There followed then a strange, unbelievable silence, as though the world had died. It lasted but a moment, for perhaps the space that a breath may be held. Again Hal glanced at his watch.
"Eleven o'clock!"
He uttered the words aloud.
Eleven o'clock. The armistice was now effective. Fighting should cease.
Came suddenly such an uproar of relief and jubilance, such a shrieking of claxons—gas claxons that shrieked now with pure joy—and such a shout from both lines that only men possessed of sheer happiness can utter.
Chester pulled off his gas mask and shouted with the rest. And even as he did so he caught a faint odor which he knew to be that of mustard gas. But nothing mattered now.
Hal and Chester piled out of their funk holes with the rest, waving their helmets and shouting at the top of their voices. Then, like a covey of quail scurrying from a hawk's shadow, they piled back again.
"Whizz—bang!"
Scarcely ten yards from Chester's hole a shell exploded.
"Wow!" exclaimed a voice. "Who said the war was over? Marshal Foch'll have to come out and tell me himself before I believe it."