The next bit was rather involved, and Jake was never sure exactly what happened. There were some grey figures in front of him, scurrying to and fro confusedly, some with long coats flapping about their ankles, others with only half bodies or shoulders showing above the shell-hole edges. He thought some were holding their hands up; but others—this was too clear to doubt—were shooting rapidly at him and the rest of the line, the red tongues of flame licking out from the rifles straight at them. Jake dived to a shell hole and began firing back, felt somebody slide and scramble down beside him, turned to find the bomber picking himself up and shaking a blood-dripping left hand. “Come on, Jake,” yelled the bomber. “Rush ’em’s the game,” and went scrambling and floundering out of the hole with Jake close at his heels. There was a minute’s wild shooting and bombing, and the rest of the Germans either ran, or fell, or came crouching forward towards them with their empty hands high and waving over their heads.
An officer appeared suddenly from somewhere. “Come along. Push on!” he was shouting. “Bit further before we make a line to hold. Push on,” and he led the way forward at a staggering trot. Jake and the others followed.
They reached the wide flattened crest of the slope they were attacking and were pushing on over it when a rapid stutter of machine-gun fire broke out on their left flank, and a stream of bullets came sheeting and whipping along the top of the slope. The line was fairly caught in the bullet-storm, and suffered heavily in the next minute. There was some shooting from shell holes in front, too, but that was nothing to the galling fire that poured on them from the flank. Jake heard suddenly the long, insistent scream of a whistle, looked round and saw an officer signalling to take cover. He dropped promptly into a shell crater, and, hearing presently the bang of rifles round him, peered out over the edge for a mark to shoot at. Out to his left he caught sight of a sparkle of fire, and heard the rapid clatter of the machine-guns. He could just make out the rounded top of a buried concrete emplacement, and the black slit that marked the embrasure, and began to aim and fire steadily and carefully at it. The emplacement held its fire more now, but every now and then delivered a flickering string of flashes and a venomous _rat-at-at-at_. Jake kept on firing at it, glancing round every little while to be sure that the others were not moving on without him. The noisy banging raps of close-by machine-gunning broke out suddenly, and on Jake looking round from his shell hole he found a gun in action not more than a dozen yards away; and while he looked another one began to fire steadily from another shell crater fifty or sixty yards farther along. Jake crawled out of his hole, slithered over the rough ground and down into the crater where the nearest machine-gun banged rapidly. A sergeant was with the team, and Jake bawled in his ear, “If you’ll keep pottin’ at him every time he opens fire, I’ll try’n sneak over an’ out him with a bomb in the letter-box.”