"All ready, sir."
"First round!"
Fear lay heavy on Horace, but an overmastering desire to watch the modern gladiatorial arena, drove him to look.
The firing number bent down to seize the lanyard.
"Fire!"
His experience at Beaufays had taught the boy to put his fingers to his ears, but it was the first time he had heard a .75, the famous "Soixante-Quinze" which the French believed—and rightly—to be the best field-gun in the world. It cracked deafeningly, stridently. The flame which darted out of the muzzle was long and thin and seemed to lick the air as though envious of the shell's flight. The smell of the powder was acrid and bitter, somewhat like the taste of an unripe persimmon, Horace thought.
"One thousand, five hundred!" the battery commander called.
And Number One of the gun crew repeated:
"One thousand, five hundred."