"Were the Prussians here?" Trent asked of a soldier who sat wiping the
blood trickling from his hair. "Yes. The hussars cleaned them out. We caught their cross fire." "We are supporting a battery on the embankment," said another. Then the battalion crawled over the embankment and moved along the lines
of twisted rails. Trent rolled up his trousers and tucked them into his
woollen socks: but they halted again, and some of the men sat down on the
dismantled railroad track. Trent looked for his wounded comrade from the
Beaux Arts. He was standing in his place, very pale. The cannonade had
become terrific. For a moment the mist lifted. He caught a glimpse of the
first battalion motionless on the railroad track in front, of regiments on
either flank, and then, as the fog settled again, the drums beat and the
music of the bugles began away on the extreme left. A restless movement
passed among the troops, the colonel threw up his arm, the drums rolled,
and the battalion moved off through the fog. They were near the front now
for the battalion was firing as it advanced. Ambulances galloped along the
base of the embankment to the rear, and the hussars passed and repassed
like phantoms. They were in the front at last, for all about them was
movement and turmoil, while from the fog, close at hand, came cries and
groans and crashing volleys. Shells fell everywhere, bursting along the
embankment, splashing them with frozen slush. Trent was frightened. He
began to dread the unknown, which lay there crackling and flaming in
obscurity. The shock of the cannon sickened him. He could even see the fog
light up with a dull orange as the thunder shook the earth. It was near,
he felt certain, for the colonel shouted "Forward!" and the first
battalion was hastening into it. He felt its breath, he trembled, but
hurried on. A fearful discharge in front terrified him. Somewhere in the
fog men were cheering, and the colonel's horse, streaming with blood
plunged about in the smoke. Another blast and shock, right in his face, almost stunned him, and he
faltered. All the men to the right were down. His head swam; the fog and
smoke stupefied him. He put out his hand for a support and caught
something. It was the wheel of a gun-carriage, and a man sprang from
behind it, aiming a blow at his head with a rammer, but stumbled back
shrieking with a bayonet through his neck, and Trent knew that he had
killed. Mechanically he stooped to pick up his rifle, but the bayonet was
still in the man, who lay, beating with red hands against the sod. It
sickened him and he leaned on the cannon. Men were fighting all around him
now, and the air was foul with smoke and sweat. Somebody seized him from
behind and another in front, but others in turn seized them or struck them
solid blows. The click! click! click! of bayonets infuriated him, and he
grasped the rammer and struck out blindly until it was shivered to pieces. A man threw his arm around his neck and bore him to the ground, but he
throttled him and raised himself on his knees. He saw a comrade seize the
cannon, and fall across it with his skull crushed in; he saw the colonel
tumble clean out of his saddle into the mud; then consciousness fled. When he came to himself, he was lying on the embankment among the twisted
rails. On every side huddled men who cried out and cursed and fled away
into the fog, and he staggered to his feet and followed them. Once he
stopped to help a comrade with a bandaged jaw, who could not speak but
clung to his arm for a time and then fell dead in the freezing mire; and
again he aided another, who groaned: "Trent, c'est moi--Philippe," until a
sudden volley in the midst relieved him of his charge. An icy wind swept down from the heights, cutting the fog into shreds. For
an instant, with an evil leer the sun peered through the naked woods of
Vincennes, sank like a blood-clot in the battery smoke, lower, lower, into
the blood-soaked plain. IV

When midnight sounded from the belfry of St. Sulpice the gates of Paris
were still choked with fragments of what had once been an army. They entered with the night, a sullen horde, spattered with slime, faint
with hunger and exhaustion. There was little disorder at first, and the
throng at the gates parted silently as the troops tramped along the
freezing streets. Confusion came as the hours passed. Swiftly and more
swiftly, crowding squadron after squadron and battery on battery, horses
plunging and caissons jolting, the remnants from the front surged through
the gates, a chaos of cavalry and artillery struggling for the right of
way. Close upon them stumbled the infantry; here a skeleton of a regiment
marching with a desperate attempt at order, there a riotous mob of Mobiles
crushing their way to the streets, then a turmoil of horsemen, cannon,
troops without, officers, officers without men, then again a line of
ambulances, the wheels groaning under their heavy loads. Dumb with misery the crowd looked on. All through the day the ambulances had been arriving, and all day long the
ragged throng whimpered and shivered by the barriers. At noon the crowd
was increased ten-fold, filling the squares about the gates, and swarming
over the inner fortifications. At four o'clock in the afternoon the German batteries suddenly wreathed
themselves in smoke, and the shells fell fast on Montparnasse. At twenty
minutes after four two projectiles struck a house in the rue de Bac, and a
moment later the first shell fell in the Latin Quarter. Braith was painting in bed when West came in very much scared. "I wish you would come down; our house has been knocked into a cocked hat,
and I'm afraid that some of the pillagers may take it into their heads to
pay us a visit to-night." Braith jumped out of bed and bundled himself into a garment which had once
been an overcoat. "Anybody hurt?" he inquired, struggling with a sleeve full of dilapidated
lining. "No. Colette is barricaded in the cellar, and the concierge ran away to
the fortifications. There will be a rough gang there if the bombardment
keeps up. You might help us--"

"Of course," said Braith; but it was not until they had reached the rue
Serpente and had turned in the passage which led to West's cellar, that
the latter cried: "Have you seen Jack Trent, to-day?" "No," replied Braith, looking troubled, "he was not at Ambulance
Headquarters." "He stayed to take care of Sylvia, I suppose." A bomb came crashing through the roof of a house at the end of the alley
and burst in the basement, showering the street with slate and plaster. A
second struck a chimney and plunged into the garden, followed by an
avalanche of bricks, and another exploded with a deafening report in the
next street. They hurried along the passage to the steps which led to the cellar. Here
again Braith stopped. "Don't you think I had better run up to see if Jack and Sylvia are well
entrenched? I can get back before dark." "No. Go in and find Colette, and I'll go."