in low voices
worked at their men, and said things which do not appear in the written
reports. They talked soothingly; they talked indignantly; and they
talked always like fathers. And the men heard no sentences completely;
they heard no specific direction, these wide-eyed men. They understood
that there was being delivered some kind of exhortation to do as they
had been taught, and they also understood that a superior intelligence
was anxious over their behaviour and welfare.

There was a great deal of floundering through hedges, climbing of walls
and jumping of ditches. Curiously original privates tried to find new
and easier ways for themselves, instead of following the men in front of
them. Officers had short fits of fury over these people. The more
originality they possessed, the more likely they were to become
separated from their companies. Colonel Sponge was making an exciting
progress on a big charger. When the first song of the bullets came from
above, the men wondered why he sat so high; the charger seemed as tall
as the Eiffel Tower. But if he was high in the air, he had a fine view,
and that supposedly is why people ascend the Eiffel Tower. Very often he
had been a joke to them, but when they saw this fat, old gentleman so
coolly treating the strange new missiles which hummed in the air, it
struck them suddenly that they had wronged him seriously; and a man who
could attain the command of a Spitzbergen regiment was entitled to
general respect. And they gave him a sudden, quick affection--an
affection that would make them follow him heartily, trustfully,
grandly--this fat, old gentleman, seated on a too-big horse. In a flash
his tousled grey head, his short, thick legs, even his paunch, had
become specially and humorously endeared to them. And this is the way of
soldiers.

But still the Twelfth had not yet come to the place where tumbling
bodies begin their test of the very heart of a regiment. They backed
through more hedges, jumped more ditches, slid over more walls. The
Rostina artillery had seemed to be asleep; but suddenly the guns aroused
like dogs from their kennels, and around the Twelfth there began a wild,
swift screeching. There arose cries to hurry, to come on; and, as the
rifle bullets began to plunge into them, the men saw the high,
formidable hills of the enemy's right, and perfectly understood that
they were doomed to storm them. The cheering thing was the sudden
beginning of a tremendous u