We
return through the density, my unknown neighbor and I, unsteady, and
laboring along the narrow way of slippery mud, doubled up as if we
each carried a crushing burden. At one point of the horizon and then
at another all around, a gun sounds, and its heavy din blends with
the volleys of rifle-fire, redoubled one minute and dying out the
next, and with the clusters of grenade-reports, of deeper sound than
the crack of Lebel or Mauser, and nearly like the voice of the old
classical rifles. The wind has again increased; it is so strong that
one must protect himself against it in the darkness; masses of huge
cloud are passing in front of the moon.
So there we are, this man and I, jostling without knowing each
other, revealed and then hidden from each other in sudden jerks by
the flashes of the guns. oppressed by the opacity, the center of a
huge circle of fires that appear and disappear in the devilish
landscape.
"We're under a curse," says the man.
We separate, and go each to his own loophole, to weary our eyes upon
invisibility. Is some frightful and dismal storm about to break? But
that night it did not. At the end of my long wait, with the first
streaks of day, there was even a lull.
Again I saw, when the dawn came down on us like a stormy evening,
the steep banks of our crumbling trench as they came to life again
under the sooty scarf of the low-hanging clouds, a trench dismal and
dirty, infinitely dirty, humped with debris and filthiness.
Pages:
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285