cross the crest, he
signalled to them to "get down," and at length they took up a sort of
position along the edge of the wood on the other side.

The enemy had evidently not "spotted" them, and they were left in peace
for an hour. Then their troubles began.

It seemed as though the hill suddenly became a place of vast importance.
The Colonel arrived upon the scene, with reinforcements of over a
hundred men, and they immediately set to work putting the hill into a
state of defence. Then a battery of field guns were drawn up into
position on the "safe" side of the hill, and began without delay to
shell the enemy. Their arrival, however, was decidedly a mixed blessing.
So far, the troops had held the hill quite successfully, and had been
undisturbed by hostile artillery, for the simple reason that the enemy
was unaware of their positions. Now the artillery had come and "given
the whole show away," and no sooner did the enemy discover that the
hill was held, than he began forthwith to bombard them.

It was obviously impossible to continue "digging in." The only thing to
do was to squeeze one's self into the ground, and pray. It seemed as if
the titanic thunderbolts, that had hitherto been hurled aimlessly about,
were suddenly concentrated on that one spot. It seemed as if all the
gods in Olympus were hurling their rage upon it, determined to
obliterate it from the face of the earth. The most gigantic guns that
had ever been used in war were concentrating their fire upon it, and the
result was awful. Nothing they had experienced before was comparable to
it. It seemed as if the ground were being thrashed with whips of a
thousand leaden-loaded thongs. The smell of the lyddite was nauseating,
the uproar stupefying. Dust rose in the air; trees crashed to the
ground.

Hell was let loose: Hell and Death were dashing around, converting that
normal sky and that sane earth into a Pandemonium. The wonder was that a
human life was spared. The Subaltern had a fleeting feeling that every
one except himself must be dead. When the storm seemed for a moment to
have abated, he looked around him and was surprised to see that very
little damage had been done to the men. An inexperienced eye would
possibly not have detected any casualties at all. From a Kipling point
of view, the scene was an artistic failure. Not a man was shrieking; not
a man "clawing up the ground." Here and there men had rolled over on
their sides, and were groaning qu