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A hundred paces behind it is an orchard in which its inmates walk. . . . Groholsky pays a high rent for that villa, a thousand roubles a year, I believe. . . . The villa is not worth that rent, but it is pretty. . . . Tall, with delicate walls and very delicate parapets, fragile, slender, painted a pale blue colour, hung with curtains, portières, draperies, it suggests a charming, fragile Chinese lady. . . .
Understand, my comrade, that shell-fire is not all very pleasant, and there are times when a man must sit in the fire-trench, crouching at the bottom, whilst they rain all round him, some bursting in the trench and shattering the traverses, some thumping pits behind or in front big enough for a platoon to camp in, and others blowing in the parapets, and smothering the fellows behind them.
At eventide, when the whole population comes out for an airing and loiters by the parapets which overlook the broad rushing river, when innumerable lights gleam from the boats anchored on either bank, and when the sound of music and song is heard from half a hundred windows, no city can boast a spectacle more animated. At ten o'clock the streets are deserted.
Hundreds of the soldiers were crouching behind the parapets, companies of archers with great bows poised, arrows at their cheeks, scores of leather jerkined men with stands of javelins at their right hands, spearsmen and men with long, thonged slings. Set at intervals were squat, powerful engines of wood and metal beside which were heaps of huge, rounded boulders.
Yet the soldiers who were engaged in all the rough fighting I have described in the last eight chapters have been excluded from any of the special clasps which have been struck. "... And thou hast talk'd Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin." "Henry IV.," Part I., Act ii., Sc.3.
Extricating ourselves from the crowd, we ascend by a stone stairway to the walk around the parapets of the walls, and look down upon the scene. How gay it is! Around the fountain, which is spilling in the centre of the court, a constantly varying group is gathered, washing, drinking, and filling their flasks and vases.
Public criers rushed about, red and breathless, throwing on the pavement and sticking up on the parapets, the posts, the walls of the houses, and even on the palace, long satires in short stanzas upon the personages of the time.
Along the firing and communication trenches parties set to work of various sorts, bailing out water from the trench bottom, putting in brushwood or brick foundations, building up and strengthening dug-outs and parapets, filling sandbags in readiness for night work and repairs on any portion damaged by shell fire.
To give additional protection sand bags, bullet-proof, were placed along the tops of the parapets far enough apart to make loop-holes for musketry. On top of these, logs were put. By these means the men were enabled to walk about erect when off duty, without fear of annoyance from sharpshooters.
They laid their mines, and at the appointed time exploded them, thus causing a great amount of damage to the enemy's parapets and trenches, and killing large numbers of the occupants. Retracing my steps, I fixed the camera up and filmed the men entering the mines and others bringing up the excavated earth in sandbags and placing them on the outside of the barricade.
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