in
momentary scanning before pushing ahead to investigate decisively, there
came a short, ragged volley from out ahead.

The reports were flat and dull, as a rule, but a few cracked viciously
as though fired close at hand. These last followed the vacuum of
low-flying bullets and had a spat and twang of their own.

For weeks these two armies had been facing each other; for a week
assault had wrestled with counter assault and the armies had striven
time after time to snatch an advantage from a massing of columns, or a
seeming check.

For miles to right and left, every road, every footpath, every few yards
of broken ground was trodden by the feet of short columns, prepared to
charge into lines at the needed moment, when the fire of the enemy
became a menace. The trenches were abandoned in the rear, yet should the
columns in the rear, which by the heads formed a long, long line of
supports, be hurled back in repulse after an unsuccessful attack, the
trenches would be greeted as comfortable old friends and reoccupied.

The leading columns deployed into thin lines, with short intervals
between the men, as the shrapnel broke. From out the blur of the
mingling of landscape and sky there came, simultaneously, a whir, a
crash, and the quick dash of shrapnel balls over the ground, and of the
brief flash which marked the shrapnel's burst there remained only a
dimly-seen lingering cloud of dirty smoke and some silent, writhing
forms on the ground.

Then came crash after crash, as the hostile artillery opened in
strength. The silence of the morning fled into a hideous din as the
infantry broke into a dog trot and pushed ahead.

There came a clank of trace chains and the pounding of hoofs mingling
with hoarse commands as the artillery of the Russians wheeled out of
column to position in battery, the ring of hastily-opened breechblocks,
the hollow thump of the blocks closing and the shrill notes of a silvery
whistle. Then the earth began to tremble.

Thunderbolt after thunderbolt seemed to be discharging close in the
rear, until the very trees shook and men swayed under the compression of
air in the vicinity. Over the heads of the silent infantry, shrapnel
shrieked in reply, one after another, as the batteries opened with
salvos from flank to flank.

Through the gaps between the belching batteries poured the infantry, the
columns dashing forward until, beneath the trajectory of the guns, it
was safe to spread out in the alwa