The other guns hurried on, took up their positions and began to fire.

John shuddered violently, but in a moment or two, he, too, forgot the little tragedy in the far more gigantic one that was being played before him.
He rode back to General Vaugirard and told him that his order had been obeyed.

The general nodded, but did not take his glasses from the horizon, where a long gray line was beginning to appear against the green of the earth.

"It goes well so far," John heard him say in the under note which was audible beneath the thunder of the battle.
In a quarter of an hour the great batteries limbered up again, and once more the French army went forward, the troops to lie down and wait again, while the artillery worked with ferocious energy.

It was yet a battle of big guns, at least in the center.