passed this way like the wind or have stayed
here like the earth.

We halt in a funnel. We lean our backs against the walls, resting the
packs on the projections which bristle from them. But we examine these
things coming out of the earth, and we smell that they are knees,
elbows and heads. They were interred there one day and the following
days are disinterring them. At the spot where I am, from which I have
roughly and heavily recoiled with all my armory, a foot comes out from
a subterranean body and protrudes. I try to put it out of the way, but
it is strongly incrusted. One would have to break the corpse of steel,
to make it disappear. I look at the morsel of mortality. My thoughts,
and I cannot help them, are attracted by the horizontal body that the
world bruises; they go into the ground with it and mold a shape for it.
Its face--what is the look which rots crushed in the dark depth of the
earth at the top of these remains? Ah, one catches sight of what there
is under the battlefields! Everywhere in the spacious wall there are
limbs, and black and muddy gestures. It is a sepulchral sculptor's
great sketch-model, a bas-relief in clay that stands haughtily before
our eyes. It is the portal of the earth's interior; yes, it is the
gate of hell.

* * * * * *

In order to get here, I slept as I marched; and now I have an illusion
that I am hidden in this little cave, cooped up against the curve of
the roof. I am no more than this gentle cry of the flesh--Sleep! As I
begin to doze and people myself with dreams, a man comes in. He is
unarmed, and he ransacks us with the stabbing white point of his
flash-lamp. It is the colonel's batman. He says to our adjutant as
soon as he finds him:--

"Six fatigue men wanted."

The adjutant's bulk rises and yawns:--

"Butsire, Vindame, Margat, Termite, Paulin, Remus!" he orders as he
goes to sleep again.

We emerge from the cave; and more slowly, from our drowsiness. We find
ourselves standing in a village street. But as soon as we touch the
open air, dazzling roars precede and follow us, mere handful of men as
we are, abruptly revealing us to each other. We hurl ourselves like a
pack of hounds into the first door or the first gaping hole, and there
are some who cry that: "We are marked. We're given away!"

After the porterage fatigue we go back. I settle myself in my corner,
heavier, more exhausted, more buried in the