The Belgians, too, have suffered considerably from the mitrailleuse, but have held their entrenchment with remarkable courage.
The Germans returned to the attack, and were expected to renew the assault to-night.
It was too dark to see or be seen in the undulating fields, but voices from the trenches and the movements of horses, and the occasional rush of a military motor, acted as signs.
Taking the chance of something happening within hearing, I made myself comfortable under some bushes near an open track leading through the lines of entanglements—so far as they could be located. There was an occasional sound of distant firing, outposts skirmishing; later in the night a single whistle and the sound of wheels grinding on tracks. What may have been a battery moved up on to a rise in the ground—seen as a shadow—about a quarter of a mile to the south. Here they seemed to stop, for there was silence again.
Another long wait, and then the sound of cantering horses—some four or five—coming by the track from behind, inside the lines. Were they friends?
They had passed me, and were in a line with the slight hill to the south, when little sparks of flame—half a dozen or so—glinted for a second out of the shadows.
There was the slight "phit" of bullets through the leaves, and then the purr of a maxim. The canter broke into a sharp gallop down the track, following upon a single shouted order.
Some heavier piece of ordnance coughed a short distance to the left. A reply came from far in front. A rattle, or rather an uneasy stir and crackle, like a wet bonfire, moved along the lines, and died away in the dark to the south.
The sound of the horses' feet stopped—probably they had turned on to softer field-mould. And then silence again.
But this time the sense of human presence stayed with me. The darkness seemed strained and alive with tense expectancy.