With what intensity I
lamented this man who was so far asunder from me in everything!
Then fell the thunder on us! We were thrown violently on each other
by the frightful shaking of the ground and the walls. It was as if
the overhanging earth had burst and hurled itself down. Part of the
armor-plate of beams collapsed, enlarging the hole that already
pierced the cavern. Another shock--another pulverized span fell in
roaring destruction. The corpse of the great Red Cross sergeant went
rolling against the wall like the trunk of a tree. All the timber in
the long frame-work of the cave, those heavy black vertebrae,
cracked with an ear-splitting noise, and all the prisoners in the
dungeon shouted together in horror.
Blow after blow, the explosions resound and drive us in all
directions as the bombardment mangles and devours the sanctuary of
pierced and diminished refuge. As the hissing flight of shells
hammers and crushes the gaping end of the cave with its
thunderbolts, daylight streams in through the clefts. More sharply
now, and more unnaturally, one sees the flushed faces and those
pallid with death, the eyes which fade in agony or burn with fever,
the patched-up white-bound bodies, the monstrous bandages. All that
was hidden rises again into daylight. Haggard, blinking and
distorted, in face of the flood of iron and embers that the
hurricanes of light bring with them, the wounded arise and scatter
and try to take flight.
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