Yes, you take it, old chap!"
This man goes with little steps, and holds his pickax up in front
like a candle; his face is withered, and his body borne down by the
blows of lumbago.
"Like a penny, gran'pa?" Barque asks him, as he passes within reach
of a tap on the shoulder.
The broken-down poilu replies with a great oath of annoyance, and
provokes the harsh rejoinder of Barque: "Come now, you might be
polite, filthy-face, old muck-mill!"
Turning right round in fury, the old one defies his tormentor.
"Hullo!" cries Barque, laughing, "He's showing fight; the ruin! He's
warlike, look you, and he might be mischievous if only he were sixty
years younger!"
"And if he wasn't alone," wantonly adds Pepin, whose eye is
in quest of other targets among the flow of new arrivals.
The hollow chest of the last straggler appears, and then his
distorted back disappears.
The march past of the worn-out and trench-foul veterans comes to an
end among the ironical and almost malevolent faces of these sinister
troglodytes, whom their caverns of mud but half reveal.
Meanwhile, the hours slip away, and evening begins to veil the sky
and darken the things of earth. It comes to blend itself at once
with the blind fate and the ignorant dark minds of the multitude
there enshrouded.
Through the twilight comes the rolling hum of tramping men, and
another throng. rubs its way through.
"Africans!"
They march past with faces red-brown, yellow or chestnut, their
beards scanty and fine or thick and frizzled, their greatcoats
yellowish-green, and their muddy helmets sporting the crescent in
place of our grenade.
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