The neutral hurried along the verge of the wood, scanning every tall tree carefully, expectantly. "Ah!" He had found what he sought. Against the green bark of a lofty beech dangled a rope ladder. It was an abandoned French artillery observation post. He scrambled up the ladder, followed by the trembling, shivering Oberst. High up among the topmost branches was a little platform. The neutral settled himself, adjusted his binoculars, pushed aside the twigs. He looked out over an undulating terrain, dark with woods that ceased raggedly in deep indentations short of a bare hog's back that gathered itself into a hump. That bare ground was smothered in a turmoil of smoke that fumed to the grey sky, far to right and left. But through it, in chance rifts, his glasses revealed a dark mass upon the highest point. A reek of white smoke drifted away from it as from burning buildings, mingling with the darker clouds of incessant explosions. He had a glimpse of a rounded cupola. It was Douaumont! The snow on the open space between the fort and the woods was grey. It was moving with crawling life like the festering of a stagnant pool. Over it burst occasional puffs of shrapnel. "Ah!" The cry was involuntary from both the watching men. From the woods emerged masses of running tiny grey figures, running, running towards the fort. The open space was covered with them. A moment of tense expectation when the heart seemed to stop--and then, as by a terrible magic, great fountains of dark smoke and darker objects leaped up among those running figures, countless explosions. A canopy of vicious little shrapnel bursts in thousands spread itself over them. Under it men sprawled in great patches, seemed to be fighting the air ere they tumbled and fell. A horrid screaming came faint through the uproar. More masses rushed out, were beaten down. There was a running to and fro of men bewildered--a headlong flight. The storm of fire did not cease. It rolled over the plateau towards the woods, remorselessly following the fugitives. Louder and louder, nearer and nearer, the crashes, the fountains, the puffs--the great mingled reek of the inferno--rolled towards the two men in the observation post. The Oberst clutched the neutral's arm. "Excellenz!" he shouted stammeringly. "We must go. I insist. I have superior authority--written authority--my discretion--I insist!" he almost screamed. His hand groped for a scrap of paper which he waved. "Arrest!" he cried like a maniac. "Arrest if you do not come!" The storm of French shells was a very near menace. The neutral acquiesced with a shrug of his shoulders. Nimbly they descended the ladder. On the ground they found themselves among a swarm of slightly wounded, terror-stricken men. One of them, a tall, bearded Brandenburger, his clothes torn to rags, was shrieking and laughing in a manner horrible to hear. His comrades drew away from him as he clutched at them. He was insane.