Far away on the hillside an artilleryman, making a funnel of his
hands, shouted for stretchers; and Ailsa, repeating the call,
managed to gather together half a dozen overworked bearers and
start with them up through the smoke.
Deafened, blinded, her senses almost reeling under the
nerve-shattering crash of the guns, she toiled on through the dry
grass, pausing at the edge of charred spaces to beat out the low
flames that leaped toward her skirts.
There was a leafy hollow ahead, filled with slender, willow-trees,
many of them broken off, shot, torn, twisted, and splintered. Dead
soldiers lay about under the smoke, their dirty shirts or naked
skin visible between jacket and belt; to the left on a sparsely
wooded elevation, the slope of which was scarred, showing dry red
sand and gravel, a gun stood, firing obliquely across the gully
into the woods. Long, wavering, irregular rings of smoke shot out,
remaining intact and floating like the rings from a smoker's pipe,
until another rush and blast of flame scattered them.
The other gun had been dismounted and lay on its side, one wheel in
the air, helpless, like some monster sprawling with limbs stiffened
in death. Behind it, crouched close, squatted some infantry
soldiers, firing from the cover of the wreckage.
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