Therefore telephonic word came to the detachments to left and
right of the Here-We-Comes, to fall back, under cover of the gas-
cloud, to safer positions. Two dogs were sent, with the same
order, to the Here-We-Comes. (One of the dogs was gassed. A bit
of shrapnel found the other.)

Thus it was that the Here-We-Comes were left alone (though they
did not know it), to hold the position,--with no support on
either side, and with a mere handful of men wherewith to stem the
impending rush.

On the heels of the dispersing gas-cloud, and straight across the
half-mile or less of broken ground, came a line of gray. In five
successive waves, according to custom, the boches charged. Each
wave hurled itself forward as fast as efficiency would let it, in
face of the opposing fire, and as far as human endurance would be
goaded. Then it went down, and its survivors attached themselves
to the succeeding wave.

Hence, by the time the fifth and mightiest wave got into motion,
it was swelled by the survivors of all four of its predecessors
and was an all-but-resistless mass of shouting and running men.

The rifles and machine-guns of the Here-We-Comes played merrily
into the advancing gray swarms, stopping wave after wave, and at
last checking the fifth and "master" wave almost at the very
brink of the Franco-American parapet.

"That's how they do!" Mahan pantingly explained to a rather shaky
newcomer, as the last wave fell back. "They count on numbers and