What is that crawling along the ground behind our line?... there is one here, another over there--it looks so novel and so odd. They are crawling back out of the firing-line. And I see how one of them suddenly tries to rise, clutches his rifle with both hands, and hauls himself to his feet by his gun. And now he is spreading his arms out, tumbling over backwards, and flinging his hands away from him, far apart ... his hands are still flapping up and down on the grass. I am looking back as if fascinated while my legs keep on advancing. But suddenly something begins to set up a rattle over there in the wood and buzzes like huge alarum-clocks running down. "Lie down." And there we are lying down, flat on our stomachs, as if we had already been mown down, for every man of us knows what that was. They have masked machine-guns in the wood over there; they are opening fire on us. I feel how my heart is thumping against my ribs. A machine-gun is equivalent to a company, the Old Man once explained to us, after we had been shot down in heaps to the last man by the machine-guns in the autumn manoeuvres. What's the next thing? Cautiously, without raising it, I turn my head. Behind us, too, the lines of skirmishers, close up to us, have disappeared from the face of the earth; they too, have gone to cover in the grass. Only outside the firing zone are they still being pushed forward. Shall we have to retreat? Are we going to attack? Then the order to fire rings out, and is zealously passed on from unit to unit. "Rapid fire! Into the wood!" Yes, but what are we to fire at? Lying down, there is nothing to be seen of the sharpshooters. They won't do us any harm; in another minute they will have disappeared among the trees. But the machines--they have hidden them away among the foliage to good purpose. Our subaltern, lying a bare five paces away from me in the grass, raises himself on his elbows, and gazes intently through his field-glasses. I know what is vexing his soul. He is a handsome, splendid lad, for whom even we grizzled old-timers would go through fire and water, for he meets you as man to man, without sniffing or swagger, as it becomes a youngster. And the other day, when I was marching with the rear guard, we discussed Lilliencron's novels. Since then he has always appealed to me as if he had stepped straight out of one of these romances of war. He is all ablaze to glean his first laurels. But however much he may twiddle the focus of his glasses up and down and crane his neck, he cannot discover a trace of the enemy, and we blaze away foolishly at the wood, and may, for all I know, be bringing down leaves or birds from the trees there. "Close to the big oak. To the right in the undergrowth," some one of the rank and file sings out. I strain my eyes to the spot, and fail to see anything.