The
darkness was so deep that the star-shells only lit up slices of
water-seamed obscurity, in the depths of which fleeing phantoms came
and went and ran round in circles.
I cannot say how long I wandered with the group with which I had
remained. We went into morasses. We strained our sight forward in
quest of the embankment and the trench of salvation, towards the
ditch that was somewhere there, as towards a harbor.
A cry of consolation was heard at last through the vapors of war and
the elements--"A trench!" But the embankment of that trench was
moving; it was made of men mingled in confusion, who seemed to be
coming out and abandoning it.
"Don't stay there, mates!" cried the fugitives; "clear off, don't
come near. It's hell--everything's collapsing--the trenches are
legging it and the dug-outs are bunged up--the mud's pouring in
everywhere. There won't be any trenches by the morning--it's all up
with them about here!"
They disappeared. Where? We forgot to ask for some little direction
from these men whose streaming shapes had no sooner appeared than
they were swallowed up in the dark.
Even our little group crumbled away among the devastation, no longer
knowing where they were. Now one, now another, faded into the night,
disappearing towards his chance of escape.
We climbed slopes and descended them. I saw dimly in front of me men
bowed and hunchbacked, mounting a slippery incline where mud held
them back, and the wind and rain repelled them under a dome of
cloudy lights.
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