In vain the cannon
nearest hurled their deadly fire. It wheeled rapidly, and returned to
the place from which it came.

"It must have taken in the whole situation," thought the old Frenchman.
"It has found them out; it knows what is going on here."

He guessed rightly that this information would swiftly change the course
of events. Everything which had been happening in the early morning
hours was going to sink into insignificance compared with what was
coming now. He shuddered with fear, the irresistible fear of the
unknown, and yet at the same time, he was filled with curiosity,
impatience and nervous dread before a danger that threatened and would
not stay its relentless course.

Outside the park, but a short distance from the mud wall, sounded a
strident explosion like a stupendous blow from a gigantic axe--an axe as
big as his castle. There began flying through the air entire treetops,
trunks split in two, great chunks of earth with the vegetation still
clinging, a rain of dirt that obscured the heavens. Some stones fell
down from the wall. The Germans crouched but with no visible emotion.
They knew what it meant; they had been expecting it as something
inevitable after seeing the French aeroplane. The Red Cross flag could
no longer deceive the enemy's artillery.

Don Marcelo had not time to recover from his surprise before there came
a second explosion nearer the mud wall . . . a third inside the park.
It seemed to him that he had been suddenly flung into another world from
which he was seeing men and things across a fantastic atmosphere which
roared and rocked and destroyed with the violence of its reverberations.
He was stunned with the awfulness of it all, and yet he was not afraid.
Until then, he had imagined fear in a very different form. He felt an
agonizing vacuum in his stomach. He staggered violently all the time, as
though some force were pushing him about, giving him first a blow on the
chest, and then another on the back to straighten him up.

A strong smell of acids penetrated the atmosphere, making respiration
very difficult, and filling his eyes with smarting tears. On the other
hand, the uproar no longer disturbed him, it did not exist for him. He
supposed it was still going on from the trembling air, the shaking of
things around him, in the whirlwind which was bending men double but was
not reacting within his body. He had lost the faculty of hearing; all
the strength of his senses had concen