We were in a railway station, on a platform. A night alarm had torn
us from our sleep in the village and we had marched here. The rest
was over; our sector was being changed; they were throwing us
somewhere else. We had disappeared from Gauchin under cover of
darkness without seeing either the place or the people, without
bidding them good-by even in a look, without bringing away a last
impression.
A locomotive was shunting, near enough to elbow us, and screaming
full-lunged. I saw Barque's mouth, stoppered by the clamor of our
huge neighbor, pronounce an oath, and I saw the other faces
grimacing in deafened impotence, faces helmeted and chin-strapped,
for we were sentries in the station.
"After you!" yelled Barque furiously, addressing the white-plumed
whistle. But the terrible mechanism continued more imperiously than
ever to drive his words back in his throat. When it ceased, and only
its echo rang in our ears, the thread of the discourse was broken
for ever, and Barque contented himself with the brief conclusion,
"Oui."
Then we looked around us. We were lost in a sort of town.
Interminable strings of trucks, trains of forty to sixty carriages,
were taking shape like rows of dark-fronted houses, low built, all
alike, and divided by alleys. Before us, alongside the collection of
moving houses, was the main line, the limitless street where the
white rails disappeared at both ends, swallowed up in distance.
Sections of trains and complete trains were staggering in great
horizontal columns, leaving their places, then taking them again.
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