e French sappers had
thrown a plank gangway across the gap in the ruined old bridge,
built in A. D. 800, that had survived all the wars of France, only
to perish at last in this one.

"Smack, smack, smack, smack go the French guns; and then, a few
seconds later, four white mushrooms of smoke spring up over the far
woods and slowly the pop, pop, pop, pop, of the distant explosions
comes back to you. But now it is the German gunners' turn. Bang!
go his guns, two miles away; there is a moment of eerie and
uncomfortable silence--uncomfortable because there is just a chance
they might have altered their range--and then, quite close by, over
the wood where the battery is, come the crashes of the bursting
shells. They sound like a Titan's blows on a gigantic kettle filled
with tons of old iron.

"At Trilport there is a yawning gap, where one arch of the railway
bridge used to be, with a solitary bent rail still lying across
it. And, among the wreckage of the bridge below, lying on its side
and more than half beneath the water, is the smashed and splintered
ruin of a closed motor car.

"Beyond the town was a ridge on which the French batteries were
posted. We could see the ammunition wagons parked on the reverse
slope of the hill. More were moving up to join them.

"The village beyond, Penchard, was thronged with troops and blocked
with ambulance wagons and ammunition carts.

"Through the rank grass at the side came tramping a long file of
dusty, sweating, wearied men. They carried long spades and picks
as well as their rifles. They had come out of the firing line and
were going back to Penchard for food.

"Topping the next ridge... the hill slopes steeply down to the
hamlet of Chamvery, just below us. The battery which I mentioned
just now is in the wood on this side of it to our right. The Zouaves'
firing line is lying flat on the hillside a little way beyond the
village, and behind them, farther down the hill, are thick lines of
supports in the cover of intrenchments. It is a spectacle entirely
typical of a modern battle, for there is scarcely anything to see
at all. If it were not for those shells being tossed to and fro
on the right there, and an occasional splutter of rifle fire, one
might easily suppose that the lines of blue-coated men lying about
on the stubble were all dozing in the hot afternoon sun.

"Even when some of them move they seem to do it lazily, to saunter
rather than to walk.... It is only in th