"Aim for 3,750 metres," repeated the soldier at the telephone.
The Lieutenant and a couple of his men busied themselves around the sight and elevating cranks of the gun. Another man removed a leather cap which had been fitted over Julia's nose to keep the rain out.
I was busy sticking cotton wool in my ears.
"The Captain says to say when you are ready and he will give the order to fire."
"All ready," said the Lieutenant, backing away from Julia and holding a thick white cord in his hand which ran from her to him.
"All ready," replied the soldier into the telephone.
"Tirez!" ("Fire!") said he a fraction of a second later.
The Lieutenant's arm gave a jerk, the whole front of the shelter was a mass of blood-red flame, there was a bellow of sound, the barrel of the great gun ran smoothly three feet or so back into the cellar and then smoothly forward again. There was a rush of air around my legs.
Almost simultaneously with the report I heard with one ear the telephonist say, "Coup parti" ("The shot has left"), while with the other I listened to the long-drawn wheeze with which the projectile mounted into the sky on its mountain-high trajectory. In the second which had meanwhile elapsed one of the artillerymen had swung open the breech of the gun, another had taken out the now empty copper cylinder and placed it on the floor to the right of Julia, a third had lifted a new shell and with the aid of the second had run it into the breech, and a fourth had slipped in a fresh copper cylinder containing a full charge of three of the little cream-colored tape-coils. Whereupon the first artilleryman had swung to and locked the breech again.