It was not close, and no shells dropped in our vicinity. But the low,
horizontal red streaks of the German guns were plainly visible.
With the cessation of the rain had begun again the throwing over the
Belgian trenches of the German magnesium flares, which the British
call starlights. The French call them _fusees_. Under any name I do
not like them. One moment one is advancing in a comfortable obscurity.
The next instant it is the Fourth of July, with a white rocket
bursting overhead. There is no noise, however. The thing is
miraculously beautiful, silent and horrible. I believe the light
floats on a sort of tiny parachute. For perhaps sixty seconds it hangs
low in the air, throwing all the flat landscape into clear relief.
I do not know if one may read print under these _fusees_. I never had
either the courage or the print for the experiment. But these eyes of
the night open and close silently all through the hours of darkness.
They hang over the trenches, reveal the movements of troops on the
roads behind, shine on ammunition trains and ambulances, on the
righteous and the unrighteous. All along the German lines these
_fusees_ go up steadily. I have seen a dozen in the air at once. Their
silence and the eternal vigilance which they reveal are most
impressive. On the quietest night, with only an occasional shot being
fired, the horizon is ringed with them.
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