"Permission is given to be audible," he said, loudly, and loudness spread like panic down the line to his left and to his right. Though because of the fog it was not so much a line as a chopped-up scribble. The drummers began to beat an advance, and sergeants began to scream in outrage as they understood, from that, just how badly spattered over the field they had become. One platoon was far to the rear, and confused, and (what was much worse) unwilling to accept just how badly they’d got it wrong; Bob crossed them off his mental Order of Battle as hors de combat . Other platoons seemed to be moving perpendicular to the line of march. And so Bob finally screamed an order that all should simply march toward the barking dog. This worked better than anything else he had tried. It forced them to go up-slope. Word propagated up the line that a wall had been encountered on the right, and Bob ordered them to hold there. Presently the middle, and finally the left, found that wall, and stopped, forming (Bob supposed) an arc a few hundred yards long, curved inwards to face in the general direction of the dog. Its barking had been joined by the blowing of a post horn; shouting; colliding blades; and pistol-shots. The wall was a linear rock-pile, snarled and teeming with hedge-life. Bob vacillated there, for a few moments, until he heard cavalry behind him, and noted that the fog was beginning to dissolve into the light of day. Then he gave the order to clamber over the wall and proceed double-time toward the melee. They would serve better as beaters than as hunters. The horsemen coming round across their rear could round up anyone who dashed through their line.