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 and our ammunition will barely hold out to-morrow."

"Where are your carrier pigeons?"

"Most of them are dead. They were shot while flying back to headquarters. What we have left are too nearly dead of thirst to lift a wing. I tell you our plight is desperate. You know the trail back to headquarters better than any one else. You have been hauling ammunition over it for days. Can any human thing live long enough in that inferno to get a message back to headquarters?"

The captain looked back along the way that he and his dog team had traversed so many times in the past three weeks, but it looked like the very mouth of hell. The trees that had shielded and befriended them in the past were swaying and bending and breaking under the barrage. The