Jack watched him until his white shirt became a speck, a dot, and
finally vanished among the trees on the blue hill. When he was
gone, Jack turned sharply away and climbed the furze-covered
slope from whence he hoped to see the cannon, now firing only at
five-minute intervals. As he toiled up the incline he carefully
kept himself under cover, for he had no desire to meet any lurking
franc-tireurs. It is true that, even when the franc-tireurs had
been closest, there in the swamp among the rank marsh grasses, the
distance was too great for them to have identified him with certainty.
But he thought it best to keep out of their way until within hail of
the regular troops, so he took advantage of bushes and inequalities
of the slope to reconnoitre the landscape before he reached the
summit of the ridge. There was a tufted thicket of yellow broom in
flower on the crest of the ridge; behind this he lay and looked out
across the plain.

A little valley separated this hill from the vineyard, terraced
up to the north, ridge upon ridge. The cannon smoke shot up from
the thickets of vines, rose, and drifted to the west, blotting
out the greater portion of the vineyard. The cannon themselves
were invisible. At times Jack fancied he saw a human silhouette
when the white smoke rushed outward, but the spectral vines
loomed up everywhere through the dense cannon-fog and he could
not be sure.

However, there were plenty of troops below the hill now--infantry
of the line trudging along the dusty road in fairly good order,
and below the vineyard, among the uncut fields of flax, more
infantry crouched, probably supporting the three-gun battery on
the hill.

At that distance he could not tell a franc-tireur from any
regular foot-soldier except line-infantry; their red caps and
trousers were never to be mistaken. As he looked, he wondered at
a nation that clothed its troops in a colour that furnished such
a fearfully distinct mark to the enemy. A French army, moving,
cannot conceal itself; the red of trousers and caps, the
mirror-like reflections of cuirass and casque and lance-tip,
advertise the presence of French troops so persistently that an
enemy need never fear any open landscape by daylight.

Jack watched the cannonade, lying on his stomach, chin supported
by both hands. He was perfectly cool now; he neither feared the
Uhlans nor the franc-tireurs. For a while he vainly tried to
comprehend the reason of the cannonade; the sh