"
"Rot!" cried the zouave.
"He doesn't care a damn for us, don't fret yourself."
"Anyway, what is there funny about it? That doesn't prevent people
from quarreling with each other--and don't they! And rifle-shots
speak jolly well the same language, don't they?"
"Yes," said the aviator, "but there's only one God. It isn't the
departure of prayers that I don't understand; it's their arrival."
The conversation dropped.
"There's a crowd of wounded laid out in there," the man with the
dull eyes said to me, "and I'm wondering all ways how they got 'em
down here. It must have been a terrible job, tumbling them in here."
Two Colonials, hard and lean, supporting each other like tipsy men,
butted into us and recoiled, looking on the ground for some place to
fall on.
"Old chap, in that trench I'm telling you of," the hoarse voice of
one was relating, "we were three days without rations, three full
days without anything--anything. Willy-nilly, we had to drink our
own water, and no help for it."
The other explained that once on a time he had cholera. "Ah, that's
a dirty business--fever, vomiting, colics; old man, I was ill with
that lot!"
"And then, too," suddenly growled the flying-man, still fierce to
pursue the answer to the gigantic conundrum, "what is this God
thinking of to let everybody believe like that that He's with them?
Why does He let us all--all of us--shout out side by side, like
idiots and brutes, 'God is with us!'--'No, not at all, you're wrong;
God is with us'?"
A groan arose from a stretcher, and for a moment fluttered lonely in
the silence as if it were an answer.
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