"Let's leg it," growls the voice of Poupardin.
"Got to search him first!"
They lift him and turn him over, and set the soft, damp and warm
body up again. Suddenly he coughs.
"He isn't dead!"--"Yes, he is dead; that's the air."
They shake him by the pockets; with hasty breathing the four black
men stoop over their task. "The helmet's mine," says Pepin.
"It was me that knifed him, I want the helmet."
They tear from the body its pocket-book of still warm papers, its
field-glass, purse, and leggings.
"Matches!" shouts Blaire, shaking a box, "he's got some!"
"Ah, the fool that you are!" hisses Volpatte.
"Now let's be off like hell." They pile the body in a corner and
break into a run, prey to a sort of panic, and regardless of the row
their disordered flight makes.
"It's this way!--This way!--Hurry, lads--for all you're worth!"
Without speaking they dash across the maze of the strangely empty
trench that seems to have no end.
"My wind's gone," says Blaire, "I'm--" He staggers and stops.
"Come on, buck up, old chap," gasps Pepin, hoarse and
breathless. He takes him by the sleeve and drags him forward like a
stubborn shaft-horse.
'We're right!" says Poupardin suddenly. "Yes, I remember that tree.
It's the Pylones road!"
"Ah!" wails Blaire, whose breathing is shaking him like an engine.
He throws himself forward with a last impulse--and sits down on the
ground.
"Halt!" cries a sentry--"Good Lord!" he stammers as he sees the four
poilus.
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