They kept up their solemn litany, with a minute's interval between each--no _rafale_ which rumbles like a drum, but the steady persistence of artillery exactly ranged on a target.

I judged they must be bombarding the outer forts, and once there came a loud explosion and a red glare as if a magazine had suffered.
It was a sound I had not heard for five months, and it fairly crazed me.

I remembered how I had first heard it on the ridge before Laventie.

Then I had been half-afraid, half-solemnized, but every nerve had been quickened.

Then it had been the new thing in my life that held me breathless with anticipation; now it was the old thing, the thing I had shared with so many good fellows, my proper work, and the only task for a man.