etonations of exploding shells, the intermittent
rattle of machine-guns, and by the crescendoes of rifle-fire mingled
with the shouts and shrieks of men, the cheers of triumphant attackers,
and the grim, hoarse commands of officers leading their sections.

There had been many a silent, yet grimly ferocious struggle with the
bayonet; when men stood outside their trenches or struggled with the
enemy in what remained of their battered positions. Such scenes we
know had taken place inside the fort of Douaumont, for had not Jules
and Henri participated in such an adventure on the stairway? And now
they were being repeated--those scenes--in many an odd part of that
fortress.

Bursting in by a gateway to the west, the Bretons forced their way
forward; while the Brandenburgers, beating a hasty retreat, threw up
barricades and fought for them. Thus, as Henri and his chum crept
along that gallery, comparatively silent for the moment, for the fight
had drifted forward, and the Brandenburgers were holding a position
farther to the east of the fortress, they came within sound of the
combatants, and heard the shouts of men and the crack of rifles. Yet
never a sight did they catch of Max, the German, though here and there
torches threw a fitful gleam about the masonry.

"Then on!" said Henri, now rising to his feet and staggering forward.
"Where's the beggar gone to? And what's he up to?"

"Can't say. Perhaps he's merely trying to escape; or more likely he's
trying to join his own people, for you can tell quite easily that they
are still holding a portion of the fort."

Yet to follow in the tracks of the German was an impossibility; for,
let us explain, the interior of a fortress such as Douaumont is not so
planned as to make progress easy and direct at the best of times. Such
a place is designedly erected in sections, so that, should one portion
suffer capture, the others may be held intact; while often enough such
works are constructed so that one portion of the fortress commands by
its fire the works immediately surrounding and attached to it. That
gallery, then, did not run in a straight line for long: it curved
abruptly to the left just as it had done before at the point where the
German contrived to evade our heroes. It dropped down a flight of
steps, and opened into a wide hallway much like that other in which
Jules and Henri had already seen some adventure; and from this hall
galleries led off, some reached by me