he stands.

The howling and crashing of the bursting shrapnel of course had its
effect on those troops who were here under fire for the first time. But
the shrapnel bullets rained on the wooden roofs without being able to
penetrate them, and after half an hour this fact imbued the men in their
retreats with a certain feeling of security. The enemy soon stopped this
ineffective fire from his field-guns, however, and on the basis of
careful observations made from a captive balloon behind Hilgard, the
Japanese began using explosive shells in place of the shrapnel.

The very first shots produced terrible devastation. The long planks were
tossed about like matches in the smoke of the bursting Shimose shells,
and the slaughter when one of them landed right in the midst of the
closely packed men in one of these subterranean mole-holes was
absolutely indescribable. Back into the trenches, therefore! But the
enemy had observed this change of position from his balloon, and the
shots began to rain unceasingly into the trenches. And so perfect was
the Japanese marksmanship that the position of the long line of trenches
could easily be recognized by the parallel line of little white clouds
of smoke up above them. There was nothing more to be concealed, and
accordingly Colonel Katterfeld ordered his regiment to open fire on
Hilgard and on the hostile artillery entrenched before the town.

Captain Lange lay with his nose pressed against the breastworks,
carefully observing the effect of the fire through his field glasses.
Although this was not his first campaign, he had nevertheless had some
trouble in ridding himself of that miserable feeling with which every
novice has to contend, the feeling that every single hostile gun and
cannon is pointed straight at him. But the moment the first men of his
company fell and he was obliged to arrange for the removal of the
wounded to the rear, his self-possession returned at once. It was his
bounden duty, moreover, to set an example of cool-headed courage to his
men, so he calmly and with some fuss lighted a cigarette, yet in spite
of the apparent indifference with which he puffed at it, it moved up and
down rather suspiciously between his lips.

A volunteer by the name of Singley, the war-correspondent of the _New
York Herald_, worked with much greater equanimity, but then he had been
through five battles before he gained permission to join the 7th Company
for the purpose of making pencil sk