They are the men who come to
relieve us. Their faces are ruddy and tearful with cold, their
cheek-bones like enameled tiles; but their greatcoats are not
snow-powdered, for they have slept underground.
Paradis hoists himself out. Over the plain I follow his Father
Christmas back and the duck-like waddle of the boots that pick up
white-felted soles. Bending deeply forward we regain the trench; the
footsteps of those who replaced us are marked in black on the scanty
whiteness that covers the ground.
Watchers are standing at intervals in the trench, over which
tarpaulins are stretched on posts here and there, figured in white
velvet or mottled with rime, and forming great irregular tents; and
between the watchers are squatting forms who grumble and try to
fight against the cold. to exclude it from the meager fireside of
their own chests, or who are simply frozen. A dead man has slid
down. upright and hardly askew, with his feet in the trench and his
chest and arms resting on the bank. He was clasping the earth when
life left him. His face is turned skyward and is covered with a
leprosy of ice, the eyelids are white as the eyes, the mustache
caked with hard slime. Other bodies are sleeping, less white than
that one; the snowy stratum is only intact on lifeless things.
"We must sleep." Paradis and I are looking for shelter, a hole where
we may hide ourselves and shut our eyes. "It can't be helped if
there are stiffs in the dugouts," mutters Paradis; "in a cold like
this they'll keep, they won't be too bad.
Pages:
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329