ned.

"My children are biting," he said, glancing affectionately at his guns.
"They're brave lads, and their teeth are long and sharp."

He looked at his signal man, and the guns let loose again with a force
that sent the air rushing away in violent waves. Batteries farther on
were firing also with great rapidity. In most of these the gunners were
directed by field telephones strung hastily, but the one near John still
depended upon signal men. It was composed of eight five-inch guns, and
John believed that its fire was most accurate and deadly.

Using his glasses again, he saw that the disturbance among those
manikins was increasing. They were running here and there, and many
seemed to vanish suddenly--he knew that they were blown away by the
shells. To the right of the great French battery some lighter field guns
were advancing. One drawn by eight horses had not yet unlimbered, and he
saw a shell strike squarely upon it. In the following explosion pieces
of steel whizzed by him and when the smoke cleared away the gun, the
gunners and the horses were all gone. The monster shell had blown
everything to pieces. The other guns hurried on, took up their positions
and began to fire. John shuddered violently, but in a moment or two, he,
too, forgot the little tragedy in the far more gigantic one that was
being played before him.

He rode back to General Vaugirard and told him that his order had been
obeyed. The general nodded, but did not take his glasses from the
horizon, where a long gray line was beginning to appear against the
green of the earth. "It goes well so far," John heard him say in the
under note which was audible beneath the thunder of the battle.

In a quarter of an hour the great batteries limbered up again, and once
more the French army went forward, the troops to lie down and wait
again, while the artillery worked with ferocious energy. It was yet a
battle of big guns, at least in the center. The armies were not near
enough to each other for rifles; in truth not near enough yet to be
seen. John, even with his glasses, could only discern the gray line
advancing, he could make little of its form or order or of what it was
trying to do.

But a light wind was now bringing smoke from one flank where the battle
was far heavier than in the center, and the concussion of the artillery
at that point became so frightful that the air seemed to come in waves
of the utmost violence and to beat upon the drum of the