He sprang to the ground, and, in a state of the utmost panic and excitement, lunged heavily through the mud, seeking for a passageway between the vehicles.
Those were terrible moments to Chase Manning. He felt cold shivers coursing through him; his heart was throbbing painfully.
Shells began bursting with fearful force close about him and his overstrained nerves threatened to give way completely.
Men were dashing past, running with all that mad haste which characterizes the actions of those fleeing for their lives.
"It's all up! It's all up!"
The words fell stutteringly from Chase Manning's lips.
The flashing fire of the exploding projectiles, the thunderous concussions and the fumes which were wafted in his face appalled him. He began to experience a feeling of rage—of bitter rage against those who were responsible for the engines of destruction on the opposite hills.
He soon found a narrow passageway between the transports and then, with lowered head, began running across a muddy, uneven field—a field that one moment was swallowed up in pitchy blackness and the next illuminated with a dazzling glare of lightning. In his panic and confusion of mind, he entirely forgot the shelters that might have been found along the road.
As he plunged and staggered ahead his feet often sank deeply into the soft, yielding soil, which held on to them with a sucking, tenacious grip that was hard to break. Although dazed—almost unable to think coherently—he never ceased to put forth his utmost exertions. The bursting projectiles were dropping to the right and left of him, ahead and behind, each with a gleam of flame, a stunning detonation and an enormous rounded pile of smoke, and now and then shrapnel shells exploding in the air sprayed the earth with bullets.
Despite the pains and aches which the strenuous exertion brought into his frame, Chase kept struggling on, in the midst of Heaven's storm and the far deadlier storm created by man. Many a time he had narrow escapes from falling headlong into the shell-craters that pitted the field; many a time he crawled around a rim to safety.