achine? By the light of a cascade of flashes I thought I
saw a strange monk-like face. Then I saw more clearly--the face of an
ordinary man, muffled in a comforter.

"It's a chap of the 150th, not the 129th," stammers a voice by my side.

We do not know, except that it is the end of the attacking wave.

When he has disappeared among the eddies, another follows him at a
distance, and then another. They pass by, separate and solitary,
delegates of death, sacrificers and sacrificed. Their great-coats fly
wide; and we, we press close to each other in our corner of night; we
push and hoist ourselves with our rusted muscles, to see that void and
those great scattered soldiers.

We return to the shelter, which is plunged in darkness. The
motor-cyclist's voice obtrudes itself to the point that we think we can
see his black armor. He is describing the "carryings on" at Bordeaux
in September, when the Government was there. He tells of the
festivities, the orgies, the expenditure, and there is almost a tone of
pride in the poor creature's voice as he recalls so many pompous
pageants all at once.

But the uproar outside silences us. Our funk-hole trembles and cracks.
It is the barrage--the barrage which those whom we saw have gone to
fight, hand to hand. A thunderbolt falls just at the opening, it casts
a bright light on all of us, and reveals the last emotion of all, the
belief that all was ended! One man is grimacing like a malefactor
caught in the act; another is opening strange, disappointed eyes;
another is swinging his doleful head, enslaved by the love of sleep,
and another, squatting with his head in his hands, makes a lurid
entanglement. We have seen each other--upright, sitting or
crucified--in the second of broad daylight which came into the bowels
of the earth to resurrect our darkness.

In a moment, when the guns chance to take breath, a voice at the
door-hole calls us:

"Forward!"

"We shall be staying there, this time over!" growl the men.

They say this, but they do not know it. We go out, into a chaos of
crashing and flames.

"You'd better fix bayonets," says the sergeant; "come, get 'em on."

We stop while we adjust weapon to weapon and then run to overtake the
rest.

We go down; we go up; we mark time; we go forward--like the others. We
are no longer in the trench.

"Get your heads down--kneel!"

We stop and go on our knees. A star-shell pierces us with its
intolerable gaze.

By