"Heinrich," said Vogt to Klitzing, "this is just like a summer holiday for us, isn't it? Isn't this air splendid?"
The clerk stopped his unpacking for a moment and drew in a deep breath of the invigorating odour.
"Oh yes," he answered; "we can do with this all right!"
However, it was not a "summer holiday" by any means, and the two friends found that out soon enough. There was a lot of real hard work to do during these weeks; but it was all done with a good will. Actual gun-practice was a very different thing from that dull work in garrison with blank cartridges.
The magazine where the ammunition was stored lay at some little distance from the other buildings, near the gun-park, and was surrounded by a thick high wall of earth. One realised from this how dangerous were its contents. But the store-men, who gave out the shrapnel-shells and the fuses, went about their work as if regardless of the fact that in each one of these lurked death and destruction. And yet in every shrapnel-shell were a couple of hundred bullets that could easily put a whole company hors de combat.
The beginning of the gun-practice did not, however, seem likely to be very dangerous. Only twenty-four shrapnel, i.e., six shots for each gun, were given out next morning. It was a first experience, meant especially for the younger officers, and Lieutenant Landsberg was to command the battery.
The men were very curious to know what he would make of it. The affected young dandy was extremely unpopular with every one. Besides which, he was clearly not blessed with much intelligence; for at garrison-drill more reproofs and reprimands were showered upon him alone than upon all the rest of the battery put together. Again and again would Wegstetten's trumpet-tones ring across the parade-ground: "Lieutenant Landsberg, you are not in your right place!" "Lieutenant Landsberg, you are allowing too much distance!" The little captain had sworn many a fierce oath as he galloped to and fro on his long-legged "Walküre": "Lieutenant Landsberg! attention, please. What in thunder are you about?" or "Good God, sir! don't go to sleep! Time's getting on!"
And to-day he was to command the whole battery. Wegstetten took the precaution of accompanying the young man himself, so that he might be able to come to the rescue in case of necessity.
He was soon needed. The battery started from the gun-park and left the camp, turning off the road and crossing the heather towards the broad level stretch of the exercise-ground.
Suddenly Landsberg's snapping voice crowed out: "Battery, halt!" and immediately afterwards: "Open with shrapnel!"