"
"There were four in the bottom of the hole. I called to 'em to come
out, and as soon as one came out I stuck him. Blood ran down me up
to the elbow and stuck up my sleeves."
"Ah!" the first speaker went on, "when we are telling all about it
later, if we get back, to the other people at home, by the stove and
the candle, who's going to believe it? It's a pity, isn't it?"
"I don't care a damn about that, as long as we do get back," said
the other; "I want the end quickly, and only that."
Bertrand was used to speak very little ordinarily, and never of
himself. But he said, "I've got three of them on my hands. I struck
like a madman. Ah, we were all like beasts when we got here!"
He raised his voice and there was a restrained tremor in it: "it was
necessary," he said, "it was necessary, for the future's sake."
He crossed his arms and tossed his head: "The future!" he cried all
at once as a prophet might. "How will they regard this slaughter,
they who'll live after us, to whom progress--which comes as sure as
fate--will at last restore the poise of their conscience? How will
they regard these exploits which even we who perform them don't know
whether one should compare them with those of Plutarch's and
Corneille's heroes or with those of hooligans and apaches?
"And for all that, mind you," Bertrand went on. "there is one figure
that has risen above the war and will blaze with the beauty and
strength of his courage--"
I listened, leaning on a stick and towards him, drinking in the
voice that came in the twilight silence from the lips that so rarely
spoke.
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