midnight
Lanstron added . `` There 's a kind of injustice about that which I ca n't get over . Not one of us here has been under fire ! '' Even the minute of the attack they knew ; and just before midnight they were standing at the window looking out into the night , while the vice-chief held his watch in hand . In the hush the faint sound of a dirigible 's propeller high up in the heavens , muffled by the fog , was drowned by the Gray guns opening fire . * * * * * Before the mine exploded , by the light of the shell bursts breaking their vast prisms from central spheres of flame for miles , with the quick sequence of a moving-picture flicker , Fracasse 's men could see one another 's faces , spectral and stiff and pasty white , with teeth gleaming where jaws had dropped , some eyes half closed by the blinding flashes and some opened wide as if the lids were paralyzed . Faces and faces !