Our strides have passed that trench.  We go more quickly and trouble no more now about the star-shells, which, among us who know nothing, say, “I know” and “I will.”  All is changed, all habits and laws.  We march exposed, upright, through the open fields.  Then I suddenly understand what they have hidden from us up to the last moment—­we are attacking!

Yes, the counter-attack has begun without our knowing it.  I apply myself to following the others.  May I not be killed like the others; may I be saved like the others!  But if I am killed, so much the worse.

I bear myself forward.  My eyes are open but I look at nothing; confused pictures are printed on my staring eyes.  The men around me form strange surges; shouts cross each other or descend.  Upon the fantastic walls of nights the shots make flicks and flashes.  Earth and sky are crowded with apparitions; and the golden lace of burning stakes is unfolding.

A man is in front of me, a man whose head is wrapped in linen.

He is coming from the opposite direction.  He is coming from the other country!  He was seeking me, and I was seeking him.  He is quite near—­suddenly he is upon me.

The fear that he is killing me or escaping me—­I do not know which—­makes me throw out a desperate effort.  Opening my hands and letting the rifle go, I seize him.  My fingers are buried in his shoulder, in his neck, and I find again, with overflowing exultation, the eternal form of the human frame.  I hold him by the neck with all my strength, and with more than all my strength, and we quiver with my quivering.

He had not the idea of dropping his rifle so quickly as I. He yields and sinks.  I cling to him as if it were salvation.  The words in his throat make a lifeless noise.  He brandishes a hand which has only three fingers—­I saw it clearly outlined against the clouds like a fork.

Just as he totters in my arms, resisting death, a thunderous blow strikes him in the back.  His arms drop, and his head also, which is violently doubled back, but his body is hurled against me like a projectile, like a superhuman blast.

I have rolled on the ground; I get up, and while I am hastily trying to find myself again I feel a light blow in the waist.  What is it?  I walk forward, and still forward, with my empty hands.  I see the others pass, they go by in front of me. I, I advance no more.  Suddenly I fall to the ground.

* * * * * *

CHAPTER XIV

THE RUINS

I fall on my knees, and then full length.  I do what so many others have done.

I am alone on the earth, face to face with the mud, and I can no longer move.  The frightful searching of the shells alights around me.  The hoarse hurricane which does not know me is yet trying to find the place where I am!