hed
back difficulties and pierced insoluble problems with prompt escapes.
Only from time to time casualties dropped in upon them grimly,
impervious to human ingenuity.

In the quieter hours of the night, they crouched side by side
formulating fresh schemes and going over one by one the weak points of
their defenses.

They hadn't enough guns, or any reinforcements; they had no dry clothes.
The men were not accustomed to wet climates or invisible enemies.

They wanted more sand-bags and more bombs, and it would be better for
human beings not to be in trenches for three weeks at a time in the
rain.

They sat there pitting their brains against these obstacles, creating
the miraculous ingenuity of war. Personal questions dropped. Lionel saw
that Winn was ill beyond mending, but he saw it without definite
thought--it was one more obstacle in a race of obstacles. It wouldn't do
for Winn to break down. He fitted himself without explanations,
selflessly, with magnificent disinterestedness, into his friend's needs.
He was like a staff in the hand of a blind man.

Winn himself had begun to wonder, moving about in his sea of mud, how
much worse you could be before you were actually done. His cough shook
him incessantly, his brain burned, and his hands were curiously weak. He
was conscious that he had to repeat to himself all day long the things
he had to do; even then he might have forgotten if there had not been
Lionel. He might have forgotten to give orders. In spite of everything a
strange inner bliss possessed him which nourished him like food. He had
Claire's letters, they never failed him, they were as regular as the
beats of a heart. Something in him lived that had never lived before,
something that did not seem likely ever to die.

It was helping him as Lionel was helping him to get through things. What
he had to get through was dying. It was going to be quicker than the way
they had of dying in Davos, but it mightn't be quick enough; it might
drive him out of his last fight, back to an inconceivable stale world.

This must not happen. Lionel must live and he must die, where he was.
You could bully fate, if you were prepared to pay the price for it.

Winn was not sure yet what the price would be, he was only sure that he
was prepared to pay it.

They were to be relieved next day. The men were so worn out that they
could hardly move. Winn and Lionel found their own bodies difficult to
control; they had become heav