For the space of perhaps two or three minutes the fog-bank swirled and curled in swaying eddies as the shells came hurtling into it; then—­whether it was from a sudden awakening of the wind or through the licking up of its vapors by the first rays of the now risen sun, I never knew—­almost in the wave of a hand, it was gone, revealing a broad expanse of trench-creased plain with a long belt of gray figures moving across it in a cloud of dust and smoke.

[Sidenote:  Lively hand-to-hand fighting.]

“It isn’t much of a barrage as barrages go on the western front,” said Captain X——­ half apologetically.  “Their artillery won’t do much harm to us, and, I’m afraid, ours not much to them.  And we’ll hardly be having enough machine guns emplaced to sting them as they ought to be stung for swarming up in masses like that.  But if it’s only a second-class artillery show, I still think I can promise you—­if only the Bulgar has the stomach for it—­a livelier bit of hand-to-hand fighting than you might find in a whole summer of looking for it in France.  Do you see those little winking flashes all along where the infantry are moving?  Some of them are from bayonets, but most are from knives.  A great man with the knife is the Bulgar.  Did you ever hear that song about him they sang at a revue the British ‘Tommies’ had at Saloniki?  It was a parody on some other song that was being sung in the halls in London, and went something like this: 

[Sidenote:  A Bulgar song.]

     I’m Boris the Bulgar,
       The Man With the Knife;
     The Pride of Sofia,
       The Taker of Life. 
     Good gracious, how spacious
       And deep are the cuts,
     Of Boris the Bulgar,
       The Knifer—­

“Now for it!  Look at that!”

[Sidenote:  The barrages lift and the Greeks advance to meet the Bulgars.]

I never did hear just what it was that Boris was a knifer of, for at that juncture the two barrages—­having respectively protected and harried to the best of their abilities the advancing wave of infantry down to within a hundred yards or so of the Greek trenches—­“lifted” almost simultaneously on to “communications,” and that lifting was the signal for the opening of the climacteric stage of the action.  Without an instant’s delay, a solid wave of Greeks in brown—­lightly fringed in front with the figures of a few of the more active or impetuous who had outdistanced their comrades in the scramble over the top—­rose up out of the earth and swept forward to meet the line of gray.  The gust of their first great cheer rolled up to us above the thunder of the artillery.

“Now for it!” repeated X——­, focussing down his telescope and steadying himself with his elbows.  “I think you’ll find the show from now on worth all the trouble of coming up to see.”

[Sidenote:  the Bulgars break and retreat.]