“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 its light we see, a few steps in front of us, a gaping trench.  We were going to fall into it.  It is motionless and empty—­no, it is occupied—­yes, it is empty.  It is full of a file of slain watchers.  The row of men was no doubt starting out of the earth when the shell burst in their faces; and by the poised white rays we see that the blast has staved them in, has taken away the flesh; and above the level of the monstrous battlefield there is left of them only some fearfully distorted heads.  One is broken and blurred; one emerges like a peak, a good half of it fallen into nothing.  At the end of the row, the ravages have been less, and only the eyes are smitten.  The hollow orbits in those marble heads look outwards with dried darkness.  The deep and obscure face-wounds have the look of caverns and funnels, of the shadows in the moon; and stars of mud are clapped on the faces in the place where eyes once shone.