When there are no more of the wooden floor-gratings, we tramp in the
thick mud. It is dark now. There is a sudden halt and I am thrown on
Poterloo. Up higher we hear half-angry reproaches--"What the devil,
will you get on? We shall get broken up!"
"I can't get my trotters unstuck!" replies a pitiful voice.
The engulfed one gets clear at last, and we have to run to overtake
the rest of the company. We begin to pant and complain, and bluster
against those who are leading. Our feet go down haphazard; we
stumble and hold ourselves up by the wails, so that our hands are
plastered with mud. The march becomes a stampede, full of the noise
of metal things and of oaths.
In redoubled rain there is a second halt; some one has fallen, and
the hubbub is general. He picks himself up and we are off again. I
exert myself to follow Poterloo's helmet closely that gleams feebly
in the night before my eyes, and I shout from time to time, "All
right?"--"Yes, yes, all right," he replies, puffing and blowing, and
his voice always singsong and resonant.
Our knapsacks, tossed in this rolling race under the assault of the
elements, drag and hurt our shoulders.
The trench is blocked by a recent landslide, and we plunge unto it.
We have to tear our feet out of the soft and clinging earth, lifting
them high at each step. Then, when this crossing is laboriously
accomplished, we topple down again into the slippery stream, in the
bottom of which are two narrow ruts, boot-worn, which hold one's
foot like a vice, and there are pools into which it goes with a
great splash.
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