The normal shelling of the afternoon—­a scattered bombardment all over the landscape, which only brings perhaps half a dozen shells to your immediate neighbourhood once in every ten minutes—­has noticeably quickened.  The German is obviously turning on more batteries.  The light field-gun shrapnel is fairly scattered as before.  But 5.9-inch howitzers are being added to it.  Except for his small field guns, the German makes little use of guns.  His work is almost entirely done with howitzers.  He possesses big howitzers—­8-inch and larger—­as we do.  But the backbone of his artillery is the 5.9 howitzer; and after that probably the 4.2.

The shells from both these guns are beginning to fall more thickly.  Huge black clouds shoot into the air from various parts of the foreground, and slowly drift away across the hill-top.  Suddenly there is a descending shriek, drawn out for a second or more, coming terrifyingly near; a crash far louder than the nearest thunder; a colossal thump to the earth which seems to move the whole world about an inch from its base; a scatter of flying bits and all sorts of under-noises, rustle of a flying wood splinter, whir of fragments, scatter of falling earth.  Before it is half finished another shriek exactly similar is coming through it.  Another crash—­apparently right on the crown of your head, as if the roof beams of the sky had been burst in.  You can just hear, through the crash, the shriek of a third and fourth shell as they come tearing down the vault of heaven—­crash—­crash.  Clouds of dust are floating over you.  A swifter shriek and something breaks like a glass bottle in front of the parapet, sending its fragments slithering low overhead.  It bursts like a rainstorm, sheet upon sheet, smash, smash, smash, with one or two more of the heavier shells punctuating the shower of the lighter ones.  The lighter shell is shrapnel from field guns, sent, I dare say, to keep you in the trench while the heavier shell pounds you there.  A couple of salvos from each, perhaps twenty or thirty shells in the minute, and the shrieks cease.  The dust drifts down the hill.  The sky clears.  The sun looks in.  Five minutes later down comes exactly such another shower.

That is the beginning.  As the evening wears on, the salvos become more frequent.  All through the night they go on.  The next morning the intervals are becoming even less.  Occasionally the hurricane reaches such an intensity that there seems no interval at all.  There is an easing in the afternoon—­which may indicate that the worst is over, or merely that the guns are being cleaned, or the gunners having their tea.  Towards dusk it swells in a wave heavier than any that has yet come.  All through the second night the inferno lasts.  In the grey dawn of the second day it increases in a manner almost unbelievable—­the dust of it covers everything; it is quite impossible to see.  The earth shakes and quivers with the pounding.