"Waiting for what?" I asked.
"Oh, just waiting until everything is ready."
"Then what will you do?"
"Oh, destroy the forts, I hope. This fellow ought to account for several," and he patted the side of the barrel.
"Will you destroy the city?" I asked.
"What for?" he asked. "What good would that do? If we expect to occupy a city we do not want it destroyed. Besides,"—he shrugged his shoulders expressively—"we are not Germans."
I walked up to the gun and stared into the breech. I adjusted my glasses again and through them looked down the barrel. Out on the horizon I could see the huge gray mass that the Major said was a cathedral. The gun was trained directly upon it—this silent gun.
"It could hit that cathedral now," I thought to myself. Then I thought of the Cathedral of Rheims. Again I stared through the glasses into the barrel of the gun. The light was better now, and the tops of the spires were visible above the bulky gray mass.
It was the Cathedral of Metz.