A spell seems to be cast on us, paralyzing our
arms. The rockets torment and pursue us, and allow us but little
movement. After every one of them that petrifies us with its light we
have to struggle against a task still more stubborn. The hole only
deepens into the darkness with painful and despairing tardiness.

The ground gets softer; each shovelful drips and flows, and spreads
from the blade with a flabby sound. At last some one cries, "Water!"
The repeated cry travels all along the row of diggers--"Water--that's
done it!"

"Melusson's team's dug deeper, and there's water. They've struck a
swamp."--"No help for it."

We stop in confusion. In the bosom of the night we hear the sound of
shovels and picks thrown down like empty weapons. The non-coms. go
gropingly after the officer to get instructions. Here and there, with
no desire for anything better, some men are going deliciously to sleep
under the caress of the rain, under the radiant rockets.

* * * * *

It was very nearly at this minute, as far as I can remember, that the
bombardment began again. The first shell fell with a terrible splitting
of the air, which seemed to tear itself in two; and other whistles were
already converging upon us when its explosion uplifted the ground at
the head of the detachment in the heart of the magnitude of night and
rain, revealing gesticulations upon a sudden screen of red.

No doubt they had seen us, thanks to the rockets, and had trained their
fire on us.

The men hurled and rolled themselves towards the little flooded ditch
that they had dug, wedging, burying, and immersing themselves in it,
and placed the blades of the shovels over their heads. To right, to
left, in front and behind, shells burst so near that every one of them
shook us in our bed of clay; and it became soon one continuous quaking
that seized the wretched gutter, crowded with men and scaly with
shovels, under the strata of smoke and the falling fire. The splinters
and debris crossed in all directions with a network of noise over the
dazzling field. No second passed but we all thought what some stammered
with their faces in the earth, "We're done, this time!"

A little in front of the place where I am, a shape has arisen and
cried, "Let's be off!" Prone bodies half rose out of the shroud of mud
that dripped in tails and liquid rags from their limbs, and these
deathful apparitions cried also, "Let's go!" They were on their kne