"This must be what you have been expecting, Major," shouted Ribaut over the racket. "A barrage!"
Down the line ran the noise of bombardment, the thing becoming more furious every instant. Then some shells landed in first-line trenches nearby.
"Take shelter!" shouted Captain Ribaut. "Now! At once!"
French soldiers were scurrying to dug-out shelters. Ribaut led the officer party to a dugout reached by eight descending steps cut in the earth. The apartment in which they found themselves led out some fifteen feet under the barbed wire defenses.
"How long is this likely to last?" demanded Major Wells, eyeing the Frenchman keenly by the light of the one slim candle that burned in the dug-out.
"Perhaps fifteen minutes; maybe until after daylight," Ribaut replied, with a shrug.
"What is the object?"
"Who can say? But a barrage fire is being laid down between our first and second lines. That means that no reinforcements can reach us from the support trenches. And our own trench is being shelled furiously, to drive all into shelters. My friends, it is likely that the Germans, enraged by the capture of Colonel Pernim, who must be missed by now, are paying us back with a raid."
"More of your strenuous doings then, Dick," laughed Greg.
"At least a raid will be highly interesting," Dick retorted. "So far we haven't been in one, and we're here for experience, you know."