He had blown out the brains of his first German.

Fires of hell, in two long lines, bordering a barren, ghastly, hazy strip of land, burst forth from the earth.  From holes where men hid poured thunder of guns and stream of smoke and screeching of iron.  That worthless strip of land, barring deadly foes, shook as with repeated earthquakes.  Huge spouts of black and yellow earth lifted, fountain-like, to the dull, heavy bursts of shells.  Pound and jar, whistle and whine, long, broken rumble, and the rattling concatenation of quick shots like metallic cries, exploding hail-storm of iron in the air, a desert over which thousands of puffs of smoke shot up and swelled and drifted, the sliding crash far away, the sibilant hiss swift overhead.  Boom!  Weeeee—­eeeeooooo! from the east.  Boom!  Weeeee—­eeeeooooo! from the west.

At sunset there was no let-up.  The night was all the more hideous.  Along the horizon flashed up the hot sheets of lightning that were not of a summer storm.  Angry, lurid, red, these upflung blazes and flames illumined the murky sky, showing in the fitful and flickering intervals wagons driving toward the front, and patrols of soldiers running toward some point, and great upheavals of earth spread high.

This heavy cannonading died away in the middle of the night until an hour before dawn, when it began again with redoubled fury and lasted until daybreak.

Dawn came reluctantly, Dorn thought.  He was glad.  It meant a charge.  Another night of that hellish shrieking and bursting of shells would kill his mind, if not his body.  He stood on guard at a fighting-post.  Corporal Owens lay at his feet, wounded slightly.  He would not retire.  As the cannons ceased he went to sleep.  Rogers stood close on one side, Dixon on the other.  The squad had lived through that awful night.  Soldiers were bringing food and drink to them.  All appeared grimly gay.

Dorn was not gay.  But he knew this was the day he would laugh in the teeth of death.  A slumbrous, slow heat burned deep in him, like a covered fire, fierce and hot at heart, awaiting the wind.  Watching there, he did not voluntarily move a muscle, yet all his body twitched like that of the trained athlete, strained to leap into the great race of his life.

An officer came hurrying through.  The talking hushed.  Men on guard, backs to the trench, never moved their eyes from the forbidden land in front.  The officer spoke.  Look for a charge!  Reserves were close behind.  He gave his orders and passed on.

Then an Allied gun opened up with a boom.  The shell moaned on over.  Dorn saw where it burst, sending smoke and earth aloft.  That must have been a signal for a bombardment of the enemy all along this sector, for big and little guns began to thunder and crack.