s fingers at!
To laugh at! To chortle over! Something to avoid, though, my Henri
and my Jules! Not that a man is so careful of his body in these days.
Though he is anxious to retain his life, yet not for himself only, not
that he shall live on to see the end of this warfare and the victory of
the Allies. No, no! But so that he shall live to pull a trigger as
the enemy draws nearer, and so help to destroy the German effort."

You would have thought, to look at Jules's face, that he was listening
to quite a merry conversation; for that young man was smiling broadly,
and, though shells still pitched about them, though many a
shrapnel-burst high overhead plastered the ground with bullets, even
twitted his comrades. But Henri was stern and severe, and even looked
a trifle nervous: such was the difference in their characters. Yet
Jules knew, the Sergeant knew, all his comrades knew, that when it came
to the pinch, when it came to close fighting, there was no one more to
be trusted than the sterner of these two young fellows. Ducking now
and again, for somehow he could not help it, turning his eyes anxiously
every few minutes in the direction of the enemy, his fingers locking
themselves about his rifle and toying nervously with the buttons of his
tunic, Henri did indeed, at that moment, look ill at ease, to say the
least of it. And yet he too smiled as that shell burst, and, turning a
moment later, smiled once more as he pointed towards the enemy.

"Wait!" he told Jules and the Sergeant. "They give us shells here in
plenty, those Boches, they keep a torrent of them tumbling about our
ears both day and night; but wait, I say! For remember what we saw
from the forest, Jules! Those masses down below, the village of
Vacherauville and the road to it, the slopes of the Cote de Poivre and
of the Cote de Talou, are enfiladed by our guns across the river. Wait
then! The gunners have not opened yet, but when the word comes, such a
storm of shell will be poured upon the Germans that they too will learn
what shell-fire really means."

His words, indeed, proved to be almost prophetic, for though, for some
few minutes longer, the thinned garrison of the French trenches in
those parts waited and watched the enemy masses advance, almost
unobstructed, yet in a little while, and very soon after the
machine-gunners had got into action and rifles were speaking sharply
from every direction, there came sudden salvoes from across the