And I'll tell you what--I don't think he'll stop long. The lad won't
take care of himself--he'll get himself done in. A lucky wound's got
to drop on him from the sky, otherwise he's corpsed. Six
brothers--it's too bad, that! Don't you think it's too bad?" He
added, "It's astonishing that he was so near us."
"His arm's just against the spot where I put my head."
"Yes," says Paradis, "his right arm, where there's a wrist-watch."
The watch--I stop short--is it a fancy, a dream? It seems to
me--yes, I am sure now--that three days ago, the night when we were
so tired out, before I went to sleep I heard what sounded like the
ticking of a watch and even wondered where it could come from.
"It was very likely that watch you heard all the same, through the
earth," says Paradis, whom I have told some of my thoughts; "they go
on thinking and turning round even when the chap stops. Damn, your
own ticker doesn't know you--it just goes quietly on making little
circles."
I asked, "There's blood on his hands; but where was be hit?"
"Don't know; in the belly, I think; I thought there was something
dark underneath him. Or perhaps in the face--did you notice the
little stain on the cheek?"
I recall the hairy and greenish face of the dead man. "Yes, there
was something on the cheek. Yes, perhaps it went in there--"
"Look out!" says Paradis hurriedly, "there he is! We ought not to
have stayed here."
But we stay all the same, irresolutely wavering, as Mesnil Joseph
comes straight up to us.
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