty yards away, jetted fire from every loophole; but its marksmen were aiming into the darkness, having been caught in a hurry and before they could throw down flares.  As the sergeant rushed to get close under the wall of it, a bullet sent his shako whizzing; but still he ran on, and came bareheaded to the foot of the breach.

It ran down to the foreshore, a broadening scree of rubble, ruined masonry, broken beams of timber—­some of them smouldering; and over the top of it shone the blaze of the town.  But the actual gap appeared to be undefended, and, better still, the rubbish on the near side had so piled itself that for half the way up the stormers could climb under cover, protected from the enfilading fire.  Already the major had dropped on hands and knees and was leading the way up, scrambling from heap to heap of rubbish.  Close after him went an officer in the uniform of the Engineers, with Corporal Sam at his heels.  The sergeant ducked his head and followed, dodging from block to block of masonry on the other side of which the bullets spattered.

‘Forward!  Forward the Royals!’

The leaders were shouting it, and he passed on the shout.  As yet, not a man had fallen on the slope of the breach.  Two, more agile than he because by some years younger, overtook and passed him; but he was the sixth to reach the summit, and might reckon this very good work for a man of his weight.  Then, as he turned to shout again, three more of the forlorn hope came blundering up, and the nine stood unscathed on the summit of the gap and apparently with none to oppose them.

But beyond it—­between them and the town, and a sheer twenty feet below them, lay a pool of blazing tar, the flames of which roared up against their faces.

’Forward the Royals!  Ladders—­ladders!  Oh, for your life, forward with the ladders!’

The major started the cry.  Corporal Sam, taking it up, screamed it again and again.  In the darkness, behind and below, the sergeant heard Captain Archimbeau calling to his men to hurry.  One ladder-bearer came clattering up; but the ladders were in six-foot lengths, and a single length was useless.  Nevertheless, in his rage of haste, Corporal Sam seized it from the man, and was bending to clamp it over the pit, when from the parapet to the right a sudden cross-fire swept the head of the breach.  A bullet struck him in the hand.  He looked up, with the pain of it, in time to see Major Frazer spin about, topple past the sergeant’s hand thrust out to steady him, and pitch headlong down the slope.  The ladder-bearer and another tall Royal dropped at the same moment.