we there?"--"Ah, yes, we're there!"

For the moment a heavy recoil presses us back and then a murmur runs
along: "We've lost ourselves." The truth dawns on the confusion of the
wandering horde. We have taken the wrong turn at some fork, and it will
be the deuce of a job to find the right way again.

Then, too, a rumor passes from mouth to mouth that a fighting company
on its way to the lines is coming up behind us. The way by which we
have come is stopped up with men. It is the block absolute.

At all costs we must try to regain the lost trench--which is alleged to
be on our left--by trickling through some sap or other. Utterly wearied
and unnerved, the men break into gesticulations and violent reproaches.
They trudge awhile, then drop their tools and halt. Here and there are
compact groups--you can glimpse them by the light of the
star-shells--who have let themselves fall to the ground. Scattered afar
from south to north, the troop waits in the merciless rain.

The lieutenant who is in charge and has led us astray, wriggles his way
along the men in quest of some lateral exit. A little trench appears,
shallow and narrow.

"We most go that way, no doubt about it," the officer hastens to say.
"Come, forward, boys."

Each man sulkily picks up his burden. But a chorus of oaths and curses
rises from the first who enter the little sap: "It's a latrine!"

A disgusting smell escapes from the trench, and those inside halt butt
into each other, and refuse to advance. We are all jammed against each
other and block up the threshold.

"I'd rather climb out and go in the open!" cries a man. But there are
flashes rending the sky above the embankments on all sides, and the
sight is so fearsome of these jets of resounding flame that overhang
our pit and its swarming shadows that no one responds to the madman's
saying.

Willing or unwilling, since we cannot go back, we must even take that
way. "Forward into the filth!" cries the leader of the troop. We plunge
in, tense with repulsion. Bullets are whistling over. "Lower your
heads!" The trench has little depth; one must stoop very low to avoid
being hit, and the stench becomes intolerable. At last we emerge into
the communication trench that we left in error. We begin again to
march. Though we march without end we arrive nowhere.

While we wander on, dumb and vacant, in the dizzy stupefaction of
fatigue, the stream which is running in the bottom of the trench
cleanses our befo