"These demon-men, who seem carved of yellow wood, of bronze or of ebony, are grave and taciturn; their faces are disquieting and secret, like the threat of a snare suddenly found at your feet. These men are drunk with eagerness for the bayonet and from their hands there is no quarter. The German cry of surrender, 'Kamerad!' they answer with a bayonet thrust, waist-high." Their presence, also, told its story. A counter-assault was planned. Rarely do the Moroccans hold the trenches. It is not their kind of fighting, nor would their bodies, used to the sun of North Africa, endure the cold and wet of the muddy trench. They are the troops of the advance. There are no prisoners, no wounded, after they have leaped into a trench. Their trail is the trail of savage death. All the next day the bombardment increased in violence, and Horace, at his military switchboard, plugged calls to distant quarters for reënforcements. Everywhere along the line, when the early dusk fell, men were standing to arms or marching to the threatened sector. One section of trench was wiped out with the concentration of high explosive shells; wire, fire trench, communication trench and their living defenders being blown into an unrecognizable, pockmarked mass. Another trench was hastily dug behind and craftily wired. There the assault would come. The noise was deafening, maddening. One felt the slow approach of insanity. Men sprang up here and there with frantic cries that the appalling nerve-racking din might cease, even for a second. A few went mad, and their hands were bound by their comrades until the crisis was past. A gray, evil earth; a gray, evil sky, with bomb-dropping aeroplanes overhead like vultures waiting to swoop down upon their carrion prey. Upon that scene night fell. On that small section of the trenches not less than 50,000 projectiles had fallen that evening. The shrill whistling of bullets, the baby's wail of falling torpedoes, the spattering "whit" "whit" of ricochetting fuses, the six-fold squall of the 77's, the whine of the small howitzers, and the roar of large shell formed a shrieking arch in the tortured and glutted air. Nor was the French artillery silent. The batteries of "Soixante-Quinze" replied incessantly. From time to time the bellow as of a prehistoric bull told that the 8.2-inch gun was bodily tearing holes and men in the enemy's trenches. The long thin Rimailho sent its 5.9-inch shell with the swift flight of a vengeful meteor and the new great 10-inch howitzer looped its 240-pound shell upon the dug-outs where the men were sheltering. There is neither shelter nor men after that shell has fallen. The guards in the advance trenches were redoubled. Extra supplies of bombs and hand-grenades were served out. Under arms, silent, expectant, grim, stood the Moroccan brigade. Their turn was coming, soon. The night dragged on. No one went to sleep, for sleep was impossible under the fury of noise.