emed to be consumed by raging fires. He felt the ground
trembling in the throes of a titanic upheaval, while his entire being
seemed to be hammered and torn by the frightful cataclysm of sounds. He
stood as though paralyzed, unmindful that bits of earth and gravel were
sifting through chinks between the ceiling timbers and falling on his
head.

Other members of the unit had staggered into wakefulness and sat staring
at him, he thought, with greenish, flickering faces--accusingly, as if
he were responsible. Each knew the French guns had searched out and were
crumbling up the German defenses, but none had previously suspected that
an artillery bombardment could reach such fury. The desultory firing of
yesterday might well be understood as a _moment decalme_!

In this instant of terrified amazement Jeb and his comrades remained as
statues, simply staring with owlish eyes devoid of intelligence, since
it was well nigh impossible for men, uninitiated, to master their
faculties until the first shock had been absorbed.

'Twas not so much the roar of cannon from their distant places in the
rear--although these alone might doubtless have been startling
enough--but the shower of projectiles falling on the doomed line only
six hundred yards across No Man's Land. In answer to this bombardment
from an eight-mile line of guns accurately trained the day before, enemy
guns, trained with lesser accuracy, did their best to inflict an equal
punishment. The effect was a combination of the solemnity and the
littleness of man which defies every knack of human expression to
depict.

The seasoned soldier could have told some things; he could have
distinguished calibre from calibre as readily as the skillful fox hunter
knows the position of his racing hounds by the quality of their voices.
He could have spotted the vindictive crash of "75's," the deep-toned
bellowing of "heavies," or, nearer by--had they been in action--the
banging of trench mortars. In the sky he could have told from white or
greenish-orange flashes, from lace-like wreaths or fixed-star blasts,
where shrapnel or high explosive shells had burst; from the ringing of a
gas gong he could tell where "green cross" shells were falling; he
could, and gladly would, have explained--to his own satisfaction, at
least--the many freak phenomena: a solitary light spirally ascending
upward until lost in the clouds; sprays of fire and spark-showers
illumining the sky; rainbow arcs of angry