He
is looking at his dreams of a moment ago. Then he passes his hand
over his eyes and--as if it had some connection with his
dream--recalls the scene that night when we came up to the
trenches--"For all that," he says, in a voice weighty with slumber
and reflection, "there were some half-seas-over that night! Ah, what
a night! All those troops, companies and whole regiments, yelling
and surging all the way up the road! In the thinnest of the dark you
could see the jumble of poilus that went on and up--like the sea
itself, you'd say--and carrying on across all the convoys of
artillery and ambulance wagons that we met that night. I've never
seen so many, so many convoys in the night, never!" Then he deals
himself a thump on the chest, settles down again in self-possession,
groans, and says no more.
Blaire's voice rises, giving expression to the haunting thought that
wakes in the depths of the men: "It's four o'clock. It's too late
for there to be anything from our side."
One of the gamesters in the other corner yelps a question at
another: "Now then? Are you going to play or aren't you, worm-face?"
Tirette continues the story of his major: "Behold one day they'd
served us at the barracks with some suetty soup. Old man, a disease,
it was! So a chap asks to speak to the captain, and holds his
mess-tin up to his nose."
"Numskull!" some one shouts in the other corner. "Why didn't you
trump, then?"
"'Ah, damn it,' said the captain, 'take it away from my nose, it
positively stinks.
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