Their reports did not threaten to shatter everything, but had a dull resonance, something like that produced by striking an empty barrel with a wooden maul.

Their shells did not come at one in that wildly, ferocious way, with which a missile from a six-pounder convinces every fellow in a long line of battle that he is the identical one it is meant for, but they meandered over in a lazy, leisurely manner, as if time was no object and no person would feel put out at having to wait for them.

Then, the idea of firing every quarter of an hour for a year--fixing up a job for a lifetime, as Andrews expressed it,--and of being fired back at for an hour at 9 o'clock every morning and evening; of fifty thousand people going on buying and selling, eating, drinking and sleeping, having dances, drives and balls, marrying and giving in marriage, all within a few hundred yards of where the shells were falling-struck me as a most singular method of conducting warfare.
We received no rations until the day after our arrival, and then they were scanty, though fair in quality.

We were by this time so hungry and faint that we could hardly move.

We did nothing for hours but lie around on the ground and try to forget how famished we were.