With his head upraised by a lump of mud, he looks over his feet at
those who come up on the left; his face is dark and polluted by the
clammy stains of disordered hair, and his wide and scalded eyes are
heavily encrusted with blackened blood. Eudore seems very small by
contrast, and his little face is completely white, so white as to
remind you of the be-flowered face of a pierrot, and it is touching
to see that little circle of white paper among the gray and bluish
tints of the corpses. The Breton Biquet, squat and square as a
flagstone, appears to be under the stress of a huge effort; he might
be trying to uplift the misty darkness; and the extreme exertion
overflows upon the protruding cheek-bones and forehead of his
grimacing face, contorts it hideously, sets the dried and dusty hair
bristling, divides his jaws in a spectral cry, and spreads wide the
eyelids from his lightless troubled eyes, his flinty eyes; and his
hands are contracted in a clutch upon empty air.
Barque and Biquet were shot in the belly; Eudore in the throat. In
the dragging and carrying they were further injured. Big Lamuse, at
last bloodless, had a puffed and creased face, and the eyes were
gradually sinking in their sockets, one more than the other. They
have wrapped him in a tent-cloth, and it shows a dark stain where
the neck is. His right shoulder has been mangled by several bullets,
and the arm is held on only by strips of the sleeve and by threads
that they have put in since.
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