When he came to, he found himself gazing at the blue sky. The deep breath he drew half-choked him with the fumes of burnt explosive. Shaking in every limb he struggled to his feet. Before him lay his two orderlies, dead. The dug-out was wrecked and roofless. The telephone instrument was strewn in fragments on the floor. He himself was unwounded. He listened, with a sudden anxiety, for the detonations of his guns. The general uproar had diminished not at all, but the familiar crashes were wanting in the din. How long had he lain there? A wild fear seized him. Scrambling out of the ruined dug-out he ran breathlessly towards the battery. The enemy fire was as intense as ever. The air was filled with the whine and scream of arriving shells and the heavy crashes of their explosion. From somewhere behind came the rattle of rifles and machine-guns and the dull thud of bombs. Grey-clad men in swarms were running across the open ground athwart his path. He heard them shouting, saw officers gesticulating, realised as in a dream that they were running from the battle. But their fear touched him not. He was enveloped in concern for his beloved battery. He arrived on the lip of the depression where it lay. In a surge of joy he saw the four guns lying in the familiar places, saw them strangely naked, their protective veils ripped and hurled aside, saw barely sufficient crews standing at their posts, saw the position gashed with shell-holes and littered with prone grey bodies, shattered limbers and dead horses. Even as he looked a salvo of shrapnel burst with deafening cracks above them, and white fleecy clouds floated over the battery. On the near flank, in the position of command, stood Oberleutnant Schwarz, rigid and precise as on the parade-ground. Von Waldhofer ran down the slope towards him. "Schwarz! Schwarz!" he called. The Oberleutnant advanced to meet him, and, looking calmly at his chief as though his smoke-blackened face and torn clothing were in no way out of the normal, saluted with perfect gravity. "What has been happening?" "We have been under heavy fire, Herr Hauptmann. All the wires are cut in many places. The telephone dug-out has been blown in. We are absolutely without communications. The battery has fired whenever there was a chance of a target. Your orders have been obeyed. The battery has stood its ground. We have only three rounds per gun left. I am waiting now for an opportunity to fire." Listening to the cool report of his subordinate, von Waldhofer recovered his soldierly poise. "Excellent. You have done well, Schwarz. And the casualties?" "I regret are heavy." He waved a gloved hand towards the bare dozen standing by the guns. "All that are left." There was the loud, hissing, nerve-paralysing rush of a shell at arrival. Simultaneously with the shattering crash that leaped from the fountain of black smoke, Oberleutnant Schwarz put his hand to his breast, performed a sharp half-turn and fell--dead.