I make an effort to break the silence. To Paradis, who also is
looking that way, I say, "Are they dead?"
"We'll go and see presently," he says in a low voice; "stop here a
bit yet. We shall have the heart to go there by and by."
We look at each other, and our eyes fall also on the others who came
and fell down here. Their faces spell such weariness that they are
no longer faces so much as something dirty, disfigured and bruised,
with blood-shot eyes. Since the beginning we have seen each other in
all manner of shapes and appearances, and yet--we do not know each
other.
Paradis turns his head and looks elsewhere.
Suddenly I see him seized with trembling. He extends an arm
enormously caked in mud. "There--there--" he says.
On the water which overflows from a stretch particularly
cross-seamed and gullied, some lumps are floating, some round-backed
reefs.
We drag ourselves to the spot. They are drowned men. Their arms and
heads are submerged. On the surface of the plastery liquid appear
their backs and the straps of their accouterments. Their blue cloth
trousers are inflated, with the feet attached askew upon the
ballooning legs, like the black wooden feet on the shapeless legs of
marionettes. From one sunken head the hair stands straight up like
water-weeds. Here is a face which the water only lightly touches;
the head is beached on the marge, and the body disappears in its
turbid tomb. The face is lifted skyward.
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