How joyful we were to leave our battery behind us. As the trees closed around it we could fancy its baffled rage. Other batteries now seemed to draw nearer to us and the whole forest was filled with childish quarrelling giants; but as we began to bump down the hill out of the forest stranger sounds attacked us. On either side of us were cornfields and out of the heart of those from under our very feet as it seemed there were explosions of a strange stinging metallic kind--not angry and human as the battery had been, but rather like some huge bottle cracking in the sun. These huge bottles--one could fancy them green and shining somewhere in the corn--cracked one after another; positively the sound intensified the heat of the sun upon one's head. There were too now, for the first time in our experience, shrapnel. They were not over us, but ran somewhere on our right across the valley. Their sound was "fireworks" and nothing more--so that alarm at their gentle holiday temper was impossible. Brock's Fireworks on a Thursday evening at the Crystal Palace, oneself a small boy sitting with both hands between one's knees, one's mouth open, a damp box of chocolates on one's lap, the murmured "Ah ..." of the happy crowd as the little gentle "Pop!" showed green and red against the blue night sky. Ah! there was the little "Pop!" and after it a tiny curling cloud of smoke in the air, the whole affair so gentle, so kind even. There! sighing overhead they go! Five, six little curls of smoke, and then beneath our very horses' feet again a huge green bottle cracking in the sun! And with all this noise not a living soul to be seen! We had before us as we slowly bumped down the hill a fair view. The river was hidden from us, but there was a little hamlet guarded happily by a green wood; there was a line of fair hills, fields of corn, and the long dusty white road. Not a soul to be seen, only our bumping cart and, now and then, against the burning sky those little curling circles of smoke. The world slumbered.... Suddenly from the ditch at the side of the road a soldier appeared, spoke to our driver and disappeared again. "What did he say?" I asked. "He says, your Honour, that we must hasten. We may be hit." "Hit here--on this road?" "_Tak totchno._" "Well, hurry then." I caught a little frightened sigh behind me from Andrey Vassilievitch, whom the events of the day had frozen into horror-stricken silence. We hurried, bumping along; at the bottom of the hill there was a farmhouse. From behind it an officer appeared. "What are you doing there? You're under fire.... Red Cross? Ah yes, we had a message about you. Dr. Semyonov?... Yes. Please come this way. Hurry, please!" We were led across the farmyard and almost tumbled into a trench at the farther end of it.