The dust clouds had been pouring in their faces all morning. They paid no attention to the changing greenish tints of the new dust bank. The deadly fumes poured over our trenches in silence. The men breathed once and dropped in strangling horror, clutching and tearing at their throats. The guns fell by their sides as their bodies writhed and twisted in mortal agony. The pestilence swept the field scorching and curling every living thing. Behind it in the shadows stalked a new figure in the history of war--ghouls in shining divers’ helmets with knife and revolver to complete the assassin’s work. A thousand fiends of hell charging in serried ranks with faces silhouetted by the red glare of the pit could not have made a picture more hideous than these crouching diving machines as they scrambled over the shambles of the trenches and ruthlessly shot the few surviving figures, blindly fighting for air. Behind those monsters who were proof against the poison fumes advanced the dense masses of infantry. The way was clear, the backbone of the defense had been broken. Three miles of undefended trenches lay in front. It was the simplest work of routine to give the order to charge and watch them pour through the far-flung hopeless breach, swing to the right and left and roll the broken ranks up in two mighty scrolls of blood and death. It was done with remorseless, savage brutality. Our men asked no quarter. They got none. The leader of the charging hosts had orders to exterminate the contemptible little army of civilians that had dared oppose the imperial hosts. They were setting an example of frightfulness that would make the task of complete conquest easy. “Kill! Kill! Kill!” shouted the stout bow-legged General in command of the cavalry. “It’s mercy in the long run! Let them know that we mean what we say!” When our men saw their methods and knew that the end was sure, they sold each life for all it would bring in the shambles. Many a stalwart foe bit the dust and lay cold and still or writhing in mortal agony among the heaps of our dead and wounded before the awful day had ended. The cries of the wounded were heartrending. A weird, unearthly sound came from the vast field of groaning, wailing, dying, gibbering men. The most hideous scenes of all were enacted by maniacs who laughed the red laugh of death in each other’s faces. The horizon toward Southampton was black now with the smoke of burning villages. They had set them on fire with deliberate wanton purpose of destructive terror. Would they burn Babylon in the same way? Would these maddened brutes break into our homes and make the night still more hideous with crimes against women and children? A wave of horror swept Vassar’s soul as he thought of his nieces and the woman he loved. He crept through the shadows of the woods and hurried toward the Holland home. CHAPTER XXXIII