The march speeds up, it becomes precipitate and haggard.  We are swept along by an impetuosity that we submit to without knowing whence it comes.  We begin the ascent of the second hill which appears in the fallen night a mountain.

When fairly on it we hear round us, on all sides and quite close, a terrible pit-pat, and the long low hiss of mown grass.  There is a crackling afar in the sky, and they who glance back for a second in the awesome storm see the cloudy ridges catch fire horizontally.  It means that the enemy have mounted machine guns on the summit we have just abandoned, and that the place where we are is being hacked by the knives of bullets.  On all sides soldiers wheel and rattle down with curses, sighs and cries.  We grab and hang on to each other, jostling as if we were fighting.

The rest at last reach the top of the rise; and just at that moment the lieutenant cries in a clear and heartrending voice: 

“Good-by, my lads!”

We see him fall, and he is carried away by the survivors around him.

From the summit we go a few steps down the other side, and lie on the ground in silence.  Some one asks, “The lieutenant?”

“He’s dead.”

“Ah,” says the soldier, “and how he said good-by to us!”

We breathe a little now.  We do not think any more unless it be that we are at last saved, at last lying down.

Some engineers fire star-shells, to reconnoiter the state of things in the ground we have evacuated.  Some have the curiosity to risk a glance over it.  On the top of the first hill—­where our guns were—­the big dazzling plummets show a line of bustling excitement.  One hears the noises of picks and of mallet blows.

They have stopped their advance and are consolidating there.  They are hollowing their trenches and planting their network of wire—­which will have to be taken again some day.  We watch, outspread on our bellies, or kneeling, or sitting lower down, with our empty rifles beside us.

Margat reflects, shakes his head and says:—­

“Wire would have stopped them just now.  But we had no wire.”

“And machine-guns, too! but where are they, the M.G.s?”

We have a distinct feeling that there has been an enormous blunder in the command.  Want of foresight—­the reinforcements were not there; they had not thought of supports.  There were not enough guns to bar their way, nor enough artillery ammunition; with our own eyes we had seen two batteries cease fire in mid-action—­they had not thought of shells.  In a wide stretch of country, as one could see, there were no defense work, no trenches; they had not thought of trenches.

It is obvious even to the common eyes of common soldiers.

“What could we do?” says one of us; “it’s the chiefs.”

We say it and we should repeat it if we were not up again and swept away in the hustle of a fresh departure, and thrown back upon more immediate and important anxieties.