Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/216

182 the size and appearance of tomato cans. The officer picked up one, touched his cigarette to a fuse in the end, and tossed it on the grass a few yards away.

"Don't move," he grinned, seeing our startled expressions. "Only cnough explosive to set it off well."

The tin puffed like a faulty firecracker and out of it sprang an unbelievable volume of pure white smoke which formed perfect and beautiful curling patterns as it blotted out the lower end of the field. The sergeant threw one or two more and placed candles near by from which vast clouds of smoke, sooty or orange coloured, hissed wickedly. A thick, velvety curtain banded with yellows and whites and blacks was drawn across the field. In its fringes the form of the sergeant was lost now and again.

"The merry villagers," Williams said," will picture the Huns at their doors."

We heard one or two shouts, indeed, and, as we walked through the drift of smoke, we saw French children squatted on the fence, pointing and laughing and admiring.

"French children aren't easily alarmed," the instructor grinned. "I'll wager they can tell you the calibre of each one of those guns you hear firing over there. They know just what I've been