The gun pointer made the slight correction necessary, the mortar again sent its shell purring through the air against the village, which this time, it was learned, broke into flames, and while the men went back to their noonday rest, the Lieutenant explained the fine points of his beloved guns.  One man, as had been seen, could manipulate the elevation gear with one hand easily and quickly; ten of his horses could take the mortar, weighing eight tons, anywhere; it could fire up to 500 shots per day.  He was proud of the skillful concealment of his guns, which had been firing for four days from the same position without being discovered, although French aviators had located all the sister batteries, all of which had suffered loss from shrapnel fire.

Along the roadside through the Cote Lorraine were here and there graves with rude crosses and penciled inscriptions.  At the western edge of the forest the battle panorama of the Meuse Valley suddenly opened out, the hills falling away again steeply to the level valley below.  The towns below—­St. Mihiel and Banoncour—­seemed absolutely deserted, not a person being visible even around the large barracks in the latter town.  While the little party of officers and spectators, including the correspondent, were watching the artillery duel on the far horizon or endeavoring to pick out the infantry positions, a shrapnel suddenly burst directly before them, high in the air.  There was a general stir, the assumption being that the French had taken the group on the hillside for a battery staff picking out positions for the guns; but as other shots were fired it was seen that the shrapnel was exploding regularly above the barracks, a mile and a half away, the French evidently suspecting the presence of German troops there.

A ten-mile ride southward led to the position of the Austrian 12-inch battery.  The two guns this time were planted by the side of the road, screened only in front by a little wood, but exposed to view from both sides, the rear, and above.  For this greater exposure the battery had paid correspondingly, several of its men having been killed or wounded by hostile fire.  Here, as in the German batteries, the war work in progress went on with a machinelike regularity and absence of spectacular features more characteristic of a rolling mill than a battle.  The men at the guns went through their work with the deftness and absence of confusion of high-class mechanics.  The heavy shells were rolled to the guns, hoisted by a chain winch to the breech opening, and discharged in uninteresting succession, a short pause coming after each shot, until the telephonic report from the observation stand was received.  The battery had been firing all day at Fort Lionville, at a range of 9,400 meters, (nearly six miles,) and the battery commander was then endeavoring to put out of action the only gun turret which still answered the fire.  The task of finding this comparatively minute target, forty or fifty feet in diameter, was being followed with an accuracy which promised eventual success.