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From the upper terrace came a great voice, like that of the guns, from a human throat: "Why didn't we level those terraces? They'll creep up from one to the other!" It was Stransky. In answer was another voice Dellarme's. "Perhaps there wasn't time to do everything. And if this position is taken before we are ready to go, it will not be from that side, but from the side of the town."
Under cover of the rain of shell fire on Dellarme's position, already described, they mounted the wall of the second terrace and ran to the wall of the first terrace. They had expected to suffer terribly, but passed safely underneath a sheet of bullets that caught other sections of their regiment on the lower terraces.
Then came another outburst from Dellarme's men, which she interpreted as the response to another rush by the Grays; and this yelping of the demon was not that of the hound after the hare, as in the valley, but of the hare with his back to the wall. When it was over there was no cheer. What did this mean?
Our losses have been heavy enough, but nothing to theirs and how they are driving their men in! But where is Major Dellarme?" When he saw Dellarme's still body he dismounted and in a tide of feeling which, for the moment, submerged all thought of the machine, stood, head bowed and cap off, looking down at Dellarme's face. "I was very fond of him! He was at the school when I was teaching there.
It was not Dellarme's company, but some other that had mistaken its direction and retired too late and by the wrong road. You will throw hand-grenades, will you? thought Fracasse's men. You will mangle our fellows when they Can't strike back, will you? Now you'll pay! Now it is our turn! We have seen our blood flow and now yours will flow!
Marta could not deny that there was something fine about Dellarme's smile no less than in his bearing and his delicately, chiselled features.
There was an end to the concussions and the thrashing of the air around Dellarme's men, and they had the relief of a breaking abscess in the ear. But they became more conscious of the spits of dust in front of their faces and the passing whistles of bullets. In return, they made the sections of Gray infantry in reserve rushing across the levels, leave many gray lumps behind.
But there was Dellarme smiling; there was Hugo Mallin saying that he would fight for his own home; there was Stransky, who had thrown the hand-grenade, bringing in an exhausted old man on his back from under fire; there was Feller as he rallied Dellarme's men; and and there was Lanny waiting at the other end of the wire and a burglar should not take her home.
"Mind the signal to the batteries keep the men screened warn them not to let their first baptism of shell fire shake their nerves!" the colonel added in a final repetition of instructions already indelibly impressed on the captain's mind. Moving cautiously through a cut, Dellarme's company came, about midnight, to a halt among the stubble of a wheat-field behind a knoll.
In the haziness of fleecy thought, as slumber drew its soft clouds around her, her last conscious visions were the pleasant ones rising free of a background of horror: of Feller's smile when he went back to his automatic for good; of Dellarme's smile as he was dying; of Stransky's smile as Minna gave him hope; and of Hugo's face as he uttered his flute-like cry of protest.
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