about seven o'clock
` This bit of landscape 's mighty unsafe for democracy , ' he croaked . ` For the love of Mike get your guns on to those devils across the river . They 're plaguing my boys too bad . ' It was about seven o'clock , I think , when the flanking fire slacked off , but it was not because of our divisional guns . There was a short and very furious burst of artillery fire on the north bank , and I knew it was British . Then things began to happen . One of our planes -- they had been marvels all day , swinging down like hawks for machine-gun bouts with the Boche infantry -- reported that Mitchinson was attacking hard and getting on well .