“But come,” he said with sudden gaiety, “we are not going to sleep here?”

You cannot believe how much this courageous display of joviality contributed towards giving me strength and hope.  I felt quite different since we were two to struggle against death.

“Wait,” I exclaimed, “I will bandage up your arm with my handkerchief, and we will try and support one another as far as the nearest ambulance.”

“That’s it, my boy.  Don’t make it too tight.  Now, let us take each other by the good hand and try to get up.”

We rose staggering.  We had lost a great deal of blood; our heads were swimming and our legs failed us.  Any one would have mistaken us for drunkards, stumbling, supporting, pushing one another, and making zigzags to avoid the dead.  The sun was setting with a rosy blush, and our gigantic shadows danced in a strange way over the field of battle.  It was the end of a fine day.

The colonel joked; his lips were crisped by shudders, his laughter resembled sobs.  I could see that we were going to fall down in some corner never to rise again.  At times we were seized with giddiness, and were obliged to stop and close our eyes.  The ambulances formed small grey patches on the dark ground at the extremity of the plain.

We knocked up against a large stone, and were thrown down one on the other.  The colonel swore like a pagan.  We tried to walk on all-fours, catching hold of the briars.  In this way we did a hundred yards on our knees.  But our knees were bleeding.

“I have had enough of it,” said the colonel, lying down; “they may come and fetch me if they will.  Let us sleep.”

I still had the strength to sit half up, and shout with all the breath that remained within me.  Men were passing along in the distance picking up the wounded; they ran to us and placed us side by side on a stretcher.

“Comrade,” the colonel said to me during the journey, “Death will not have us.  I owe you my life; I will pay my debt, whenever you have need of me.  Give me your hand.”

I placed my hand in his, and it was thus that we reached the ambulances.  They had lighted torches; the surgeons were cutting and sawing, amidst frightful yells; a sickly smell came from the blood-stained linen, whilst the torches cast dark rosy flakes into the basins.

The colonel bore the amputation of his arm with courage; I only saw his lips turn pale and a film come over his eyes.  When it was my turn, a surgeon examined my shoulder.

“A shell did that for you,” he said; “an inch lower and your shoulder would have been carried away.  The flesh, only, has suffered.”

And when I asked the assistant, who was dressing my wound, whether it was serious, he answered me with a laugh: 

“Serious! you will have to keep to your bed for three weeks, and make new blood.”

I turned my face to the wall, not wishing to show my tears.  And with my heart’s eyes I perceived Babet and my uncle Lazare stretching out their arms towards me.  I had finished with the sanguinary struggles of my summer day.