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Such was Mahmud's famous zeriba, which for more than a month had been the predominant thought in the minds of the troops. It was scarcely imposing, and at first the soldiers thought it deserted. Only a dozen stray horsemen sat silently on their horses outside the entrenchment, watching their enemies, and inside a few dirty-white figures appeared and disappeared behind the parapets.
It was seven o'clock, and the morning wind swept soft and warm from over the river. There was a white light on all the stucco parapets, and their shadows slanted clear and delicately purple to the west.
They, too, sat on the parapets drying their legs, and grinning at the gray ants yonder, until these incidents were reported back to G. H. Q. where good fires were burning under dry roofs and stringent orders came against "fraternization." Every German who showed himself was to be shot. Of course any Englishman who showed himself owing to a parapet falling in would be shot, too.
There are no words in any vocabulary that convey the emotions and thoughts of persons during the long days and nights of horror of the continual crash of the shells, the melting away or total annihilation of parapets and dug-outs; being buried and spattered with mud and blood; with dead and wounded everywhere and, worst of all, the pitiful ravings of those whose nerves have suddenly given way from shell shock.
Beside the deserted fire John Penhallow sat smoking. A hand fell on his shoulder. "Halloa, Blake!" he said, "where did you come from?" "I am on Wright's staff. I am waiting for a note I am to carry. There will be no sleep for me to-night. We shall attack at dawn a square frontal attack through slashes, chevaux-de-frises and parapets; but the men are keen for it, and we shall win."
The majority were old books, many of them in languages that he was not able to decipher, picked up for a song at second-hand shops or on the book stands installed upon the parapets of the Seine. Only a man holding the key of tongues could get together such volumes.
Then those gallant poilus who had poured over the parapets of their trenches where such still existed springing from shell-holes where they had taken shelter, and emerging from every sort of odd and unexpected corner, joined in one frantic mob, swept down under the rays of the search-light upon the enemy, and, plunging into their midst, commenced at once a desperate hand-to-hand encounter.
But there come forth speedily from out the number a few of unsurpassed allurement. These are a ski trip from Tallac to Fallen Leaf Lake to see the breakers and the spray driven by a rising gale against the rock-bound shore, and, when the lake has grown quieter, a boat ride to Fallen Leaf Lodge beneath the frowning parapets of Mount Tallac.
He has repaired the foundations in some parts and the parapets in others, and so judiciously that the eye is never annoyed by the intrusion of the new among the old; the ivy furnishing him with a ready means for hiding the unhallowed brick and mortar from the sight.
We sat like sparrows on a railing, and munched our egg-sandwiches and drank our wine in a sort of glorious stupefaction. For right opposite us was the vast glacier-fall, whose crashing foam was towers and parapets of ice, that went over and rolled into the valley below, a ruin of thunder.
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