These spaces the men are ordered to avoid, or whip quickly across them into cover.
Now the enemy had just got the range of one of these places with their solitary gun, and had already dropped a couple of shot right on to it.
A camp follower with a tray, two cutlets, and a glass of water, came to this open space just as a puff of white smoke burst from the bastion.
Instead of instantly seeking shelter till the shot had struck, he, in his inexperience, thought the shot must have struck, and all danger be over.

He stayed there mooning instead of pelting under cover: the shot (eighteen-pound) struck him right on the breast, knocked him into spilikins, and sent the mutton cutlets flying.
The human fragments lay quiet, ten yards off.

But a soldier that was eating his dinner kicked it over, and jumped up at the side of "Death's Alley" (as it was christened next minute), and danced and yelled with pain.
"Haw! haw! haw!" roared a soldier from the other side of the alley.
"What is that ?" cried Sergeant La Croix.

"What do you laugh at, Private Cadel ?" said he sternly, for, though he was too far in the trench to see, he had heard that horrible sound a soldier knows from every other, the "thud" of a round shot striking man or horse.
"Sergeant," said Cadel, respectfully, "I laugh to see Private Dard, that got the wind of the shot, dance and sing, when the man that got the shot itself does not say a word." "The wind of the shot, you rascal!" roared Private Dard: "look here!" and he showed the blood running down his face.
The shot had actually driven a splinter of bone out of the sutler into Dard's temple.
"I am the unluckiest fellow in the army," remonstrated Dard: and he stamped in a circle.
"Seems to me you are only the second unluckiest this time," said a young soldier with his mouth full; and, with a certain dry humor, he pointed vaguely over his shoulder with the fork towards the corpse.
The trenches laughed and assented.
This want of sympathy and justice irritated Dard.

"You cursed fools!" cried he.