I cautioned my coach to remind me to keep my eye away from the cocking piece, and after testing sling and ground, threw myself down and got into position at the word. Well, it wasn't difficult to fire; though the noise of the gun was much greater than that of the gallery rifle there was no recoil; and I tried to be as steady as possible in aiming and squeezing. The bullseye was the silhouette, life size, of a man lying prone and firing at me. Instructions were to aim at the bottom of the target, about a foot below him. The crack of my neighbor's piece, very loud and sharp, was the most uncomfortable part of the performance, and I shall shoot tomorrow with cotton in my ears; many decided likewise. I plugged away steadily, the ammunition worked well, and I finished my second clip with about fifteen seconds to spare. Then I stood up and brushed myself, with no one to prove that I had not made a perfect score. One hundred and fifty men shooting ten rounds each--that meant 1500 shells left on the ground, with 300 clips, all of brass. I noticed some rather untidy figures, emerging from the miserable little shacks that dotted the scrub, slinking through the brush in our direction and gathering on the flanks of our firing line, eight or ten men and boys and girls, one of the latter carrying a baby. Near me Captain Kirby cursed them under his breath as "human buzzards," and I understood that these camp followers had not gathered merely to admire. As soon as the last platoon filed off the ground, these persons slipped forward, and began eagerly to pick up the treasure that lay scattered there. With brass at twenty-five cents a pound, war prices, they made enough, scratching in the dirt, to keep them going for the next week or so. Back to camp then, still glad of our ponchos, for though there was no more rain the wind was steadily colder. Then the job of cleaning, with one rod per squad, and patches always few, our fouled rifles. This afternoon we were taken to a neighboring field, where in limited area are samples of most of the military engineering devices approved by moderns. Three officers of the engineers in turn took charge of us, and showed us bridges, roads, entanglements, dugouts, rifle pits, hand grenades, trench mortars (with real bombs!) and finally the mysteries of map-making, which for me are practical mysteries still. Some glimmer of an idea I now have of how a man with a watch and compass, a sketching board and paper, can make a working map of country entirely new to him; but I never could do it myself. Calisthenics next, as almost daily; and then instead of being dismissed for our swim, which none of us wanted in such cold, we were marched back to the company street, where a line soon formed at the store tent, and a magic word was passed from squad to squad.