In the immense obscurity, surcharged with men and with all things,
lights begin everywhere to appear. These are the flash-lamps of
officers and detachment leaders, and the cyclists' acetylene lamps,
whose intensely white points zigzag hither and thither and reveal an
outer zone of pallid resurrection.
An acetylene searchlight blazes blindingly out and depicts a dome of
daylight. Other beams pierce and rend the universal gray.
Then does the station assume a fantastic air. Mysterious shapes
spring up and adhere to the sky's dark blue. Mountains come into
view, rough-modeled, and vast as the ruins of a town. One can see
the beginning of unending rows of objects, finally plunged in night.
One guesses what the great bulks may be whose outermost outlines
flash forth from a black abyss of the unknown.
On our left, detachments of cavalry and infantry move ever forward
like a ponderous flood. We hear the diffused obscurity of voices. We
see some ranks delineated by a flash of phosphorescent light or a
ruddy glimmering, and we listen to long-drawn trails of noise.
Up the gangways of the vans whose gray trunks and black mouths one
sees by the dancing and smoking flame of torches, artillerymen are
leading horses. There are appeals and shouts, a frantic trampling of
conflict, and the angry kicking of some restive animal--insulted by
its guide--against the panels of the van where he is cloistered.
Not far away, they are putting wagons on to railway trucks.
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