He was interrupted by the sudden bursting of a shrapnel-shell. One of the dispatch-riders standing near him fell, hit in the chest, and an officer staggered under the weight of the earth that spattered against him. "Come," said the colonel, when things had restored themselves, "there's nothing to do but bow before the storm. Take the best shelter you can find; and let's wait." Paul Delroze stepped forward once more. "Forgive me, sir, for interfering in what's not my business; but we might, I think, avoid . . ." "Avoid the peppering? Of course, I have only to change our position again. But, as we should be located again at once. . . . There, my lad, go back to your place." Paul insisted: "It might be a question, sir, not of changing our position, but of changing the enemy's fire." "Really!" said the colonel, a little sarcastically, but nevertheless impressed by Paul's coolness. "And do you know a way of doing it?" "Yes, sir." "What do you mean?" "Give me twenty minutes, sir, and by that time the shells will be falling in another direction." The colonel could not help smiling: "Capital! You'll make them drop where you please, I suppose?" "Yes, sir." "On that beet-field over there, fifteen hundred yards to the right?" "Yes, sir." The artillery-captain, who had been listening to the conversation, made a jest in his turn: "While you are about it, corporal, as you have already given me the distance and I know the direction more or less, couldn't you give it to me exactly, so that I may lay my guns right and smash the German batteries?" "That will be a longer job, sir, and much more difficult," said Paul. "Still, I'll try. If you don't mind examining the horizon, at eleven o'clock precisely, towards the frontier, I'll let off a signal." "What sort of signal?" "I don't know, sir. Three rockets, I expect." "But your signal will be no use unless you send it off immediately above the enemy's position." "Just so, sir." "And, to do that, you'll have to know it." "I shall, sir." "And to get there." "I shall get there, sir." Paul saluted, turned on his heel and, before the officers had time either to approve or to object, he slipped along the foot of the slope at a run, plunged on the left down a sort of hollow way, with bristling edges of brambles, and disappeared from sight. "That's a queer fellow," said the colonel. "I wonder what he really means to do." The young soldier's pluck and decision disposed the colonel in his favor; and, though he felt only a limited confidence in the result of the enterprise, he could not help looking at his watch, time after time, during the minutes which he spent with his officers, behind the feeble rampart of a hay-stack. They were terrible minutes, in which the commanding officer did not think for a moment of the danger that threatened himself, but only of the danger of the men in his charge, whom he looked upon as children.