tupid to attack from that direction, which
pleased Howell as showing the advantage of racial reputation as an aid
to strategy.

However, the German artillery was not altogether unresponsive. It was
putting some "krumps" into the neighborhood of the British first line
and one of the bands of prisoners ran into the burst of a
five-point-nine. Ran is the word, for they were going as fast as they
could to get beyond their own curtain of fire, which experience told
them would soon be due. I saw this lot submerged in the spout of smoke
and dust but did not see how many if any were hit, as the sound of a
machine gun drew my attention across the dead grass of the old No Man's
Land to the German--I should say the former German--first-line trench
where an Englishman had his machine gun on the _parados_ and was
sweeping the field across to the German second-line trench. Perhaps some
of the Germans who had run away from the barrage at the start had been
hiding in shell-craters or had shown signs of moving or there were
targets elsewhere.

So far so good, as Howell remarked. That supposedly impregnable German
fortification that had repulsed the first British attempt had been taken
as easily as if it were a boy's snow fort, thanks to the patent curtain
of fire and the skill that had been developed by battle lessons. It was
retribution for the men who had fallen in vain on July 1st. Howell was
not thinking of that, but of the second objective in the afternoon's
plan. By this time not more than a quarter of an hour had elapsed since
the first charge had "gone over the lid." Out of the cut in the welt of
chalk the line of helmets rose again and England started across the
field toward the German second-line trench, which was really a part of
the main first-line fortification on the slope, in the same manner as
toward the first.

What about their protecting barrage? My eyes had been so intently
occupied that my ears had been uncommunicative and in a start of glad
surprise I realized that the same infernal sweep of shells was going
overhead and farther up on the Ridge fireflies were flashing out of the
mantle of smoke that blanketed the second line. Now the background
better absorbed the khaki tint and the figures of the men became more
and more hazy until they disappeared altogether as the flashes in front
of them ceased. Howell had to translate from the signals results which I
could not visually verify. One by one items of news appear