ed decently enough, but my right
was a rebel. I felt a personal fury against it, as though I
said to it: "Ah! but I'll punish you when I get back!" I
with all my mental consciousness "willed" it to remain on
the handle. It slipped. I drove it back. It slipped further,
it was almost gone.... With a supreme effort I drove it back
again, "I _will_ fall off," said my hand. "You shall
_not_," said I. "I have!" cried my hand triumphantly.
"Back!" I swore, driving it.

We were now, I believe, both stumbling along, the wounded
man pitching from side to side. Of the rest of our journey I
have the most confused memory. The firing had no longer any
effect upon me. I was thinking of my rebellious hand, my
aching heel, and the irritation of my trousers clustered
about my legs. "Another step and I shall fall!" I
thought.... "I shall sleep." I heard, from a great distance
as it seemed, the soldier's "Na ... Na! Na ... na!" I
replied to him as a nurse to her child. "Na ... na! Na ...
na!" ... Then I heard Nikitin's voice....

Half an hour after my adventure I was watching the dawn
flood the sky from the little garden at the back of the
cottage. It seemed that those stretchers are really heavy
things for any two men to carry.... We had been three hours
on our journey!

Well--I sat in the garden watching the sun rise. To my right
were four dead men neatly laid out in a row under a tree.
Their faces had not been covered but their eyes were closed,
their cheeks, hands, and feet like wax. In front of them the
young man who had sat on the stove in the kitchen all night
and watched us at work was mowing the tall grass with a
scythe. He was going to dig graves. He wore a white shirt
and white trousers and had long black hair.

"Why didn't they take you for a soldier?" I asked him.

"Consumptive," he said.

I had washed my face, hitched up my trousers. I sat on the
trunk of a tree, watched the dew on the grass and the faint
blue like the colour of a bird's egg flood the sky, staining
it pale yellow. All firing had utterly ceased. There was
not a sound except the birds in the trees who were beginning
to sing. A soldier, a fine grave figure with a black beard,
was washing in a little pool at the end of the garden. He
was naked save for