And when light did come the Germans were not long in discovering us; nor were we in perceiving that there was a strong line of entrenchments in front of us occupied by our forces. No doubt the men whose places we had taken had gone forward to strengthen this line. The enemy was shelling it vigorously, and devoting no small part of their attention to us; and some of the projectiles which fell amongst us were enormous in size, and terrific in sound when they exploded; but they did not cause very appalling casualties. Sometimes a huge cloud of dust and black smoke rose to a great height, and obscured the view; but when it cleared away, though there might be a large hole in the ground, or 20 yards of trench blown clean away, there were never more than two or three dead and wounded. Once or twice an unfortunate man disappeared entirely, blown to atoms. I should scarcely have realized what the fate of these men was had not one of them stood close to me; and I noticed, directly after the explosion, that I was covered with minute spots of blood, none of them bigger than a pin's head. This man's body acted as a shield to me and saved my life. The hot blast of the shell momentarily stopped my breathing, and gave me a tremendous shock; but I was not much hurt. Two men on the other side were instantly killed, one of them being shockingly mutilated. Strange how these things are ordained! If I had not been bending at the moment to insert a cartridge in my rifle, I should probably have made a fourth victim. These big shells were certainly more than a foot in diameter. One which fell outside the trench, and did not explode, appeared to be about 15 inches in diameter, and a yard long. A good many of these big shells were fired at us; but most of the projectiles were from field artillery, each weighing 16 or 18 pounds only. On the side of the Russians I did not see any gun bigger than a 6-inch; but our artillery was well served, did great execution, and put many of the German guns out of action. Motor-driven batteries were used on both sides; and from what I saw of the action of guns so mounted, I think they must soon largely supplant horse-drawn batteries, in open, flat countries at least. People who love horses will be glad of this: for artillery horses suffer frightfully in action; and it is not always possible to put them out of their misery quickly.