The battery on our left was very near to us and we could see the sharp flash of its flame behind the trees.

The noise that it made was terrific, a sharp, angry, clumsy noise, as though some huge giant clad in mail armour was flinging his body, in a violent rage, against an iron door that echoed through an empty house--my same iron door that I had heard all night.

The rage of the giant spread beyond his immediate little circle of trees and one wondered at the men in the trenches because they were indifferent to his temper.
The noise of the more distant batteries was still, as it had been before, like the clanging of many iron doors very mild and gentle against the clamour of our own enraged fury.

The Austrian reply seemed like the sleepy echo of this confusion, so sleepy and pleasant that one felt almost friendly to the enemy.
Our own battery was inconsistent in his raging.

Had he only chosen to fling himself at his door every three minutes, say, or even every minute, we could have prepared ourselves, but he was moved by nothing, apparently, but his own irrational impulse.