The French field guns behind their trenches opened, sending showers of missiles over their heads and into the charging ranks, and the trenches themselves blazed with the fire of the rifles.

“A surprise that isn’t a surprise?” shouted Carstairs.  “They thought to catch us napping in the night and the snow!”

The battle spread with astonishing rapidity over a front of more than a mile, and in the driving snow and white gloom it assumed a frightful character.  The German guns fired for a little while over their troops at the French artillery beyond, but soon ceased lest they pour shells into their own men, and the heavy French batteries ceased also, lest they, too, mow down friend as well as foe.  But the light machine guns posted in the trenches kept up a rapid and terrible crackle.  The front lines of the Germans were cut down again and again, always to be replaced by fresh men, who unflinchingly exposed their bodies to the deadly hail.

“The massed attack!” exclaimed Wharton.  “What courage!  Nobody was ever more willing to die for victory than these Germans!”

Even in the moment of danger and utmost excitement he could not refuse tribute to the enemy.  Nevertheless he snatched up a rifle and was firing as fast as he could into the gray ranks.  John and Carstairs were doing the same and the trench held by the Strangers was a continuous red blaze.  There was so much fire and smoke and so much whirling snow that John could not see clearly.  He was a prey to illusions.  Now the Germans were apparently at the very edge of the trench, and then they were further away than he had first seen them.  The white gloom was shot with a red haze, and the shouts of soldiers, the commands of officers and groans of wounded were mingled in a terrible turmoil of sound.  But John knew that the Germans would be driven tack.  Only surprise could have enabled them to win, and the vigilance of the French scouts had put their commanders on guard.

Captain Colton walked up and down the trench, his face ghastly white, although it was the flare of the searchlight and not any retreat of the blood that made it so.  Now and then under the frightful crash of the rifles and machine guns he addressed brief words of warning and encouragement to his men: 

“Don’t raise your heads too high!  Keep cool!  Aim at something!  Here they come again!  Fire low!”

All of John’s pulses were throbbing hard with excitement.  He wished the Germans would go back, and his wish was prompted—­less by the desire of victory than the sickening of his soul at so much slaughter.  Why would their leaders continue to hurl these simple and honest peasants upon that invincible line of rifles and machine guns?  The dead and wounded were piling up fast in the driving snow, but the willing servants of an emperor came on as steadily as ever to be killed.  So much slaughter for so little purpose!  The height of battle, excitement and danger, could not keep him from thinking of it.