the breach; other men sprang forward and began firing.  The reserves, the hospital-corps men and the engineers hugged the breastwork for cover.  The leaves clipped from the trees by bullets were blown aside with the hurricane breaths of shrapnel bursts; bullets whistled so near Marta that she heard their shrillness above every other sound.  She was amazed that the house still remained standing—­that any one was alive.  But she had a glimpse of Dellarme maintaining his set smile and another of Feller, who had crept up behind the automatic, making impatient “come-on! come-on! what-is-the-matter-with-you?” gestures in the direction of the batteries in front of the castle.

“Thur-eesh—­thur-eesh!” As the welcome note swept overhead he waved his hands up and down in mad rapture and then peeped over the breastwork to ascertain if the practice were good.  The Brown batteries had been a little slow in coming into action, but they had the range from the Gray batteries’ flashes the previous night and, undisturbed in the security of their own flashes screened by the trees, soon broke the precision of the opposing fire.

Now shells coming infrequently fell short or went wide.  The air cleared.  Marta could again see distinctly, and she marvelled that the brown figures were proceeding with their knitting as if nothing had happened.  She could not resist a thrill of grim admiration for their steadiness or an appreciative thrill as she saw Feller eagerly peering over the automatic gunner’s shoulder to watch the effect of his fire.  Suddenly, both the rifles and the automatic, which had been firing deliberately, began to fire with desperate rapidity.  It was as if a boxer, sparring slowly, let out all his power in a rain of blows.  She could see nothing of the Grays, but she understood that they were making a rush.

Then a chance shell, striking at the one point which the man who fired it six thousand yards away would have chosen as his bull’s-eye, obscured Feller and the automatic and its gunners in the havoc of explosion.  Feller must have been killed.  The dust settled; she saw Dellarme making frantic gestures as he looked at his men.  They were keeping up their fusillade with unflinching rapidity.  Through the breach left in the breastwork she had glimpses, as the dust was finally dissipated, of gray figures, bayonets fixed, pressing together as they came on fiercely toward the opening.  The Browns let go the full blast of their magazines.  Had that chance shell turned the scales?  Would the Grays get into the breastwork?

All Marta’s faculties and emotions were frozen in her stare of suspense at the breach.  Her heart seemed straining with the effort of the living, who heard nothing, thought nothing, in the crux of their effort.  War’s own mesmerism had made her forget Feller and everything except the gamble, the turn of the card, while the gray figures kept stumbling on over their fallen.  Then her heart leaped, a cry in a gust of short breaths broke from her lips as the Browns let go a rasping, explosive, demoniacal cheer.  The first attack had been checked!