Dorn leaped over the bloody mass.  Owens lay next, wide-eyed, alive, but stricken.  Purcell fought with clubbed rifle, backing away from several foes.  Brewer was being beaten down.  Gray forms closing in!  Dorn saw leveled small guns,, flashes of red, the impact of lead striking him.  But he heard no shots.  The roar in his ears was the filling of a gulf.  Out of that gulf pierced his laugh.  Gray forms—­guns—­bullets—­ bayonets—­death—­he laughed at them.  His moment had come.  Here he would pay.  His immense and terrible joy bridged the ages between the past and this moment when he leaped light and swift, like a huge cat, upon them.  They fired and they hit, but Dorn sprang on, tigerishly, with his loud and nameless laugh.  Bayonets thrust at him were straws.  These enemies gave way, appalled.  With sweep and lunge he killed one and split a second’s skull before the first had fallen.  A third he lifted and upset and gored, like a bull, in one single stroke.  The fourth and last of that group, screaming his terror and fury, ran in close to get beyond that sweeping blade.  He fired as he ran.  Dorn tripped him heavily, and he had scarcely struck the ground when that steel transfixed his bulging throat.

Brewer was down, but Purcell had been reinforced.  Soldiers in brown came on the run, shooting, yelling, brandishing.  They closed in on the Germans, and Dorn ran into that melee to make one thrust at each gray form he encountered.

Shriller yells along the line—­American yells—­the enemy there had given ground!  Dorn heard.  He saw the gray line waver.  He saw reserves running to aid his squad.  The Germans would be beaten back.  There was whirling blackness in his head through which he seemed to see.  The laugh broke hoarse and harsh from his throat.  Dust and blood choked him.

Another gray form blocked his leaping way.  Dorn saw only low down, the gray arms reaching with bright, unstained blade.  His own bloody bayonet clashed against it, locked, and felt the helplessness of the arms that wielded it.  An instant of pause—­a heaving, breathless instinct of impending exhaustion—­a moment when the petrific mace of primitive man stayed at the return of the human—­then with bloody foam on his lips Dorn spent his madness.

A supple twist—­the French trick—­and Dorn’s powerful lunge, with all his ponderous weight, drove his bayonet through the enemy’s lungs.

“Ka—­ma—­rod!” came the strange, strangling cry.

A weight sagged down on Dorn’s rifle.  He did not pull out the bayonet, but as it lowered with the burden of the body his eyes, fixed at one height, suddenly had brought into their range the face of his foe.

A boy—­dying on his bayonet!  Then came a resurrection of Kurt Dorn’s soul.  He looked at what must be his last deed as a soldier.  His mind halted.  He saw only the ghastly face, the eyes in which he expected to see hate, but saw only love of life, suddenly reborn, suddenly surprised at death.