I heard one of them mutter to another that they should not have been sent now; that they should have waited until the attack was over ...
"and the full moon....

Did any one ever see such a moon ?" We came to cross-roads and advanced very carefully.
As we crossed the road I was conscious of great excitement.
The noise around us was terrific and different from any noise that I heard before.

I did not think at the time, but was informed afterwards that it was because we were almost directly under a high-wooded cliff (the actual position about whose possession the battle was being fought), that the noise was so tremendous.

The echo flung everything back so that each report sounded three or four times.

This certainly had the strangest effect--a background as it were of rolling thunder, sometimes distant, sometimes very close and, in front of this, clapping, bellowing, stamping, and then suddenly an absolutely _smashing_ effect as though some one cried: "Well, this will settle it!" In quieter intervals one heard the birdlike flight of bullets above one's head and the irritated bad temper of the machine-guns.