ed in rocket
flashes through the gathering haze which began to obscure the slope
itself.

"I think we have everything that we expected to take this afternoon,"
said Howell, at length. "The Germans are very slow to respond. I think
we rather took them by surprise."

They had not even begun shelling their old first line, which they ought
to have known was now in British possession and which they must have had
registered, as a matter of course; or possibly their own intelligence
was poor and they had no real information of what had been proceeding on
the slope under the clouds of smoke, or their wires had been cut and
their messengers killed by shell fire. This was certain, that the
British in the first-line German trench had a choice lot of dugouts in
good condition for shelter, as the patent barrage does not smash in the
enemy's homes, only closes the doors with curtains of death.

"I hope you're improving your dugouts," British soldiers would call out
across No Man's Land, "as that is all the better for us when we take
them!"

We stayed on till Howell's expert eye had had its fill of details, with
no burst of shells to interfere with our comfort; though by the rules we
ought to have had a good "strafing," which was another reminder of my
debt to the German for his consideration to the American correspondent
at the British front.

"What do you think of our patent barrage, now?" said the artillery
general returning from his post of observation.

"Wonderful!" was all that one could say.

"A good show!" said Howell.

The rejoicing of both was better expressed in their eyes than in words.
Good news, too, for the corps commander smoking his pipe and waiting,
and for every battalion engaged--oh, particularly for the battalions!

"Congratulations!" The exclamation was passed back and forth as we met
other officers on our way to brigade headquarters in a dugout on the
hillside, where Howell's felicitations to the happy brigadier on the way
that his men had gone in were followed by suggestions and a discussion
about future plans, which I left to them while I had a look through the
brigadier's telescope at Thiepval Ridge under the patterns of shell fire
of average days, which proved that the Germans were making no attempt at
a counter-attack to recover lost ground. I imagined that the German
staff was dumfounded to hear that their redoubtable old first line could
possibly have been taken with so little fireworks.

It