"That's nothing yet," said Cocon, The Man of Figures. "At Army Corps
Headquarters alone there are thirty officers' motors; and you don't
know," he added, "how many trains of fifty trucks it takes to
entrain all the Corpsmen and all the box of tricks--except, of
course, the lorries, that'll join the new sector on their feet?
Don't guess, fiat-face. It takes ninety."
"Great Scott! And there are thirty-three Corps?"
"There are thirty-nine, lousy one!"
The turmoil increases; the station becomes still more populous. As
far as the eye can make out a shape or the ghost of a shape, there
is a hurly-burly of movement as lively as a panic. All the hierarchy
of the non-coms. expand themselves and go into action, pass and
repass like meteors, wave their bright-striped arms, and multiply
the commands and counter-commands that are carried by the worming
orderlies and cyclists, the former tardy, the latter maneuvering in
quick dashes, like fish in water.
Here now is evening, definitely. The blots made by the uniforms of
the poilus grouped about the hillocks of rifles become indistinct,
and blend with the ground; and then their mass is betrayed only by
the glow of pipes and cigarettes. In some places on the edge of the
clusters, the little bright points festoon the gloom like
illuminated streamers in a merry-making street.
Over this confused and heaving expanse an amalgam of voices rises
like the sea breaking on the shore: and above this unending murmur,
renewed commands, shouts, the din of a shot load or of one
transferred, the crash of steam-hammers redoubling their dull
endeavors, and the roaring of boilers.
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