He pointed to it.
"Frenchmen," he said; "French infantrymen's trousers. One cannot make
out their coats, but their red trousers show as they wriggle forward on
their faces."
Better than ever before I realized the idiocy of sending men to fight in
garments that make vivid targets of them.
My companion may have come up for pleasure, but if business obtruded
itself on him he did not neglect it. He bent to his telephone and spoke
briskly into it. He used German, but, after a fashion, I made out what
he said. He was directing the attention of somebody to the activities
of those red trousers.
I intended to see what would follow on this, but at this precise moment
a sufficiently interesting occurrence came to pass at a place within
much clearer eye range. The gray grub-worms had shoved ahead until they
were gray ants; and now all the ants concentrated into a swarm and,
leaving the trenches, began to move in a slanting direction toward a
patch of woods far over to our left. Some of them, I think, got there,
some of them did not.
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