As the captain followed his guide up the vast empty slope he heard a long plaintive whining in the air, descending a scale of tones. It had not ceased when over to his right a great fountain of snow leaped skywards from the field--subsided leaving a smother of dirty smoke. The whine finished in an ugly rush, a muffled detonation. Another and another followed, in each case the visible effects of the shell's explosion preceding the noise of its arrival. The Austrian batteries were replying. The echoing thunder of the bombardment continued all through the dreary fatiguing climb up the slope of snow. The higher peaks began to throw long blue shadows across its whiteness, their argent heads to be suffused with gold. The ridge to which they climbed was not, after all, the summit. There was another, yet higher, whence splintered crags serrated the sky. They reached it, stood among rocky pinnacles. "_Attenzione, signor capitano!_" said the guide. "It is dangerous to linger!" Followed by the captain he swung himself round a jut of rock, dropped into a trench excavated deeply in the snow. As they dropped a couple of ugly "_phutts!_" just above their heads explained the warning. The Alpino grinned. "Tirolese!" he said. "We could have gone round by a safer way, _signor capitano_, but their snipers do not often hit if one is quick." The deep trench, in cold blue shadow through the gilded surface of the snow, descended the ridge at a gentle angle to the summit. It emerged into another trench that ran roughly parallel to the ridge. This was filled with soldiers who, well below the high parapet, larked with one another, threw snowballs, wrestled and laughed. They were keeping themselves warm during their enforced wait. Every one of them was garbed in a thick white outer coat, with a hood. This was the main trench; these were the men who presently were going to attack. On steps cut in the parapet stood sentries, peering towards the enemy. The captain ceded to an impulse of curiosity, interrupted his hurried progress towards the battalion advanced headquarters, mounted to the side of one of these sentries, looked out. About him was a sea of mountains, their lower flanks in cold blue light, their snow-covered peaks orange against the azure sky. Immediately in front of him were the nearly submerged stakes, the snow-thickened upper wires, of wide entanglements. Beyond them stretched the confused, humped and fractured white surface of a high glacier. On the other side of it was again a snow ridge, and in front of that ridge could be discerned a belt of wire entanglements--the enemy's. In the midst of that entanglement, and all up the snow to the ridge, leaped fountain after fountain of white snow, momentarily brilliant against the sky, falling back into a persistent cloud of dark smoke. The noise of the explosions overwhelmed the roar of the guns behind. The preparatory bombardment was in full swing.