"It's a gran'pa, that
one!"
The shell cleaves the air at perhaps a thousand yards above us; the
voice of its gun covers all as with a pavilion of resonance. The
sound of its travel is sluggish, and one divines a projectile
bigger-boweled, more enormous than the others. We can hear it
passing and declining in front with the ponderous and increasing
vibration of a train that enters a station under brakes; then, its
heavy whine sounds fainter. We watch the hill opposite. and after
several seconds it is covered by a salmon-pink cloud that the wind
spreads over one-half of the horizon. "It's a 220 mm."
"One can see them," declares Volpatte, "those shells, when they come
out of the gun. If you're in the right line, you can even see them a
good long away from the gun."
Another follows: "There! Look, look! Did you see that one? You
didn't look quick enough, you missed it. Get a move on! Look,
another! Did you see it?"
"I did not see it."--"Ass! Got to be a bedstead for you to see it!
Look, quick, that one, there! Did you see it, unlucky
good-for-nothing?"--" I saw it; is that all?"
Some have made out a small black object, slender and pointed as a
blackbird with folded wings, pricking a wide curve down from the
zenith.
"That weighs 240 lb., that one, my old bug," says Volpatte proudly,
"and when that drops on a funk-hole it kills everybody inside it.
Those that aren't picked off by the explosion are struck dead by the
wind of it, or they're gas-poisoned before they can say 'ouf!'"
"The 270 mm.
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