A diabolical uproar surrounds us.  We are conscious of a sustained crescendo, an incessant multiplication of the universal frenzy.  A hurricane of hoarse and hollow banging, of raging clamor, of piercing and beast-like screams, fastens furiously with tatters of smoke upon the earth where we are buried up to our necks, and the wind of the shells seems to set it heaving and pitching.

“Look at that,” bawls Barque, “and me that said they were short of munitions!”

“Oh, la, la!  We know all about that!  That and the other fudge the newspapers squirt all over us!”

A dull crackle makes itself audible amidst the babel of noise.  That slow rattle is of all the sounds of war the one that most quickens the heart.

“The coffee-mill! [note 1] One of ours, listen.  The shots come regularly, while the Boches’ haven’t got the same length of time between the shots; they go crack—­crack-crack-crack—­crack-crack—­crack—­”

“Don’t cod yourself, crack-pate; it isn’t an unsewing-machine at all; it’s a motor-cycle on the road to 31 dugout, away yonder.”

“Well, I think it’s a chap up aloft there, having a look round from his broomstick,” chuckles Pepin, as he raises his nose and sweeps the firmament in search of an aeroplane.

A discussion arises, but one cannot say what the noise is, and that’s all.  One tries in vain to become familiar with all those diverse disturbances.  It even happened the other day in the wood that a whole section mistook for the hoarse howl of a shell the first notes of a neighboring mule as he began his whinnying bray.

“I say, there’s a good show of sausages in the air this morning,” says Lamuse.  Lifting our eyes, we count them.

“There are eight sausages on our side and eight on the Boches’,” says Cocon, who has already counted them.

There are, in fact, at regular intervals along the horizon, opposite the distance-dwindled group of captive enemy balloons, the eight long hovering eyes of the army, buoyant and sensitive, and joined to the various headquarters by living threads.

“They see us as we see them. how the devil can one escape from that row of God Almighties up there?”

There’s our reply!

Suddenly, behind our backs, there bursts the sharp and deafening stridor of the 75’s.  Their increasing crackling thunder arouses and elates us.  We shout with our guns, and look at each other without hearing our shouts—­except for the curiously piercing voice that comes from Barque’s great mouth—­amid the rolling of that fantastic drum whose every note is the report of a cannon.

Then we turn our eyes ahead and outstretch our necks, and on the top of the hill we see the still higher silhouette of a row of black infernal trees whose terrible roots are striking down into the invisible slope where the enemy cowers.

While the “75” battery continues its barking a hundred yards behind us—­the sharp anvil-blows of a huge hammer, followed by a dizzy scream of force and fury—­a gigantic gurgling dominates the devilish oratorio; that, also, is coming from our side.  “It’s a gran’pa, that one!”