The hour strikes. With one leap, furiously, the first wave bounds forward, spreads, and crosses the intervening space. The second line follows. We of the next line look and listen. They cry out--they go on--they are running--they arrive! We start. The others are already upon the German. The grenades crackle and snap. The machine-guns spit, the airplanes hum, the shells burst. Forward, forward! We run at full speed. Each knows his rôle. Each knows his act, his allotted piece of work. Each is strangely lucid. The movement is admirable. All is going well, everything is working out with precision. We will gain our point. With an infallible glance the soldier knows the outcome, and in that moment he judges his chief without error, without appeal. The trench is taken. The shelters are crushed in, the dead are lying all about. Pale and haggard prisoners run toward us, huddled together with up-lifted arms to give themselves up: “Gut Franzose! Kamarad! Polones, Polones!” They are Poles: big and little, tall and short; a whole troop. They shrink, now. They would like to run. They are anxious to get away from the place, for the miserable creatures cling to life and fear the shells, their own shells, the German shells, which follow each other in gusts. We drive them on. They go as captives. Three pass, a Frenchman follows, then three more prisoners and another Frenchman, with gun ready. The procession follows the wrecked trench, leaps over the débris, reaches the open space between our lines. Now there is less danger. The prisoners are parcelled off by twenties and are led to the rear. They stop at the first post where wounded are cared for. The stretchers are taken up and carried by the same men who made the wounds, by these men now quite docile, who, dressed in dirty gray made still more dirty by the ground, march with their burden, fearful, but at heart happy: for them the war is over. It will continue for their conquerors who still live. Death has once more made her choice. The prisoners are safe. Those others who took them will die perhaps to-morrow, on this same ground or on another. Satiated to-day, the Grim Monster is reserving them: they are kept for a coming feast of death. How well they know it! but they care not at all. They are tired and happy. They wander about the captured trench and gather up little nothings: fragments of clothing, pieces of arms, splinters of cartridges. They go to and fro; or, impassive, they choose a corner and go to sleep, indifferent to the shells, to the battle which is dying out; indifferent to to-day and to-morrow. They know their task is accomplished. FOOTNOTES: [A] The trial of Mme. Caillaux for the murder of the editor of _Le Figaro_.--TRANSLATOR. [B] “Les compagnons--ceux avec qui on rompt le pain.” [C] The banquette is about eighteen inches above the pathway at the bottom of the trench. The men stand here when firing or when on guard.--TRANSLATORS’ NOTE.