The officer shouted an order to the waiting telephonist. Overhead there was the rush of a shell, from far behind the sharp crack of a gun. Leisurely—one—two—three—four—the battery fired. The observation officer looked over the parapet. The colonel mounted by his side, watched also.
One—two—three—four—the battery fired again, repeated itself once more. Down there among the trees was a faint drifting smoke.
The colonel counted the minutes as the well-placed shells dropped around the château of his dreams. He saw, where none other saw, the sudden alarm below; the prisoner hurriedly evacuated from her home, dragged scrambling up through the dark trees into safety on the other side. One—two—three—four. She should be out of harm's way.
He turned his face to the trench, shouted an order. As he turned his gaze again swiftly towards the enemy he had a glimpse of something upon the bare lip of the ravine—something white, quickly moving. He had miscalculated! In a sudden agony, he shrieked rather than shouted a countermanding order. Too late! His voice was drowned in one long smashing detonation of a thousand rifles in an irregular volley from the trench. From the battery behind came the rapid, multiplied hammer-slams of the guns firing at their maximum speed.
He had a ghostly vision of an anguished woman's face, denying love.
The ravine was lashed by a tornado of shell and bullets. Caught in its depths, unseen yet precisely imagined from above, men were clambering in an agony of desperation to escape from the death that crashed unceasingly overhead and hailed about them. The white shrapnel puffs were countless against the dark background of the trees.
For a quarter of an hour the fierce fire continued, was answered in bitter anger from the opposing trenches. Then on both sides it died away. The dead in the valley lay in quiet.
The colonel, his face rigid, turned to walk along the trench. Suddenly a dog trailing a cord leaped over the parapet, dashed at him in a frenzy of joy. Then, perceiving the old woman, it jumped at her, nosed around her with vigorously wagging tail.
The old woman shrieked. The colonel looked. There was blood upon the dog's coat. The old woman drew herself up, held the colonel's eyes. "Murderer!" she cried with the intensity of a curse, and fainted.