“There’s three!” some one shouted.

This one, whom we had not seen at first, hung in the air with dangling arms against the sheer wall, hooked on to a beam by the bottom of his trousers.  A pool of blood which lengthened down the flat plaster looked like a projected shadow.  At each fresh explosion splinters were scattered round him and shook him, as though the dead man was still marked and chosen by the blind destruction.

There was something hatefully painful in the doll-like attitude of the hanging corpse.

Then Termite’s voice was raised.  “Poor lad!” he said.

He went out from the shelter of the wall.

“Are you mad?” we shouted; “he’s dead, anyway!”

A ladder was there.  Termite seized it and dragged it towards the disemboweled house, which was lashed every minute by broadsides of splinters.

“Termite!” cried the lieutenant, “I forbid you to go there!  You’re doing no good.”

“I’m the owner of my skin, lieutenant,” Termite replied, without stopping or looking round.

He placed the ladder, climbed up and unhooked the dead man.  Around them, against the plaster of the wall, there broke a surge of deafening shocks and white fire.  He descended with the body very skillfully, laid it on the ground, and remaining doubled up he ran back to us—­to fall on the captain, who had witnessed the scene.

“My friend,” the captain said, “I’ve been told that you were an anarchist.  But I’ve seen that you’re brave, and that’s already more than half of a Frenchman.”

He held out his hand.  Termite took it, pretending to be little impressed by the honor.

When he returned to us he said, while his hand rummaged his hedgehog’s beard, “That poor lad—­I don’t know why—­p’raps it’s stupid—­but I was thinking of his mother.”

We looked at him with a sort of respect.  First, because he had gone up and then because he had passed through the hail of iron and won.  There was no one among us who did not earnestly wish he had tried and succeeded in what Termite had just done.  But assuredly we did not a bit understand this strange soldier.

A lull had come in the bombardment.  “It’s over,” we concluded.

As we returned we gathered round Termite and one spoke for the rest.

“You’re an anarchist, then?”

“No,” said Termite, “I’m an internationalist.  That’s why I enlisted.”

“Ah!”

He tried to throw light on his words.  “You understand, I’m against all wars.”

“All wars!  But there’s times when war’s good.  There’s defensive war.”

“No,” said Termite again, “there’s only offensive war; because if there wasn’t the offensive there wouldn’t be the defensive.”

“Ah!” we replied.

We went on chatting, dispassionately and for the sake of talking, strolling in the dubious security of the streets which were sometimes darkened by falls of wreckage, under a sky of formidable surprises.