"Perhaps!" cries Cocon, "and perhaps not."
"Anyway," Tirloir goes on, "we've not got a dead set on the men, but
on the German officers; non, non, non, they're not men, they're
monsters. I tell you, they're really a specially filthy sort o'
vermin. One might say that they're the microbes of the war. You
ought to see them close to--the infernal great stiff-backs, thin as
nails, though they've got calf-heads."
"And snouts like snakes."
Tirloir continues: "I saw one once, a prisoner, as I came back from
liaison. The beastly bastard! A Prussian colonel, that wore a
prince's crown, so they told me, and a gold coat-of-arms. He was mad
because we took leave to graze against him when they were bringing
him back along the communication trench, and he looked down on
everybody--like that. I said to myself, 'Wait a bit, old cock, I'll
make you rattle directly!' I took my time and squared up behind him,
and kicked into his tailpiece with all my might. I tell you, he fell
down half-strangled."
"Strangled?"
"Yes, with rage, when it dawned on him that the rump of an officer
and nobleman had been bust in by the hobnailed socks of a poor
private! He went off chattering like a woman and wriggling like an
epileptic--"
"I'm not spiteful myself," says Blaire, "I've got kiddies. And it
worries me, too, at home, when I've got to kill a pig that I
know--but those, I shall run 'em through--Bing!--full in the
linen-cupboard."
"I, too.
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