"What's that moving away over there, Rob?" demanded Merritt. "Seems like a gray looking snake creeping out from the shelter of the woods. I declare if I don't believe it is a mass of men charging straight at the Belgian trenches!"
"The Germans all wear a sort of grayish green uniform, you know," Tubby declared, "which is so like the dirt that lots of times you can't tell the soldiers from the earth half a mile away."
"Look sharp, fellows," said Rob, "because that is where they're going to shoot their bolt. What we see is a battalion of infantry charging. Now watch how they begin to gather momentum. Yes, and when the gun fire lets up we'll hear the voices of thousands of men singing as they rush forward, ready to die for the Fatherland."
They stood there with trembling limbs, and continued to watch what was developing right before their eyes. It seemed as though that gray mass would never cease coming into view. The whole open space was covered with lines upon lines of soldiers all pushing in one direction, and that where the intrenchments of the Belgians must lie.
"Oh! look! look! they're opening on them with quick-fire guns, and all sorts of things!" Tubby exclaimed, in absolute horror. "Why, I can see lanes cut in the lines of the Germans; but they always close up, and keep right on! Isn't it terrible?"
"It is sublime!" said Rob; and that tribute to the unflinching bravery of the German advance was about the limit of a boy's vocabulary.
"But the plucky little Belgians won't yield an inch of ground, you see!" cried Merritt. "They keep pouring in that terrible fire, and mowing the Germans down, just like they were cutting wheat on a Minnesota farm."
"How will it all end, I wonder?" said Rob, fascinated, more than he would have believed possible, by the panorama that was being unfolded before his eyes.
"If the ammunition of the Belgian batteries and Maxims holds out," ventured Merritt, "there won't be any German army left in this part of the country. Their best troops are said to be down in France now, fighting the Allies; but if these are only second or third class reserves, I wonder what the really top-notch ones can do in a battle."
"They're weakening, let me tell you!" Rob startled the others by saying. "Watch and you'll see that they don't advance as fast as before. Perhaps the general in charge has found that the trenches can't be taken by a direct charge. They're going to fall back, and let the artillery start in again! The first part of the terrible battle is over, for there the Germans begin to scatter, and run, to get out of range of the Maxims!"