CHAPTER XIII.


THE END OF THE STORM.

Of all the things that seem strange in that battle, now that I look back
upon it, there is nothing that was queerer than the way in which it
acted on my comrades; for some took it as though it had been their daily
meat without question or change, and others pattered out prayers from
the first gunfire to the last, and others again cursed and swore in a
way that was creepy to listen to. There was one, my own left-hand man,
Mike Threadingham, who kept telling about his maiden aunt, Sarah, and
how she had left the money which had been promised to him to a home for
the children of drowned sailors. Again and again he told me this story,
and yet when the battle was over he took his oath that he had never
opened his lips all day. As to me, I cannot say whether I spoke or not,
but I know that my mind and my memory were clearer than I can ever
remember them, and I was thinking all the time about the old folk at
home, and about Cousin Edie with her saucy, dancing eyes, and de Lissac
with his cat's whiskers, and all the doings at West Inch, which had
ended by bringing us here on the plains of Belgium as a cockshot for two
hundred and fifty cannons.

During all this time the roaring of those guns had been something
dreadful to listen to, but now they suddenly died away, though it was
like the lull in a thunderstorm when one feels that a worse crash is
coming hard at the fringe of it. There was still a mighty noise on the
distant wing, where the Prussians were pushing their way onwards, but
that was two miles away. The other batteries, both French and English,