Our panting becomes hoarse groaning, yet still we hurl ourselves toward the horizon.

“The Boches!  I see them!” a man says suddenly.  “Yes—­their heads, there—­above the trench—­it’s there, the trench, that line.  It’s close, Ah, the hogs!”

We can indeed make out little round gray caps which rise and then drop on the ground level, fifty yards away, beyond a belt of dark earth, furrowed and humped.  Encouraged they spring forward, they who now form the group where I am.  So near the goal, so far unscathed, shall we not reach it?  Yes, we will reach it!  We make great strides and no longer hear anything.  Each man plunges straight ahead, fascinated by the terrible trench, bent rigidly forward, almost incapable of turning his head to right or to left.  I have a notion that many of us missed their footing and fell to the ground.  I jump sideways to miss the suddenly erect bayonet of a toppling rifle.  Quite close to me, Farfadet jostles me with his face bleeding, throws himself on Volpatte who is beside me and clings to him.  Volpatte doubles up without slackening his rush and drags him along some paces, then shakes him off without looking at him and without knowing who be is, and shouts at him in a breaking voice almost choked with exertion:  “Let me go, let me go, nom de Dieu!  They’ll pick you up directly—­don’t worry.”

The other man sinks to the ground, and his face, plastered with a scarlet mask and void of all expression, turns in every direction; while Volpatte, already in the distance, automatically repeats between his teeth, “Don’t worry,” with a steady forward gaze on the line.

A shower of bullets spirts around me, increasing the number of those who suddenly halt, who collapse slowly, defiant and gesticulating, of those who dive forward solidly with all the body’s burden, of the shouts, deep, furious, and desperate, and even of that hollow and terrible gasp when a man’s life goes bodily forth in a breath.  And we who are not yet stricken, we look ahead, we walk and we run, among the frolics of the death that strikes at random into our flesh.

The wire entanglements—­and there is one stretch of them intact.  We go along to where it has been gutted into a wide and deep opening.  This is a colossal funnel-hole, formed of smaller funnels placed together, a fantastic volcanic crater, scooped there by the guns.

The sight of this convulsion is stupefying; truly it seems that it must have come from the center of the earth.  Such a rending of virgin strata puts new edge on our attacking fury, and none of us can keep from shouting with a solemn shake of the head—­even just now when words are but painfully torn from our throats—­“Ah, Christ!  Look what hell we’ve given ’em there!  Ah, look!”

Driven as if by the wind, we mount or descend at the will of the hollows and the earthy mounds in the gigantic fissure dug and blackened and burned by furious flames.  The soil clings to the feet and we tear them out angrily.  The accouterments and stuffs that cover the soft soil, the linen that is scattered about from sundered knapsacks, prevent us from sticking fast in it, and we are careful to plant our feet in this debris when we jump into the holes or climb the hillocks.