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For sport Jean had played with wounded lynx; his was the quickness of sight, of instinct without the other's science; the quickness of the great loon that had often played this same game with his rifle-fire, of the sledge-dog whose ripping fangs carried death so quickly that eyes could not follow. A third and a fourth time he came within striking distance, and escaped.
Alternately crawling and working my way on hands and knees, and taking advantage of any little bit of cover, I drew nearer to the guns. While I was lying here, there crashed out a regular inferno of rifle-fire from the German trenches. The bullets sang overhead like a flight of hornets. This certainly was a warm corner.
In the near distance Dick made out the shadowy figures of the men in the first wave of the German assault. Rifle-fire began to roll out from the French soldiers. From somewhere at the rear, perhaps from emplacements in or near the French support trenches, the steady drumming of machine-gun fire began. The air was filled with death.
He was quite right, for upon glancing to my left I could see a perfect swarm of the Boers galloping as if to cut us off, while I learned from the right that they were also coming on there. Then came the news that they were advancing in force behind; and from that moment the crackling of rifle-fire ceased, and it became a hard ride for the haven of comparative safety ahead.
We watched the thick rolling smoke of the explosions, and saw bits of wheels, and the arms and legs of gunners blown up in little black fragments against that pearl-pink sunrise. The noise of Mechanical Battle went surging from one side of the bay to the other it swept round suddenly with an angry rattle of maxims and the hard echoing crackle of rifle-fire.
Rifle-fire wins or loses decisive actions; rifle-fire sends the heart galloping. At five in the morning of the 9th I turned on my mattress and heard guns; I got up. Then I heard the bubble of distant musketry, and I hurried out. It came from the north, and it was languidly echoed from Cæsar's Camp. Tack-tap, tack-tap each shot echoed a little muffled from the hills.
The uproar was deafening; the crash of the heavy guns upon the crest of the heights and from Fort Hoshangtao, near Linshiatun, which now joined in the fray, mingled with the hammer-like thudding of the machine-guns and the continuous rolling crackle of rifle-fire from the trenches, was frightful.
Ammunition limbers were hurried up, and I stood ready to dart anywhere. For twenty minutes the rifle-fire seemed to grow wilder and wilder. At last stretcher-bearers came in with a few wounded and reported that we seemed to be holding our own. Satisfactory so far.
He welted them with rifle-fire: they scattered and scurried back. The guns got to work, silenced the field-guns on Flat Top Hill, and added scatter and scurry to the assailing riflemen.
"The man rides like a fox-hunter," commented Taggart, noticing the ease of the seat, the light handling of the rein, the way in which the fidgety, spirited beast Saxham rode answered to the gentling hand and the guiding pressure of the rider's knee, as a sharp storm of rifle-fire swept from the enemy's northern trenches, and the Mauser bullets spurted sand between the wheels of the spider and under the horses' bellies.
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