cry, and suddenly by a sound like the heavy snoring of a sleeper, a
sound which slowly ebbed. Bertrand and I waited, grazed by the
horizontal hail of bullets that traced a network of death an inch or so
above us and sometimes scraped our clothes, driving us still deeper
into the mud, nor dared we risk a movement which might have lifted a
little some part of our bodies. The machine-gun at last held its peace
in an enormous silence. A quarter of an hour later we two slid out of
the shell-hole, and crawling on our elbows we fell at last like bundles
into our listening-post. It was high time, too, for at that moment the
moon shone out. We were obliged to stay in the bottom of the trench
till morning, and then till evening, for the machine-gun swept the
approaches without pause. We could not see the prostrate bodies through
the loop-holes of the post, by reason of the steepness of the
ground--except, just on the level of our field of vision, a lump which
appeared to be the back of one of them. In the evening, a sap was dug
to reach the place where they had fallen. The work could not be
finished in one night and was resumed by the pioneers the following
night, for, overwhelmed with fatigue, we could no longer keep from
falling asleep.

Awaking from a leaden sleep, I saw the four corpses that the sappers
had reached from underneath, hooking and then hauling them into the sap
with ropes. Each of them had several adjoining wounds, bullet-holes an
inch or so apart--the mitrailleuse had fired fast. The body of Mesnil
Andre was not found, and his brother Joseph did some mad escapades in
search of it. He went out quite alone into No Man's Land, where the
crossed fire of machine-guns swept it three ways at once and
constantly. In the morning, dragging himself along like a slug, he
showed over the bank a face black with mud and horribly wasted. They
pulled him in again, with his face scratched by barbed wire, his hands
bleeding, with heavy clods of mud in the folds of his clothes, and
stinking of death. Like an idiot be kept on saying, "He's nowhere." He
buried himself in a corner with his rifle, which he set himself to
clean without hearing what was said to him, and only repeating "He's
nowhere."

It is four nights ago since that night, and as the dawn comes once
again to cleanse the earthly Gehenna, the bodies are becoming
definitely distinct.

Barque in his rigidity seems immoderately long, his arms lie closely to
the body, his