The bombardment is redoubled. The trees of
light on the ridge have melted into hazy parachutes in the pallor of
dawn, sickly heads of Medusae with points of fire; then, more
sharply defined as the day expands, they become bunches of
smoke-feathers, ostrich feathers white and gray, which come suddenly
to life on the jumbled and melancholy soil of Hill 119, five or six
hundred yards in front of us, and then slowly fade away. They are
truly the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud, circling as one
and thundering together. On the flank of the bill we see a party of
men running to earth. One by one they disappear, swallowed up in the
adjoining anthills.
Now, one can better make out the form of our "guests." At each shot
a tuft of sulphurous white underlined in black forms sixty yards up
in the air, unfolds and mottles itself, and we catch in the
explosion the whistling of the charge of bullets that the yellow
cloud hurls angrily to the ground. It bursts in sixfold squalls, one
after another--bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. It is the 77 mm.
gun.
We disdain the 77 mm. shrapnel, in spite of the fact that Blesbois
was killed by one of them three days ago. They nearly always burst
too high. Barque explains it to us, although we know it well: "One's
chamber-pot protects one's nut well enough against the bullets. So
they can destroy your shoulder and damn well knock you down, but
they don't spread you about. Naturally, you've got to be fly, all
the same.
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