On either side of us were cornfields and out of the heart of those from under our very feet as it seemed there were explosions of a strange stinging metallic kind--not angry and human as the battery had been, but rather like some huge bottle cracking in the sun.

These huge bottles--one could fancy them green and shining somewhere in the corn--cracked one after another; positively the sound intensified the heat of the sun upon one's head.

There were too now, for the first time in our experience, shrapnel.

They were not over us, but ran somewhere on our right across the valley.

Their sound was "fireworks" and nothing more--so that alarm at their gentle holiday temper was impossible.