"How are you coming?" I asked.
"Great," he answered, "great stuff. Now, if only something happens."
He had planted his tripod fifty feet back of the barricade, plumb
against a red-brick, three-story house, so that the lens raked the
street and its defenses diagonally. Thirty minutes we waited, with shell
fire far to the right of us, falling into the center of the town with a
rumble, like a train of cars heard in the night, when one is half
asleep. That was the sense of things to me, as I stood in the street,
waiting for hell to blow off its lid. It was a dream world, and I was
the dreamer, in the center of the strange unfolding sight, seeing it all
out of a muffled consciousness.
Another quarter hour, and Rossiter began to fidget.
"Do you call this a battle?" he asked.
"The liveliest thing in a month," replied the lieutenant.
"We've got to brisk it up," Rossiter said. "Now, I tell you what we'll
do. Let's have a battle that looks something like. These real things
haven't got speed enough for a five-cent house."
In a moment, all was action. Those amazing Belgians, as responsive as
children in a game, fell to furiously to create confusion and swift
event out of the trance of peace. The battered giant in the Sava
released a cloud of steam from his car. The men aimed their rifles in
swift staccato. The lieutenant dashed back and forth from curb to curb,
plunging to the barricade, and then to the half dozen boys who were
falling back, crouching on one knee, firing, and then retreating.
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