Over this confused and heaving expanse an amalgam of voices rises like the sea breaking on the shore: and above this unending murmur, renewed commands, shouts, the din of a shot load or of one transferred, the crash of steam-hammers redoubling their dull endeavors, and the roaring of boilers. In the immense obscurity, surcharged with men and with all things, lights begin everywhere to appear. These are the flash-lamps of officers and detachment leaders, and the cyclists' acetylene lamps, whose intensely white points zigzag hither and thither and reveal an outer zone of pallid resurrection. An acetylene searchlight blazes blindingly out and depicts a dome of daylight. Other beams pierce and rend the universal gray. Then does the station assume a fantastic air. Mysterious shapes spring up and adhere to the sky's dark blue. Mountains come into view, rough-modeled, and vast as the ruins of a town. One can see the beginning of unending rows of objects, finally plunged in night. One guesses what the great bulks may be whose outermost outlines flash forth from a black abyss of the unknown. On our left, detachments of cavalry and infantry move ever forward like a ponderous flood. We hear the diffused obscurity of voices. We see some ranks delineated by a flash of phosphorescent light or a ruddy glimmering, and we listen to long-drawn trails of noise. Up the gangways of the vans whose gray trunks and black mouths one sees by the dancing and smoking flame of torches, artillerymen are leading horses. There are appeals and shouts, a frantic trampling of conflict, and the angry kicking of some restive animal--insulted by its guide--against the panels of the van where he is cloistered. Not far away, they are putting wagons on to railway trucks. Swarming humanity surrounds a hill of trusses of fodder. A scattered multitude furiously attacks great strata of bales. "That's three hours we've been on our pins," sighs Paradis. "And those, there, what are they?" In some snatches of light we see a group of goblins, surrounded by glowworms and carrying strange instruments, come out and then disappear. "That's the searchlight section," says Cocon. "You've got your considering cap on, camarade; what's it about?"