"We were right!" said Paul, exultingly. "That is to be a great battery. They must be very powerful guns, too, or else they would have been ready with the rest, and in action by this time. Ah! I'm glad I thought of the telephone!"
"How fast they are working!" said Arthur. That was what caught his eye in the strange, weird scene. There was no confusion, despite the extraordinary efforts that were obviously being made to hasten the work. Every man, as they could see, even at that distance, knew exactly what he was to do. It seemed that the whole operation must have been planned far in advance, even rehearsed. Such perfect team work could not be the result of chance, nor even of unusually good discipline. No, somewhere in Germany just such scenes must have been enacted in time of peace, that when the grim, harsh test of real war came there might be no delay, no lost motions, no trifling, unforeseen hitch to render useless all the elaborate plan that had been made. This might be war, but it was a grim, cold business, too.
"It's like going to see the steel works at Seraing at night," said Paul. "Except that there's less glare from the blast furnaces, of course."
"A good many of those men aren't in uniform," said Arthur, his keen eyes taking in details as he grew more accustomed to the strange and awe inspiring grandeur of the scene as a whole.
"They're probably workmen from Essen," said Paul. He had a pair of binoculars out now, and was looking closely at every detail of the scene.
"But why should they be there? This is a time for soldiers."
"Not altogether, Arthur. I know—don't you remember what Uncle Henri told us?—that a lot of the workmen from Seraing would have to be along with some of the new field artillery pieces, because the secrets of some things are kept even from the soldiers. Those are probably some of the men from the Krupp works, brought here just to handle these big guns."
"Well, they take their chances, just like soldiers, if they do that, don't they?"
"Of course. They really are soldiers, just as much as the others, but they have special work to do, that they're trained for. That's the only difference."
"What are we going to do now?"