the trained athlete, strained to leap into the great race
of his life.

An officer came hurrying through. The talking hushed. Men on guard,
backs to the trench, never moved their eyes from the forbidden land in
front. The officer spoke. Look for a charge! Reserves were close behind.
He gave his orders and passed on.

Then an Allied gun opened up with a boom. The shell moaned on over. Dorn
saw where it burst, sending smoke and earth aloft. That must have been a
signal for a bombardment of the enemy all along this sector, for big and
little guns began to thunder and crack.

The spectacle before Dorn's hard, keen eyes was one that he thought
wonderful. Far across No Man's Land, which sloped somewhat at that point
in the plain, he saw movement of troops and guns. His eyes were
telescopic. Over there the ground appeared grassy in places, with green
ridges rising, and patches of brush and straggling trees standing out
clearly. Faint, gray-colored squads of soldiers passed in sight with
helmets flashing in the sun; guns were being hauled forward; mounted
horsemen dashed here and there, vanishing and reappearing; and all
through that wide area of color and action shot up live black spouts of
earth crowned in white smoke that hung in the air after the earth fell
back. They were beautiful, these shell-bursts. Round balls of white
smoke magically appeared in the air, to spread and drift; long, yellow
columns or streaks rose here, and there leaped up a fan-shaped, dirty
cloud, savage and sinister; sometimes several shells burst close
together, dashing the upflung sheets of earth together and blending
their smoke; at intervals a huge, creamy-yellow explosion, like a
geyser, rose aloft to spread and mushroom, then to detach itself from
the heavier body it had upheaved, and float away, white and graceful, on
the wind.

Sinister beauty! Dorn soon lost sight of that. There came a gnawing at
his vitals. The far scene of action could not hold his gaze. That dark,
uneven, hummocky break in the earth, which was a goodly number of rods
distant, yet now seemed close, drew a startling attention. Dorn felt his
eyes widen and pop. Spots and dots, shiny, illusive, bobbed along that
break, behind the mounds, beyond the farther banks. A yell as from one
lusty throat ran along the line of which Dorn's squad held the center.
Dorn's sight had a piercing intensity. All was hard under his grip--his
rifle, the boards and bags against which he leaned.