They appeared only for an instant, as, jumping up from one trench,
where the shells were falling, they rushed to another deep defile.
Half a score, who had shown themselves in one group, vanished; and
Chester was buffeted again by the shock of high explosives.
Gas and still more gas followed high explosives again.
Chester, creeping now, got, even through his mask, smarting, searing twinges of the gas. He was among bodies and wounded men. Their masks, when, they fell, had become torn or broken. The gas had got them.
Five minutes to 10 o'clock had passed.
CHAPTER XXX
THE ATTACK
It was three minutes to the attack or less, and the hurricane fire of the French artillery swept cyclonic over the German lines.
A thousand yards away, more or less, as the ground gave advantage, the French front-line trenches were filled with men awaiting the hour of 10—two minutes off now—to go over the top.
The German batteries, behind, knew that the time was near; but just when it would be, in two minutes, or in ten or in an hour-they did not know. When the fire of the French guns lifted, they did not know whether it would be to let the poilus assault, or whether it would be only to trick the German infantry and machine-gun men out of their tunnels and dugouts to meet the frightful fall of the French hurricane fire again.
But the German guns doubled their response now when the French trebled theirs.