“Look, they’re sending torpedoes over there!” said Paradis, pointing.  Torpedoes go straight up, or very nearly so, like larks, fluttering and rustling; then they stop, hesitate, and come straight down again, heralding their fall in its last seconds by a “baby-cry” that we know well.  From here, the inhabitants of the ridge seem like invisible players, lined up for a game with a ball.

“In the Argonne,” says Lamuse, “my brother says in a letter that they get turtle-doves, as he calls them.  They’re big heavy things, fired off very close.  They come in cooing, really they do, he says, and when they break wind they don’t half make a shindy, he says.”

“There’s nothing worse than the mortar-toad, that seems to chase after you and jump over the top of you, and it bursts in the very trench, just scraping over the bank.”

“Tiens, tiens, did you hear it?” A whistling was approaching us when suddenly it ceased.  The contrivance has not burst.  “It’s a shell that cried off,” Paradis asserts.  And we strain our ears for the satisfaction of hearing—­or of not hearing—­others.

Lamuse says:  “All the fields and the roads and the villages about here, they’re covered with dud shells of all sizes—­ours as well, to say truth.  The ground must be full of ’em, that you can’t see.  I wonder how they’ll go on, later, when the time comes to say, ’That’s enough of it, let’s start work again.’”

And all the time, in a monotony of madness, the avalanche of fire and iron goes on; shrapnel with its whistling explosion and its overcharged heart of furious metal and the great percussion shells, whose thunder is that of the railway engine which crashes suddenly into a wall, the thunder of loaded rails or steel beams, toppling down a declivity.  The air is now glutted and viewless, it is crossed and recrossed by heavy blasts, and the murder of the earth continues all around, deeply and more deeply, to the limit of completion.

There are even other guns which now join in—­they are ours.  Their report is like that of the 75’s, but louder, and it has a prolonged and resounding echo, like thunder reverberating among mountains.

“They’re the long 120’s.  They’re on the edge of the wood half a mile away.  Fine guns, old man, like gray-hounds.  They’re slender and fine-nosed, those guns—­you want to call them ‘Madame.’  They’re not like the 220’s—­they’re all snout, like coal-scuttles, and spit their shells out from the bottom upwards.  The 120’s get there just the same, but among the teams of artillery they look like kids in bassinettes.”

Conversation languishes; here and there are yawns.  The dimensions and weight of this outbreak of the guns fatigue the mind.  Our voices flounder in it and are drowned.

“I’ve never seen anything like this for a bombardment,” shouts Barque.

“We always say that,” replies Paradis.

“Just so,” bawls Volpatte.  “There’s been talk of an attack lately; I should say this is the beginning of something.”