ever endured. We waited in a silent solitude enclosed
by our circles of wire, and by a circle of heavy smoke
outside of these. We couldn't see over the wall of
smoke, and we couldn't see through it. But at last it
began to shred away lazily, and by the end of another
quarter-hour the land was clear and our curiosity was
enabled to satisfy itself. No living creature was in
sight! We now perceived that additions had been
made to our defenses. The dynamite had dug a ditch
more than a hundred feet wide, all around us, and cast
up an embankment some twenty-five feet high on both
borders of it. As to destruction of life, it was amazing.
Moreover, it was beyond estimate. Of course, we
could not COUNT the dead, because they did not exist
as individuals, but merely as homogeneous protoplasm,