any progress now on account
of the dense growth of the shrubbery; the supple branches caught them
around the shoulders, the rank, tough grass held them by the ankles,
impenetrable walls of brambles rose before them and blocked their way,
while all the time the foliage was fluttering down about them, clipped
by the gigantic scythe that was mowing down the wood. Another man was
struck dead beside them by a bullet in the forehead, and he retained
his erect position, caught in some vines between two small birch trees.
Twenty times, while they were prisoners in that thicket, did they feel
death hovering over them.

"Holy Virgin!" said Maurice, "we shall never get out of this alive."

His face was ashy pale, he was shivering again with terror; and Jean,
always so brave, who had cheered and comforted him that morning, he,
also, was very white and felt a strange, chill sensation creeping down
his spine. It was fear, horrible, contagious, irresistible fear. Again
they were conscious of a consuming thirst, an intolerable dryness of the
mouth, a contraction of the throat, painful as if someone were choking
them. These symptoms were accompanied by nausea and qualms at the pit
of the stomach, while maleficent goblins kept puncturing their aguish,
trembling legs with needles. Another of the physical effects of their
fear was that in the congested condition of the blood vessels of the
retina they beheld thousands upon thousands of small black specks
flitting past them, as if it had been possible to distinguish the flying
bullets.

"Confound the luck!" Jean stammered. "It is not worth speaking of, but
it's vexatious all the same, to be here getting one's head broken for
other folks, when those other folks are at home, smoking their pipe in
comfort."

"Yes, that's so," Maurice replied, with a wild look. "Why should it be I
rather than someone else?"

It was the revolt of the individual Ego, the unaltruistic refusal of the
one to make himself a sacrifice for the benefit of the species.

"And then again," Jean continued, "if a fellow could but know the rights
of the matter; if he could be sure that any good was to come from it
all." Then turning his head and glancing at the western sky: "Anyway,
I wish that blamed sun would hurry up and go to roost. Perhaps they'll
stop fighting when it's dark."

With no distinct idea of what o'clock it was and no means of measuring
the flight of time, he had long been watching the tardy declinat