atteries, and through the air
passed a shrill whistle. But it was not only their hellish din which
made one tremble and start up, but even more so the dismal, powerfully
exciting howl of the gigantic missile of the great mortars, chasing up
and 'way into the air almost perpendicular. It sounded each time as if a
giant risen from out of the very bowels of the earth sent up great sobs.
Like a wild chase of unbridled, unchained elements the powerful missile
shot up high from the gun barrel.

"A shriek of the most horrible kind, a trembling and shaking started in
the wildly torn air, a continual pounding, hissing whirlwind shot up
like a hurricane, lasted for seconds and disappeared in the distance
like some monstrous mystery. Surrounded by a glare of fire, encircled by
blinding light, licked by sheaves of flames, the short barrel of the
mortar drew back at the moment of firing. Clouds of dust rose; they
mixed gray with brown, with the smoke of gunpowder which hid from sight
for a few moments the entire gun, and then it rained down from the air,
for whole minutes, the tiny pieces into which the cover of the charge
had been torn. After every shot of the big mortars, the heavy howitzers
and the 21-centimeter mortars--which usually are the loud talkers in an
artillery battle--could hardly make themselves heard. An entire battery
of them could not drown the noise of _one_ shot from an Austrian mortar.
It sounded like a hoarse but weak bark as compared with this gigantic
instrument of death and destruction.

"During the morning the sky cleared; this enabled the observers to sight
more accurately. Orders were sent over the telephone; the telescope
controlled the effect of the gunfire, and one could see plainly how, in
a distance of a few miles, the hail of shot descended on the enemy's
trenches. 'Way up towered the geysers of earth when the shot struck
home. Above the Russian trenches lay a long white cloud of powder
forming a great wall of waves. The dull thunder of the guns was
tremendous. It whistled and howled, it cried and moaned, it roared like
the surf of the ocean, like the terrifying growl of a thunderstorm, and
then it threw back a hundredfold clear echo. In between came the dull
crack of the Russian shrapnel. They broke in the broad, swampy lowlands
of the Rawka; they pierced the cover of ice which broke with a
tremendous noise while dark fountains of bog water gushed up from the
ground. In front and in back of the Ge