There was such a whistling in his ears that John thought at first he had been hit, but when he shook himself a little he found he was unhurt, and his heart resumed its normal beat.  Other shells coming out of space began to strike, but none so near, and the Strangers went calmly on.  On their right was a Paris regiment made up mostly of short, but thick-chested men, all very dark.  Its numbers were only one-third what they had been a week before, and its colonel was Pierre Louis Bougainville, late Apache, late of the Butte Montmartre.  All the colonels, majors and captains of this regiment had been killed and he now led it, earning his promotion by the divine right of genius.  He, at least, could look into his knapsack and see there the shadow of a marshal’s baton, a shadow that might grow more material.

John watched him and he wondered at this transformation of a rat of Montmartre into a man.  And yet there had been many such transformations in the French Revolution.  What had happened once could always happen again.  Napoleon himself had been the son of a poor little lawyer in a distant and half-savage island, not even French in blood, but an Italian and an alien.

Crash!  Another shell burst near, and told him to quit thinking of old times and attend to the business before him.  The past had nothing more mighty than the present.  The speed of the Strangers was increased a little, and the French regiments on either side kept pace with them.  More shells fell.  They came, shrieking through the air like hideous birds of remote ages.  Some passed entirely over the advancing troops, but one fell among the French on John’s right, and the column opening out, passed shudderingly around the spot where death had struck.

Two or three of the Strangers were blown away presently.  It seemed to John’s horrified eyes that one of them entirely vanished in minute fragments.  He knew now what annihilation meant.

The heavy French field guns behind them were firing over their heads, but there was still nothing in front, merely the low green hills and not even a flash of flame nor a puff of smoke.  The whistling death came out of space.

The French went on, a wide shallow valley opened out before them, and they descended by the easy slope into it.  Here the German shells and shrapnel ceased to fall among them, but, as the heavy thunder continued, John knew the guns had merely turned aside their fire for other points on the French line.  Carstairs by his side gave an immense sigh of relief.

“I can never get used to the horrible roaring and groaning of those shells,” he said.  “If I get killed I’d like it to be done without the thing that does it shrieking and gloating over me.”

They were well in the valley now, and John noticed that along its right ran a dense wood, fresh and green despite the lateness of the season.  But as he looked he heard the shrill snarling of many trumpets, and, for a moment or two, his heart stood still, as a vast body of German cavalry burst from the screen of the wood and rushed down upon them.