The Germans, systematic in everything, over-systematic in everything, never commence an assault before midnight. At half-past eleven o'clock, Horace plugged in for the order to be given for the barrage fire to begin. The whirlwind of vertically-falling flame shut off the German lines in a tawny curtain of annihilation. Now and then rockets shot up, red, green and white, writing artillery messages on the sky. The calcium whiteness of star shells illuminated the gruesome zone of No Man's Land, void, deserted and desolate. On its horrid bleakness, nothing moved. Its pallid stillness intensified the menace. Officers and men glanced anxiously at the watches fastened on their wrists. Behind, the Moroccan brigade stood motionless. They even laughed in eagerness. It was a jangling laugh. White men who heard it, shivered. It was not yet midnight, but, suddenly, a vicious crackle of rifles far to the left suggested that there, the moment was at hand. Not yet the attack, it was a patrol of German wire-cutters, trying to sneak up under cover to make an opening. "Cr-a-a-a-a-ck!" A machine-gun spoke. The wire-cutters pitched headlong. The young officer, wounded, tried to crawl back to the lines. "Crack!" One rifle spoke. Even at night a sharpshooter does not miss. The figure of the German officer moved no more. The German bombardment, hitherto directed against the batteries far to the rear, began to draw forward. It approached the rear of the trenches where the dug-out for the telephone was situated. "Afraid?" the officer asked Horace. "Yes," the boy answered, "but game!" A shell fell a dozen yards away. The burst smashed in the roof of the dug-out. A flying piece of concrete grazed the officer's cheek. It bled freely. "Hit, sir?" the boy asked anxiously. "Nothing! My cheek!" He telephoned an order. The Moroccans, unwillingly, take cover in a shelter-trench. They dislike the underground, but it is no use to stand and be shot down uselessly. Bombs and grenades fall like a hail of fire. The telephone bell rings continuously. Every one of the seventeen wires running to the switchboard is working. Horace is on the alert, his fingers as electric as the wires he is handling. A growing nervousness runs through the lines, making the whole army tingle like a single human organism vibrant with life. All the world is in activity or in readiness. Medical troops pass by, carrying out the wounded from the bombardment. An enemy patrol dashes forward to destroy the wire, knowing that it will never return alive. It is met by a storm of rifle-fire, but those who survive, cut. A hole is made. The last German falls. A French patrol rushes out to mend the gap, throwing coils here and there and is, in its turn, wiped out by grenadiers. The hateful eyes of searchlights peer over the zone of destruction. It is deserted--as yet. What is that--a shout? Midnight! There is one last furious burst from trench mortars, howitzers and guns.