ight of the struggle, Fritz had been carried away by a
perfect delirium of excitement, as if in a dream; and what he had done
had been done almost unconsciously, in spite of himself, and on the spur
of the moment. He had been marched here; marched there; halted; ordered
to fire; charged with his comrades; retreated; charged again--all, as it
seemed, in one brief second of time!

What, with the continuous roar of artillery reverberating through the
surrounding hills; the constant ping; pinging and singing of rifle
bullets; the rattling discharge of platoon firing; the whirring of heavy
shot and shell through the air above the ranks and the bursting every
now and then of some huge bomb in their midst, knocking down the men
like ninepins and sending up a pyramid of dust and stones, mingled with
particles of their arms and clothing, as well as fragments of the torn
flesh of some victims, on the missile exploding in a sheet of crackling
flame, with a rasping, tearing noise--all combined with the thick
sulphureous cloud of gunpowder which hung over the battlefield, half
asphyxiating the combatants, whose hoarse cries of rage and hatred could
be heard above the noise of the cannon and discharges of musketry, mixed
up with the words of command of their different officers, the "_En
avant, mes amis_!" of the French, the stern "_Vorwarts_!" of the
Germans, and the occasional wild, weird, frenzied scream of some
stricken charger echoing shrilly in the distance, like the wail of a
lost soul in purgatory--the whole realised a mad riot of destruction and
carnival of blood, the essence of whose moving spirit appeared to take
possession of each one engaged, rendering him unaccountable for his
actions for the time being. Like the rest, Fritz felt the "war fever"
upon him. A red mist hovered before his eyes. He smelt blood and
longed to spill more. The fumes of brimstone acted on his senses like
hasheesh to narcotic smokers. An irresistible impulse urged him
forwards. A voice kept crying in his ears, "Kill and slay, and spare
not!"

This was while the fury of the combat lasted, when the Prussian
battalions were hurling their human waves in columns against the rocky
defences of Gravelotte, only for them to fall back impotently, like the
broken foam and spent wash of billows which have assailed in vain the
precipitous peaks of some cliff-defended coast that repels their every
attack; when the sharp clash of steel met opposing steel