And now the air in the hollow grew more suffocating as fragments of burning powder and wadding set the dead grass afire, and the thick, strangling blue smoke spread over everything.

Deeper still himself he loses, Everything his sight abuses, Both himself and others hating, Taking breathand suffocating, Without lifeyet scarcely dying, Not despairingnot relying.

We worked like fiends, the smoke suffocating, firing as rapidly as we could lay hands to weapons, seeing nothing but the dim outline of gray-clad men, surging madly toward us, or hurled back by the flame of our guns.