closer and more powerful
sounds. It was a squealing howl that was swelling in intensity, that was
opening out as it advanced, filling all space. Soon it ceased to be a
shriek, becoming a rude roar formed by divers collisions and frictions,
like the descent of an electric tram through a hillside road, or the
course of a train which passes through a station without stopping.

He saw it approach in the form of a cloud, bulging as though it were
going to explode over the battery. Without knowing just how it happened,
the senator suddenly found himself in the bottom of the shelter, his
hands in cold contact with a heap of steel cylinders lined up like
bottles. They were projectiles.

"If a German shell," he thought, "should explode above this burrow . . .
what a frightful blowing up!" . . .

But he calmed himself by reflecting on the solidity of the arched vault
with its beams and sacks of earth several yards thick. Suddenly he
was in absolute darkness. Another had sought refuge in the shelter,
obstructing the light with his body; perhaps his friend Desnoyers.

A year passed by while his watch was registering a single second, then
a century at the same rate . . . and finally the awaited thunder burst
forth, making the refuge vibrate, but with a kind of dull elasticity,
as though it were made of rubber. In spite of its thud, the explosion
wrought horrible damage. Other minor explosions, playful and whistling,
followed behind the first. In his imagination, Lacour saw the
cataclysm--a writhing serpent, vomiting sparks and smoke, a species of
Wagnerian monster that upon striking the ground was disgorging thousands
of fiery little snakes, that were covering the earth with their deadly
contortions. . . . The shell must have burst nearby, perhaps in the very
square occupied by this battery.

He came out of the shelter, expecting to encounter a sickening display
of dismembered bodies, and he saw his son smiling, smoking a cigar and
talking with Desnoyers. . . . That was a mere nothing! The gunners were
tranquilly finishing the charging of a huge piece. They had raised their
eyes for a moment as the enemy's shell went screaming by, and then had
continued their work.

"It must have fallen about three hundred yards away," said Rene
cheerfully.

The senator, impressionable soul, felt suddenly filled with heroic
confidence. It was not worth while to bother about his personal safety
when other men--just like him, only differently