Then he heard a sound, faint but deep, which came rolling like an echo, and he recognized it as the distant note of a big gun.  He quivered a little, as he leaned against his motor cycle, but quickly stiffened again to attention.  The faint rolling sound came again from their right and then many times.  John, using his glasses, saw nothing there, and the giant general, still standing up in the car and also using his glasses, saw nothing there either.

Yet the same quiver that affected John had gone through this whole army of two hundred thousand men, one of the huge links in the French chain.  There was none among them who did not know that the far note was the herald of battle, not a mere battle of armies, but of nations face to face.

General Vaugirard did not show any excitement.  He leaped lightly from the car, and then began to pace up and down slowly, as if he were awaiting orders.  The men moved restlessly on the meadows, looking like a vast sea of varied colors, as the sun glimmered on the red and blue of their uniforms.

But no order came for them to advance.  John thought that perhaps they were saved to be driven as a wedge into the German center and whispered his belief to de Rougemont, who agreed with him.

“They are opening on the left, too,” said the Frenchman.  “Can’t you hear the growling of the guns there?”

John listened and soon he separated the note from other sounds.  Beyond a doubt the battle had now begun on both flanks, though at distant points.  He wondered where the English force was, though he had an idea that it was on the left then.  Yet he was already thoroughly at home with the staff of General Vaugirard.

The growling on either side of them seemed soon to come a little closer, but John knew nevertheless that it was many miles away.

“Not an enemy in sight, not even a trace of smoke,” said de Rougemont to him.  “We seem to be a great army here, merely resting in the fields, and yet we know that a huge battle is going on.”

“And that’s about all we do know,” said John.  “What has impressed me in this war is the fact that high officers even know so little.  When cannon throw shells ten or twelve miles, eyesight doesn’t get much chance.”

A wait for a full half-hour followed, a period of intense anxiety for all in the group, and for the whole army too.  John used his glasses freely, and often he saw the French soldiers moving about in a restless manner, until they were checked by their officers.  But most of them were lying down, their blue coats and red trousers making a vast and vivid blur against the green of the grass.

All the while the sound of the cannon grew, but, despite the power of his glasses, John could not see a sign of war.  Only that roaring sound came to tell him that battle, vast, gigantic, on a scale the world had never seen before, was joined, and the volume of the cannon fire, beyond a doubt, was growing.  It pulsed heavily, and either he or his fancy noticed a steady jarring motion.  A faint acrid taint crept into the air and he felt it in his nose and throat.  He coughed now and then, and he observed that men around him coughed also.  But, on the whole, the army was singularly still, the soldiers straining eye or ear to see something or hear more of the titanic struggle that was raging on either side of them.