is one I
shall never forget, and I shall never cease to be glad that the major
gave me my chance. The most thrilling moment was that of the recoil
of the great gun. I felt exactly as one does when one dives into deep
water from a considerable height.

"Good work, Harry!" said the major, warmly, when I had stepped down.
"I'll wager you wiped out a bit of the German trenches with that
shot! I think I'll draft you and keep you here as a gunner!"

And the officers and men all spoke in the same way, smiling as they
did so. But I hae me doots! I'd like to think I did real damage with
my one shot, but I'm afraid my shell was just one of those that
turned up a bit of dirt and made one of those small brown eruptions I
had seen rising on all sides along the German lines as I had sat and
smoked my pipe with Normabell earlier in the day.

"Well, anyway," I said, exultingly, "that's that! I hope I got two
for my one, at least!"

But my exultation did not last long. I reflected upon the
inscrutability of war and of this deadly fighting that was going on
all about me. How casual a matter was this sending out of a shell
that could, in a flash of time, obliterate all that lived in a wide
circle about where it chanced to strike! The pulling of a lever--that
was all that I had done! And at any moment a shell some German gunner
had sent winging its way through the air in precisely that same,
casual fashion might come tearing into this quiet nook, guided by
some chance, lucky for him, and wipe out the major, and all the
pleasant boys with whom I had broken bread just now, and the sweating
gunners who had cheered me on as I fired my shot!

I was to give a concert for this battery, and I felt that it was
time, now, for it to begin. I could see, too, that the men were
growing a bit impatient. And so I said that I was ready.

"Then come along to our theater," said the major, and grinned at my
look of astonishment.

"Oh, we've got a real amphitheater for you, such as the Greeks used
for the tragedies of Sophocles!" he said. "There it is!"

He had not stretched the truth. It was a superb theater--a great,
crater-like hole in the ground. Certainly it was as well ventilated a
show house as you could hope for, and I found, when the time came,
that the acoustics were splendid. I went down into the middle of the
hole, with Hogge and Adam, who had become part of my company, and the
soldiers grouped themselves about its rim.

Before we left