ucer,
and I found a kind of ridge on the northward slope below our guns. I had
just dismounted and was watching the right ridge through my glasses when
the edge of the horizon at which I was looking was divided by a bright
flash. In a few seconds there was a deep report, followed by the whine
of a shell in the air; the sand spouted up in a great fountain--Heavens!
how close to the convoy; and presently the sound of the burst drowned
the crackling of musketry. The convoy huddled away from the smoking
patch where the shell had fallen, and began--oh, how slowly!--to wind up
the slope towards me. Another shell, still on the same spot, of which
the waggons were now quite clear; and now the shells followed each other
so rapidly that one gave up trying to distinguish between the initial
and the bursting reports, and became absorbed in watching the brown
columns spouting from the earth.

They were now playing all round the moving convoy, and each was a
miracle; wherever there was a blank space, there the fountain rose; and
when the convoy had closed up so completely that one was certain that
the next shell must hit something, it fell quite wide. I was still
watching this beautiful and dreadful sight when the air above me
vibrated to a new song, and on my right a small shell burst with a
disagreeable sound. I cleared away to the northern side of the basin,
only to feel once more obliged to move as a new gun opened and began to
churn up the ground. To be sure, these were long, range-finding shots,
and were not intended to pitch where they did, but it is not always safe
to rely upon the accuracy of shrapnel fire, and I moved again. But it
was of no use; the enemy's pom-pom suddenly began to bark, and played on
the one spot which had seemed but a moment before to be safe.

During this development (which had only occupied about ten minutes) our
artillery had gradually come into action; first the solitary, abrupt
bang of the 12-pound horse gun, then the readier and brisker fusilade of
the Canadian quick-firing Vickers-Maxim, then the clamour of our two
pom-poms, then the rattle of a Maxim somewhere in the rear. And all the
while the area from which the sounds proceeded was spreading like a
bush-fire; beginning on the right, it worked across our front, spread
from the left front along that flank until it seemed almost to meet the
firing on the right rear. When all the guns were going the medley was
terrific, although I suppose it was