Would the gentle shuffle of feet be heard by the men who lay within stone-throw of them?
Their hopes had begun to rise when there broke upon the silence of the night a resonant metallic rattle, the thud of a falling man, an empty clatter! They had walked into a line of meat-cans slung upon a wire.

By measurement it was only ninety yards from the trench.

At that instant a single rifle sounded, and the Canadians hurled themselves down upon the ground.

Their bodies had hardly touched it when from a line six hundred yards long there came one furious glare of rifle fire, with a hiss like water on a red-hot plate, of speeding bullets.

In that terrible red light the men as they lay and scraped desperately for cover could see the heads of the Boers pop up and down, and the fringe of rifle barrels quiver and gleam.