An officer going his rounds found the said sentinel flat instead of vertical.  He stirred him with his scabbard, and up jumped Dard.

“It’s all right, sergeant.  O Lord! it’s the colonel.  I wasn’t asleep, colonel.”

“I have not accused you.  But you will explain what you were doing.”

“Colonel,” said Dard, all in a flutter, “I was taking a squint at them, because I saw something.  The beggars are building a wall, now.”

“Where?”

“Between us and the bastion.”

“Show me.”

“I can’t, colonel; the moon has gone in; but I did see it.”

“How long was it?”

“About a hundred yards.”

“How high?”

“Colonel, it was ten feet high if it was an inch.”

“Have you good sight?”

“La! colonel, wasn’t I a bit of a poacher before I took to the bayonet?”

“Good!  Now reflect.  If you persist in this statement, I turn out the brigade on your information.”

“I’ll stand the fire of a corporal’s guard at break of day if I make a mistake now,” said Dard.

The colonel glided away, called his captain and first lieutenants, and said two words in each ear, that made them spring off their backs.

Dard, marching to an fro, musket on shoulder, found himself suddenly surrounded by grim, silent, but deadly eager soldiers, that came pouring like bees into the open space behind the battery.  The officers came round the colonel.

“Attend to two things,” said he to the captains.  “Don’t fire till they are within ten yards:  and don’t follow them unless I lead you.”

The men were then told off by companies, some to the battery, some to the trenches, some were kept on each side Death’s Alley, ready for a rush.

They were not all of them in position, when those behind the parapet saw, as it were, something deepen the gloom of night, some fourscore yards to the front:  it was like a line of black ink suddenly drawn upon a sheet covered with Indian ink.

It seems quite stationary.  The novices wondered what it was.  The veterans muttered—­“Three deep.”

Though it looked stationary, it got blacker and blacker.  The soldiers of the 24th brigade griped their muskets hard, and set their teeth, and the sergeants had much ado to keep them quiet.

All of a sudden, a loud yell on the right of the brigade, two or three single shots from the trenches in that direction, followed by a volley, the cries of wounded men, and the fierce hurrahs of an attacking party.

Our colonel knew too well those sounds:  the next parallel had been surprised, and the Prussian bayonet was now silently at work.

Disguise was now impossible.  At the first shot, a guttural voice in front of Dujardin’s men was heard to give a word of command.  There was a sharp rattle and in a moment the thick black line was tipped with glittering steel.

A roar and a rush, and the Prussian line three deep came furiously like a huge steel-pointed wave, at the French lines.  A tremendous wave of fire rushed out to meet that wave of steel:  a crash of two hundred muskets, and all was still.  Then you could see through the black steel-tipped line in a hundred frightful gaps, and the ground sparkled with bayonets and the air rang with the cries of the wounded.