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On both sides of our path spread the graceful undergrowth, waving in an ocean of green, and hiding the stumps with which the plain was covered, while far away, to right and left, the prospect was bounded by forest walls, and gloomy bulwarks and parapets of pines arose in front, as if designed, in their perfect denseness, to exclude the world from some bosky Garden of Paradise beyond.
Then, with a start, I broke the irresolute, tremulous suspense in which I had vainly endeavoured to analyze my own mind, solve my own doubts, concentrate my own will, and went the opposite way, skirting the circle of that haunted ground, as now, on one side its lofty terrace, the houses of the neighbouring city came full and close into view, divided from my fairy-land of life but by the trodden murmurous thoroughfare winding low beneath the ivied parapets; and as now, again, the world of men abruptly vanished behind the screening foliage of luxuriant June.
As it was necessary for him to remain away from home, he loitered in front of the shop-windows on the quays, leaned for hours on the parapets, watching the river and the boats discharging their cargoes.
The house itself was something between an eighteenth-century mansion and an old Border fortress; its centre part was very high in the roof, and had turrets, with outer stairs to them, at the corners; the parapets were embattled, and in the turrets were arrow-slits.
One evening Gordon was seated smoking a cigar on one of the damaged parapets of the bridge, when two shots fired by his own men struck the stone-work close by him. He got down at the second shot, and entered his boat. Hardly had he done so when the bridge collapsed with a tremendous crash, nearly smashing his boat and killing two men.
To this century belongs the transformation of the triforium windows all through the nave and choir. Parapets were at the same time added above the Norman corbel tables.
These calculations occupied no more than a few seconds: then, his mind made up to the course he must pursue, he crawled as quickly, but also as quietly, as he could along the dark parapets until he gained the leads of the Tertasse. Safe so far, he proceeded, with equal or greater caution, to descend the narrow cork-screw staircase, that led to the guard-room on the ground floor.
Julien, rifle in hand, fighting like a hero. In the first trenches we occupied the line consisted of two rows of parapets. The front one was called the parapet, the rear the parado. The latter was to protect the men from the "kick back" of the German high explosive shells.
The rats, the lice that lived on the bodies of our men, the water-logged trenches, the shell-fire which broke down the parapets and buried men in wet mud, wetter for their blood, the German snipers waiting for English heads, and then the mines oh, a cheery little school of courage for the sons of gentlemen! A gentle academy of war for the devil and General Squeers!
Then, in concerted action, the lines opened at alternate points, and pairs, dozens, scores of the huge armored tanks rolled through, their big guns already blazing shells into the ranks of the disconcerted enemy. Nothing could halt them. They climbed trench parapets, descended into gullies, came out upon level land, and over their whole path swept destruction to the Germans.
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