The men began to arrive by groups almost in order, at any rate as much so as the littered ground in the courtyard would permit. They assembled by sections in a half circle around the pool of filth. It was certainly a picturesque sight when, at the command “Attention,” these men mounted a faultless guard around this fetid pool, where, among papers, tossed about and dirty, and box covers, there floated, bloated and fetid, all kinds of carrion, the rats of the last hecatomb. Near the doorway on the largest and cleanest part of the courtyard the eight machine guns were drawn up in line. Eight machine guns, the armament of the company. Eight guns, so small, so fine, and such bits of workmanship, that one would think to see them that they were a child’s playthings. The machine guns appeared very coquettish and pretty as they rested on their bluish-gray tripod, with their steel barrels well burnished even to the mouth of their muzzles. They hardly appeared at all threatening with the polished leather of the breech, where the bronzed fist of the gun layer stood out in graceful designs, and the attenuated round and svelte circles of the radiator. [Illustration: REMAINS OF VILLAGES NEAR THE LINES _See page 36_] And the machine gun is a coquette, too. Under its appearance of delicacy and grace it conceals a terrible power of domination and strength. Yet it hurls pitiless death without noise, with a rapidity as furtive as a shout of laughter, with a tac-tac which is scarcely perceptible and which is no more menacing than the familiar tac-tac of the sewing-machine or the typewriter. And the machine gun is a coquette, too! Fashioned like a work of art, the brilliancy of its polished steel and the voluptuous roundness of the brass invite caresses. Its shots come from they know not where, since they can see nothing—a bush is sufficient to conceal it; light, it is here one minute and there another; it is not visible until one is almost upon it, yet its shots are fatal at some miles. It is delicate and costly, needing a hundred things for its adornment, skilled care for its toilet and a hundred men to serve. Is not the machine gun a coquette? As the Company Casanova is of recent formation it received an entirely new armament of the latest model. The guns are built on the Hotchkiss system—the last word of perfection in war. They are light, scarcely fifty pounds, and they are easy to manipulate skilfully. The rapidity of their fire is extreme, more than five hundred shots a minute, and their adjustment is such that they can fire on the most varied objects. First, there is blockade fire, which concentrates all the shots on a narrow point; then the sweeping fire, which sweeps the whole of an extended field; and finally, indirect fire, which hits its designated target with mathematical precision, at the same time concealing the source.