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s Adelphi drama, and in a shrill voice that rang clear above the hammering tumult of the rifles, screamed "Veev la France! A baa la Bosh!" The rifles by this time were pelting a storm of lead at him, and now that the haste and flurry of the urgent call had passed and the shooters had steadied to their task, the storm was perilously close. 'Enery stayed a moment even then to spread his hands and raise his shoulders ear-high in a magnificent stage shrug; but a bullet snatched the cap from his head, and 'Enery ducked hastily, turned, and ran his hardest, with the bullets snapping at his heels. Back in the trench a frantic French captain was raving at the telephone, whirling the handle round, screaming for "Fire, fire, fire!" Private Flannigan looked over his shoulder at him, "Mong capitaine," he said, "you ought, you reely ought, to ring up your telephone; turn the handle round an' say something." "Drop two pennies in," mocked another as the captain birr-r-red the handle and yelled again. Whether he got through, or whether the burst of rifle fire reached the listening ears at the guns, nobody knew; but just as 'Enery did his ear-embracing shoulder-shrug the first shells screamed over, burst and leaped down along the German parapet. After that there was no complaint about the guns. They scourged the parapet from end to end, up and down, and up again; they shook it with the blast of high explosive, ripped and flayed it with, driving blasts of shrapnel, smothered it with a tempest of fire and lead, blotted it out behind a veil of writhing smoke. At the sound of the first shot the gunner captain had leaped back to the trench. "Is he in? Is he arrived?" he shouted in the ear of the B Company captain who leaned anxiously over the parapet. The captain drew back and down. "He's in--bless him--I mean dash his impudent hide!" The Frenchman turned and called to his signaler, and the next moment the guns ceased. But the captain waited, watching with narrowed eyes the German parapet. The storm of his shells had obliterated the rifle fire, but after a few minutes it opened up again in straggling shots. The captain snapped back a few orders, and prompt to his word the shells leaped and struck down again on the parapet. A dozen rounds and they ceased, and again the captain waited and watched. The rifles were silent now, and presently the captain relaxed his scowling glare and his tightened lips. "Vermin!" he said. He used j
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