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.A third rocket went up."Here they come!" some one said; and Tony wondered how he knew it.Soaked in perspiration,Tony glared into the blackness of the woods.He longed for the lights; he longed for military rockets.But there never had been any of these.Hendron, in making his preparation, had not foreseen this sort ofattack.He had imagined vagrants in groups, or even mobs of desperate men, but nothing that the wirewould not stop or a few machine-guns scatter.That is, he had imagined nothing worse until it was toolate to prepare, adequately, for--this.Now machine-guns in the woods were sweeping the camp enclosure.The fire radiated from afew points; and as it was certain the attackers were not in the path of their own fire, but were in the darkspaces between, Tony swept these with his bullets.The gun bucked under his tense fingers.Yells rewarded him.He was wounding, killing theattackers-units of that horde that had sent that murderous fire to mow down the men, the splendid men,the great men who had whispered their names quietly to Tony as he had bent over them before they died.Shouts drowned the yells of the wounded--savage, taunting shouts.There must be a thousandmen on this bit of the front alone, more than all the men in the camp.Tony heard his voice bawling overthe tumult: "Get 'em! Get 'em! Don't let 'em by!" His machine-gun was overheating.A little light came from somewhere; Tony could not see whatit was, except that it flickered.Something was burning.Tony could see figures at the wire, now.Hecould not reckon their numbers, did not try to.He tried only to shoot them down.Once through thatwire,--that wire so weak that he could not see it,--and that thousand with the thousand behind themwould be over him and the men beside him, they would be over the line of older men behind; then theywould reach the women.Tony's lips receded from his teeth.He aimed the gun with diabolic care, and watched it takeeffect as wind affects standing wheat.The attackers broke, and ran back to the woods.In the central part of the cantonment the growth afforded better cover and gave the assaultshorter range.Men went in pairs to the tops of the buildings, and through loopholes which had beenprovided for such a contingency began sniping at those who moved in the territory around the buildings.Every one was overmastered by the same sort of rage which had possessed Tony.The reason fortheir existence had been to them a high and holy purpose.They defended it with the fanaticism ofzealots.They could not know that the flight of their planes to and from the Ransdell metal-supply hadindicated to the frantic hordes that somewhere human beings lived in discipline and decency.They couldnot know how for weeks they had been spied upon by ravenous eyes.They could not know how thecountryside around, and the distant cities, had been recruited to form an army to attack them.They couldnot know that nearly ten thousand men, hungry, desperate, most of them already murderers many timesover, armed, supplied with crafty plans which had been formulated by disordered heads once devoted toimportant, intelligent pursuits--how these besieged them now, partly for spoils, but to a greater degree ina fury of lust and envy.They had traveled on broken roads, growing as they marched.It was a heathenhorde, a barbaric and ruthless horde, which attacked the colony.The siege relaxed to an intermittent exchange of volleys.At this machine-gun station, Tony,suffering acutely from thirst, with six of his comrades lying dead near by, fought intermittently.Re-enforcements came from the center of the camp--Jack Taylor and two more of the youngermen."Hurt, Tony?" Taylor challenged him."No," replied Tony; and he did not mention his dead; for Taylor, creeping up, had encounteredthem."Who's killed in the buildings?""Not Hendron," said Taylor, "or Eve-though she might have been.She was one of the girls thatwent out to attend to the wounded.Two of the girls were hit, but not Eve.Hendron wants to see you,Tony
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