From the left rings the high call, "Ready on the right!" The lieutenant responds to his men, "Unlock your pieces." To the waiting men the interval is long. Then slowly the blank targets begin to sink and the tops of the true ones to rise. It is the signal. The men drop to the sitting position and settle the butts in their shoulders; the muzzles rise, waver, and steady. Then together "Pol-lop!" and the whole line, faster and faster, bursts into the rap-rap-rapping of the continued fire. Along the line, little spurts of flame; a thin haze rises from the muzzles and at once disappears. Beside each shooter kneel two coaches, one calling the time, the other exhorting, warning, entreating. A distinct lag in the firing between forty-five and fifty seconds--the men are loading their second clips. Then the fire gradually quickens to the full rate, the coaches urging the slow ones on, holding the hasty ones back. The fire slackens, and seems stopped, when as the targets sink at the ninety seconds, two last hasty shots slap out. The round is over. In the brief time the three dozen men have fired three hundred and sixty shots. (_Later._) My turn approached, and I stood waiting, the sling clasped on my arm. I felt the strain of the long wait before there came the call, Ready! To my coaches I had said--to one, "Don't let me shoot too fast, and keep me on _my_ target"; to the other, "Remind me to squeeze." Then the blank target, beside the great 28, began to sink, and down I dropped. I was not nervous now; at least I did not tremble. I tried to fire slow, to squeeze, to keep on my own target, (for truly, as the captain lately said, firing on another man's target is one of the sad things of life.) My second clip I had to shoot quicker until my last shot, when the coach said, "Plenty of time." So I sighted and squeezed my best, felt that I could call the bullseye, and pulling out the bolt for the last time, to show that the breech and magazine were empty, stood up and stepped back. Now for the score. The target rose at last. The red disk was all I hoped for, but there came the white, again the white, again the white, again, again, again, then three times the red, and once the black. I still waited, having lost count. Would the flag come now? But no, the target sank, and my coaches congratulated me on a forty-five!