Along the Serbian ridge the sheepskin-clad figures lie in snug safety and pull trigger with chuckles of satisfaction. There is no excitement, only a keen savouring of primeval emotions that can now be given rein. About them dance quick spurts of dust and bright splashes of nickel appear upon the rocks. An irregular rifle fire is coming from the hostile ridge. One or two shells burst overhead and then the guns fall silent, are forgotten. The company on the right starts suddenly to its feet, dashes over the crest and down the slope. The rifle fire from the other ridge changes in character, welcomes them with rapid, violent claps. A couple of machine-guns strike into the din with a continued rapid and resonant hammering, nerve-racking in its persistency. Men in the running line throw up their arms or pitch forward here and there, but the company is lost to sight almost immediately on the rock-strewn hill-side. The men dart forward from boulder to boulder. Behind them on their left other companies are descending in quick succession towards the ravine.
At the other side of the ridge, in rear, the second line of the battalion is coming up in support, and behind them the other battalions of the brigade are streaming forward, unhindered as yet by artillery fire. It is a brief respite, however. In a moment or two a distant, unseen battery has got their range, flings shell after shell to burst over their heads and fall in a spreading cone of bullets. The brigade advances with quick onward dashes by battalions that spring up, race a hundred yards and disappear for a breathing space among the boulders. Gradually they draw into the shelter of the intervening ridge, and battalion after battalion tops it and moves down to the aid of those in front. A strong firing-line remains on the crest, keeps up a steady stream of bullets against the long grey line still whelmed in dust by an unceasing hail of shrapnel. The brigadier ensconces himself in a rock shelter at the end of this firing-line, the telephone receiver still ready to his hand.
The first line of the attack has now reached the ravine. The men seize hold of tiny shrubs that grow out at overhanging angles and swing themselves down, scrambling over loose stones and sliding sand. A hail of bullets is beating upon them from the trench above and from a line of supports that has come into action higher still. The machine-guns hammer with an appalling energy that knows not fatigue. Where their aim is directed the sand spouts up as though struck by an air-blast from a hose. In that ravine the first line is more than decimated. Men stumble and fall upon their own bayonets. Corpses, hanging limply, weigh down the shrubs. With fierce shouts the survivors scramble onward. The second line has caught them up, is mingled with them. The battle-madness seethes in every head; each bullet that strikes harmlessly upon the earth is a shock of stimulation to already hyper-excited nerves. They lose their identity, lose the instinct of self-preservation in the flood of an older instinct which blinds them to all but the hazards of the ground, and sweeps them forward like demented animals frantic to assuage a thirst that consumes their tissues. A savage cry breaks automatically from every throat; the blood-congested brains, that permit the action of the muscles, unconscious of it. They reach the bottom of the ravine, not very deep, and clamber up in the comparative security of the other side.