Not fifty yards up the Russian lookout scouts them, and then we see we are not facing a beaten foe, but a waiting one. Until that moment no sound came from the enemy. No shells chucked away at hidden batteries, no rifle ammunition plumped into the sandbags of parallels, no shrapnel sent hit-or-miss over the fields searching for an unseen foe--not any of that stupid, wild game for them. They have let the preparation go on, all the fuss and fury, the bombardment, the sapping, and now we see what they are up to. It is all hit with them, no miss, they have no ammunition to waste. Their backs are to the wall. Their defense is determined, great. Deadly purpose is in that silence. The sun is out for a moment, the smoke has lifted. Through my glass I see it all as perfectly as though on a chessboard; the sprawling blue ants creeping up, rifle-butts dragging, the line officers ahead, the field behind. Far in advance of the squad on the P fort a young lieutenant is running, carried out of himself in passion, foolish in zeal, waving his sword. Almost fifty yards behind him, his nearest file-sergeant lumbers stolidly on, as stolidly as my two companions of the morning lumbered with their bags of rice. At that moment they meet what they changed their linen for the night before. From all the Russian batteries, from silent nooks, from huge, open emplacements, from mountain recesses, from the entire line of parapets, it comes--the Russian reply. So here is the why of that previous ghostly silence. Every shot must tell. Bursts directly above send vitreous blue shoots of smoke as of strata sidewise, then curl voluminously upward, the edges unfolding to the breeze; the deadly shrapnel downward shooting bits of lead and steel. Enfilading from all crests, over the shoulders of the slopes, come shells, plowing the ground, hurling stones and fragments. From above rattle the Nordenfeldts and Maxims, spraying bullets into the advancing ants as kerosene is sometimes sprayed from a hose nozzle on the tribe of real pests.