I rely on you. As always, do your duty and be silent. It
is so easy to be silent and to act!"

We broke off and made ourselves scarce. Returned to quarters we
learned there was to be an inspection of cartridges and reserve rations
by the captain. We had hardly time to eat. Majorat waxed wroth, and
confided his indignation to Termite, who was a good audience, "It's all
the fault of that unlucky captain--we're just slaves!"

He shook his fist as he spoke towards the Town Hall.

But Termite shrugged his shoulders, looked at him unkindly, and said,
"Like a rotten egg, that's how you talk. That captain, and all the red
tabs and brass hats, it's not them that invented the rules. They're
just gilded machines--machines like you, but not so cheap. If you want
to do away with discipline, do away with war, my fellow; that's a sight
easier than to make it amusing for the private."

He left Majorat crestfallen, and the others as well. For my part I
admired the peculiar skill with which the anti-militarist could give
answers beside the mark and yet always seem to be in the right.

During those days they multiplied the route-marches and the exercises
intended to let the officers get the men again in hand. These
maneuvers tired us to death, and especially the sham attacks on wooded
mounds, carried out in the evening among bogs and thorn-thickets. When
we got back, most of the men fell heavily asleep just as they had
fallen, beside their knapsacks, without having the heart to eat.

Right in the middle of the night and this paralyzed slumber, a cry
echoed through the walls, "Alarm! Stand to arms!"

We were so weary that the brutal reveille seemed at first, to the
blinking and rusted men, like the shock of a nightmare. Then, while
the cold blew in through the open door and we heard the sentries
running through the streets, while the corporals lighted the candles
and shook us with their voices, we sat up askew, and crouched, and got
our things ready, and stood up and fell in shivering, with flabby legs
and minds befogged, in the black-hued street.

After the roll-call and some orders and counter-orders, we heard the
command "Forward!" and we left the rest-camp as exhausted as when we
entered it. And thus we set out, no one knew where.

At first it was the same exodus as always. It was on the same road
that we disappeared: into the same great circles of blackness that we
sank.

We came to the shattered glass works