Other Huns were made of sterner stuff, and offered a stubborn resistance. With rifle-shots, bayonets, clubbed weapons, and bombs they contested their ground. Machine-gunners used their deadly weapons with desperate energy, until they were stretched out by the sides of their now silent charges. The air was heavy with suffocating smoke; fragments of shell were flying with complete impartiality; shouts, oaths, and curses punctuated the crash of steel and the rattle of musketry, as men in their blind ferocity clutched at each other's throats and rolled in mortal combat upon the ground.