"Come in," he said pleasantly, without looking around. "You will not find it comfortable, I fear. Will you excuse me, please, a moment? It is important. I must see." While he made his observation, I noticed that a field telephone was strapped to his head and that a writing tablet covered with figures dangled from his belt. I watched him lower the glasses and speak quickly into the phone. "Pardon me," he said when he had finished talking, "it was very necessary." And then he went on to explain that his battery was doing great damage to the Russians now; that the shrapnel was breaking over their trenches. "You would like to see?" he said, unstrapping his binoculars. And now I was looking upon the battle. I saw on the edges of the great swamp two villages in flames. I located the German columns issuing from the south Augustowo woods and breaking into extended order, spread across the snow toward Mogilnice, a multitude of creeping specks of brown; and toward the south, out of Grezedy, they seemed suddenly to spring up from the earth, as if a Cadmus had sown them, and roll in a cloud toward a point beyond the yellow weeds, where now all the shrapnel seemed bursting, as if by fantastic intent, making beautiful the sky with the fleecy clouds that brought death. And in the din of it all, I heard now the harsh pecking of machine guns, and that which had been a rolling gray-green mass of men became jagged and wavering; and then as suddenly the earth gave up another armed harvest, and the wavering mass of men was caught up in this and hurled forward. Suddenly for the first time that day the sun streaked through the greasy clouds, and the bayonets flashed it back. Was that roar a cheer? As the gray-green mass rolled on, and there came a mad clamor as if all the machine guns were pecking away at once. Then it was as if the mass, swept over like a mighty inundation, for you could hear their volleys no more--only the shrapnel, which seemed suddenly to have lengthened its range, panged ever more faintly away, wreathing a covert where fugitives might flee in a halo of pure smoke. I felt my arms growing tired. The officer looked patient. I thanked him and climbed to the ground. Tzschirner, too, looked patient. "I thought you would remain there for the night," he smiled. "Was I long?" I asked, surprised. "Half an hour," he said.