akes definite and
sinister shape and detail; the loopholes--we are prodigiously,
incredibly close!

Something falls in front of us. It is a bomb. With a kick Corporal
Bertrand returns it so well that it rises and bursts just over the
trench.

With that fortunate deed the squad reaches the trench.

Pepin has hurled himself flat on the ground and is involved with a
corpse. He reaches the edge and plunges in--the first to enter.
Fouillade, with great gestures and shouts, jumps into the pit almost at
the same moment that Pepin rolls down it. Indistinctly I see--in the
time of the lightning's flash--a whole row of black demons stooping and
squatting for the descent, on the ridge of the embankment, on the edge
of the dark ambush.

A terrible volley bursts point-blank in our faces, flinging in front of
us a sudden row of flames the whole length of the earthen verge. After
the stunning shock we shake ourselves and burst into devilish
laughter--the discharge has passed too high. And at once, with shouts
and roars of salvation, we slide and roll and fall alive into the belly
of the trench!

* * * * *

We are submerged in a mysterious smoke, and at first I can only see
blue uniforms in the stifling gulf. We go one way and then another,
driven by each other, snarling and searching. We turn about, and with
our hands encumbered by knife, bombs, and rifle, we do not know at
first what to do.

"They're in their funk-holes, the swine!" is the cry. Heavy explosions
are shaking the earth--underground, in the dug-outs. We are all at once
divided by huge clouds of smoke so thick that we are masked and can see
nothing more. We struggle like drowning men through the acrid darkness
of a fallen fragment of night. One stumbles against barriers of
cowering clustered beings who bleed and howl in the bottom. Hardly can
one make out the trench walls, straight up just here and made of white
sandbags, which are everywhere torn like paper. At one time the heavy
adhesive reek sways and lifts, and one sees again the swarming mob of
the attackers. Torn out of the dusty picture, the silhouette of a
hand-to-hand struggle is drawn in fog on the wall, it droops and sinks
to the bottom. I hear several shrill cries of "Kamarad!" proceeding
from a pale-faced and gray-clad group in the huge corner made by a
rending shell. Under the inky cloud the tempest of men flows back,
climbs towards the right, eddying, pitching and falling