e again, and the Third Republic was justifying the
First.

The battle deepened and thickened to an extraordinary degree, as the
space between the two fronts narrowed. John for the first time saw the
German troops without the aid of glasses. They were mere outlines
against a fiery horizon, reddened by the mouths of so many belching
cannon, but they seemed to him to stand there like a wall.

Another giant shell burst near them, and two more members of the staff
fell from their cycles, dead before they touched the ground. That
convulsive shudder seized John again, but the crash of tremendous events
was so rapid that fear and horror alike passed in an instant. A piece of
the same shell struck General Vaugirard's car and put it out of action
at once. But the general leaped lightly to the ground, then swung his
immense bulk across one of the riderless motor cycles and advanced with
the surviving members of his staff. Imperturbable, he still swept the
field with his glasses. Two aides were now sent to the right with
messages, and a third, John himself, was despatched to the left on a
similar errand.

It was John's duty to tell a regiment to bear in further to the left and
close up a vacant spot in the line. He wheeled his cycle into a field,
and then passed between rows of grapevines. The regiment, its ranks much
thinned, was now about a hundred yards away, but shell and bullets alike
were sweeping the distance between.

Nevertheless, he rode on, his wheel bumping over the rough ground, until
he heard a rushing sound, and then blank darkness enveloped him. He fell
one way, and the motor cycle fell another.

CHAPTER V

SEEN FROM ABOVE

John's period of unconsciousness was brief. The sweep of air from a
gigantic shell, passing close, had taken his senses for a minute or two,
but he leaped to his feet to find his motor cycle broken and puffing out
its last breath, and himself among the dead and wounded in the wake of
the army which was advancing rapidly. The turmoil was so vast, and so
much dust and burned gunpowder was floating about that he was not able
to tell where the valiant Vaugirard with the remainder of his staff
marched. In front of him a regiment, cut up terribly, was advancing at a
swift pace, and acting under the impulse of the moment he ran forward to
join them.

When he overtook the regiment he saw that it had neither colonel, nor
captains nor any other officers of high degree. A little man, scarc