"Battle noises," says the dispatch rider, "are terrific. At the present moment a howitzer is going strong behind us, and the noise is tremendous. It is like dropping a traction engine on a huge tin tray. A shell passing away from you over your head is like the loud crackling of a newspaper close to your ear. It makes a sort of deep, echoing crackle in the air, gradually lessening, until there is a dull boom, and a mile or so away you see a thick little cloud of white smoke in the air, or a pear-shaped cloud of gray-black smoke on the ground. Coming towards you, a shell makes a cutting, swishing note, gradually getting higher and higher, louder and louder. There is a longer note one instant, and then it ceases. Shrapnel bursting close to you has the worst sound. "It is almost funny to be in a village that is being shelled. Things simply disappear. You are standing in an archway a little back from the road--a shriek of shrapnel. The windows are broken, and the tiles rush clattering into the street, while little bullets and bits of shell jump from side to side, until their force is spent. Or, a deeper bang, a crash, and a whole house tumbles down." [Footnote 48: Harbour wall.] [Footnote 49: See Vol. II., pp. 26 ff.] [Footnote 50: See Vol. II., p. 91.] CHAPTER X. WITH THE SECOND CORPS. The last ten days of October 1914 were days of furious but indecisive fighting all along the line from Arras to the sea. "The Germans rocked their attack from side to side, searching for the weak spot. They gained here; they lost there; but the line remained as it had been when Haig moved up his First Corps. The British held on, and continued to dig in. These were days of incessant battering and continual losses; the hospital trains running back to the base carried as many as 4,000 wounded in one day." The Germans, as you know, were bent on winning the Channel ports at all costs. They thought that the capture of Calais and Boulogne would create a panic in Great Britain, and make us keep our new armies at home for the defence of our shores, instead of sending them abroad for the reinforcement of our Allies. They also thought that if the Channel ports could be captured the British Navy would have to be divided, one portion keeping watch over the German naval bases on the North Sea, the other part operating in the English Channel. In this case the Germans hoped that they might fight and win a naval battle against one part of our divided fleet. There was a good deal of talk in the German papers about mounting huge guns at Calais which would command at least half of the Strait of Dover, and make the dispatch of transports very difficult, if not impossible.