" The smothered and terror-struck
mutter issued instantly from the mass that was covered with a thick
and slimy horse-cloth, so indented that it seemed to have been
trampled. "I'll tell you why. I believe my belly's shot through. But
I'm not sure, and I daren't find out."
"Let's see--"
"No, not yet," says the man. "I'd rather stop on a bit like this."
The others, dragging themselves on their elbows, began to make
splashing movements, by way of casting off the clammy infernal
covering that weighed them down. The paralysis of cold was passing
away from the knot of sufferers, though the light no longer made any
progress over the great irregular marsh of the lower plain. The
desolation proceeded, but not the day.
Then he who spoke sorrowfully, like a bell, said. "It'll be no good
telling about it, eh? They wouldn't believe you; not out of malice
or through liking to pull your leg, but because they couldn't. When
you say to 'em later, if you live to say it, 'We were on a night job
and we got shelled and we were very nearly drowned in mud,' they'll
say, 'Ah!' And p'raps they'll say. 'You didn't have a very spicy
time on the job.' And that's all. No one can know it. Only us."
"No, not even us, not even us!" some one cried.
"That's what I say, too. We shall forget--we're forgetting already,
my boy!"
"We've seen too much to remember."
"And everything we've seen was too much. We're not made to hold it
all. It takes its damned hook in all directions.
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