At no time during the day had the artillery thundered more loudly than now.  It was three o’clock, and Delaherche declared angrily that he gave it up—­he could not understand it.  There could be no doubt about it now, the Prussian batteries, instead of slackening their fire, were extending it.  Why?  What had happened?  It was as if all the forces of the nether regions had been unchained; the earth shook, the heavens were on fire.  The ring of flame-belching mouths of bronze that encircled Sedan, the eight hundred guns of the German armies, that were served with such activity and raised such an uproar, were expending their thunders on the adjacent fields; had that concentric fire been focused upon the city, had the batteries on those commanding heights once begun to play upon Sedan, it would have been reduced to ashes and pulverized into dust in less than fifteen minutes.  But now the projectiles were again commencing to fall upon the houses, the crash that told of ruin and destruction was heard more frequently.  One exploded in the Rue des Voyards, another grazed the tall chimney of the factory, and the bricks and mortar came tumbling to the ground directly in front of the shed where the surgeons were at work.  Bouroche looked up and grumbled: 

“Are they trying to finish our wounded for us?  Really, this racket is intolerable.”

In the meantime an attendant had seized the captain’s leg, and the major, with a swift circular motion of his hand, made an incision in the skin below the knee and some two inches below the spot where he intended to saw the bone; then, still employing the same thin-bladed knife, that he did not change in order to get on more rapidly, he loosened the skin on the superior side of the incision and turned it back, much as one would peel an orange.  But just as he was on the point of dividing the muscles a hospital steward came up and whispered in his ear: 

“Number two has just slipped his cable.”

The major did not hear, owing to the fearful uproar.

“Speak up, can’t you!  My ear drums are broken with their d-----d
cannon.”

“Number two has just slipped his cable.”

“Who is that, number two?”

“The arm, you know.”

“Ah, very good!  Well, then, you can bring me number three, the jaw.”

And with wonderful dexterity, never changing his position, he cut through the muscles clean down to the bone with a single motion of his wrist.  He laid bare the tibia and fibula, introduced between them an implement to keep them in position, drew the saw across them once, and they were sundered.  And the foot remained in the hands of the attendant who was holding it.

The flow of blood had been small, thanks to the pressure maintained by the assistant higher up the leg, at the thigh.  The ligature of the three arteries was quickly accomplished, but the major shook his head, and when the assistant had removed his fingers he examined the stump, murmuring, certain that the patient could not hear as yet: