lings and round
ink-blots of the dugouts. In some sections of trench one could
sometimes even descry black lines, like a dark wall between other
walls, and these lines stirred--they were the workmen of destruction.
A whole region in the north, on higher ground, was a forest flown away,
leaving only a stranded bristling of masts, like a quayside. There was
thunder in the sky, but it was drizzling, too, and even the flashes
were gray above that infinite liquefaction in which each regiment was
as lost as each man.

We entered the plain and disappeared into the trench. The "open
crossing" was now pierced by a trench, though it was little more than
begun. Amid the smacks of the bullets which blurred its edges we had
to crawl flat on our bellies, along the sticky bottom of this gully.
The close banks gripped and stopped our packs so that we floundered
perforce like swimmers, to go forward in the earth, under the murder in
the air. For a second the anguish and the effort stopped my heart and
in a nightmare I saw the cadaverous littleness of my grave closing over
me.

At the end of this torture we got up again, in spite of the knapsacks.
The last star-shells were sending a bloody _aurora borealis_ into the
morning. Sudden haloes drew our glances and crests of black smoke went
up like cypresses. On both sides, in front and behind, we heard the
fearful suicide of shells.

* * * * * *

We marched in the earth's interior until evening. From time to time
one hoisted the pack up or pressed down one's cap into the sweat of the
forehead; had it fallen it could not have been picked up again in the
mechanism of the march; and then we began again to fight with the
distance. The hand contracted on the rifle-sling was tumefied by the
shoulder-straps and the bent arm was broken.

Like a regular refrain the lamentation of Melusson came to me. He kept
saying that he was going to stop, but he did not stop, ever, and he
even butted into the back of the man in front of him when the whistle
went for a halt.

The mass of the men said nothing. And the greatness of this silence,
this despotic and oppressive motion, irritated Adjutant Marcassin, who
would have liked to see some animation. He rated and lashed us with a
vengeance. He hustled the file in the narrowness of the trench as he
clove to the corners so as to survey his charge. But then he had no
knapsack.

Through the heavy distant nois