“No. It ain’t bad yet.”
“You get that mask on and keep it on. Now. While I’m waiting.... Is it on? ... There. You can telephone as well through a mask as without it. Try it.... All right.”
There was a moment of comparative inactivity, then the telephone again. “Mustard gas to the right,” was reported, and after a few moments a call from a certain company of infantry which had become unhappy in its position: “Say, we want a retaliatory barrage. We’re getting everything here—big, little, and gas.”
“They want a barrage,” reported Jimmy.
“Where do they want it?” asked the lieutenant-colonel.
“I don’t know. Wake George up; that’s his business.... Say, let’s notify the gas officer; we’re beginning to get it pretty close here.”
Jimmy called the person designated as George. “Hey!” he said, irreverently. “Get your pants on and come down. The adjutant wants you.”
It was very chilly. Ken shivered with the cold, and was rather thankful it was cold, because it gave him honest reason for shivering. He was keyed to a high pitch, nerves taut, imagination straining its leash, but he was enjoying himself after a strange fashion, reveling in this experience, in the sensations of peril, in the fact that he was at the very center of things. The artillery activity continued to increase, and the ear-shattering, sweeping, rolling gusts of infernal clamor seemed to reach a very climax of sound.... Again and again he could feel upon his own body the shock of adjacent explosions. It required but a few feet difference in the fall of one of those shells to mean all that stood between life and death for him.... And yet he was not afraid. He was not conscious of fear, only of that queer electric sensation, and of an elevation of spirits due to intense excitement.
The telephone insisted with a new insistence each moment. “Gas reported to the right.... Gas reported to the left....”
“What shall we do about it?” Jimmy asked the lieutenant-colonel.