Don Marcelo had not time to recover from his surprise before there came a second explosion nearer the mud wall . . . a third inside the park.  It seemed to him that he had been suddenly flung into another world from which he was seeing men and things across a fantastic atmosphere which roared and rocked and destroyed with the violence of its reverberations.  He was stunned with the awfulness of it all, and yet he was not afraid.  Until then, he had imagined fear in a very different form.  He felt an agonizing vacuum in his stomach.  He staggered violently all the time, as though some force were pushing him about, giving him first a blow on the chest, and then another on the back to straighten him up.

A strong smell of acids penetrated the atmosphere, making respiration very difficult, and filling his eyes with smarting tears.  On the other hand, the uproar no longer disturbed him, it did not exist for him.  He supposed it was still going on from the trembling air, the shaking of things around him, in the whirlwind which was bending men double but was not reacting within his body.  He had lost the faculty of hearing; all the strength of his senses had concentrated themselves in looking.  His eyes appeared to have acquired multiple facets like those of certain insects.  He saw what was happening before, beside, behind him, simultaneously witnessing extraordinary things as though all the laws of life had been capriciously overthrown.

An official a few feet away suddenly took an inexplicable flight.  He began to rise without losing his military rigidity, still helmeted, with furrowed brow, moustache blond and short, mustard-colored chest, and gloved hands still holding field-glasses and map—­but there his individuality stopped.  The lower extremities, in their grayish leggings remained on the ground, inanimate as reddening, empty moulds.  The trunk, in its violent ascent, spread its contents abroad like a bursting rocket.  Further on, some gunners, standing upright, were suddenly stretched full length, converted into a motionless row, bathed in blood.

The line of infantry was lying close to the ground.  The men had huddled themselves together near the loopholes through which they aimed their guns, trying to make themselves less visible.  Many had placed their knapsacks over their heads or at their backs to defend themselves from the flying bits of shell.  If they moved at all, it was only to worm their way further into the earth, trying to hollow it out with their stomachs.  Many of them had changed position with mysterious rapidity, now lying stretched on their backs as though asleep.  One had his uniform torn open across the abdomen, showing between the rents of the cloth, slabs of flesh, blue and red that protruded and swelled up with a bubbling expansion.  Another had his legs shot away, and was looking around with surprised eyes and a black mouth rounded into an effort to howl, but from which no sound ever came.