“Ah, the devils, what?  The sort of meat they threw at us yesterday!  Talk about whetstones!  Beef from an ox, that?  Beef from a bicycle, yes rather!  I said to the boys, ’Look here, you chaps, don’t you chew it too quick, or you’ll break your front teeth on the nails!’”

Tirloir’s harangue—­he was manager of a traveling cinema, it seems—­would have made us laugh at other times, but in the present temper it is only echoed by a circulating growl.

“Another time, so that you won’t grumble about the toughness, they send you something soft and flabby that passes for meat, something with the look and the taste of a sponge—­or a poultice.  When you chew that, it’s the same as a cup of water, no more and no less.”

“Tout ca,” says Lamuse, “has no substance; it gets no grip on your guts.  You think you’re full, but at the bottom of your tank you’re empty.  So, bit by bit, you turn your eyes up, poisoned for want of sustenance.”

“The next time,” Biquet exclaims in desperation, “I shall ask to see the old man, and I shall say, ’Mon capitaine’—­”

“And I,” says Barque, “shall make myself look sick, and I shall say, ’Monsieur le major’—­”

“And get nix or the kick-out—­they’re all alike—­all in a band to take it out of the poor private.”

“I tell you, they’d like to get the very skin off us!”

“And the brandy, too!  We have a right to get it brought to the trenches—­as long as it’s been decided somewhere—­I don’t know when or where, but I know it—­and in the three days that we’ve been here, there’s three days that the brandy’s been dealt out to us on the end of a fork!”

“Ah, malheur!”

* * * * * *

“There’s the grub!” announces a poilu [note 1] who was on the look-out at the corner.

“Time, too!”

And the storm of revilings ceases as if by magic.  Wrath is changed into sudden contentment.

Three breathless fatigue men, their faces streaming with tears of sweat, put down on the ground some large tins, a paraffin can, two canvas buckets, and a file of loaves, skewered on a stick.  Leaning against the wall of the trench, they mop their faces with their handkerchiefs or sleeves.  And I see Cocon go up to Pepere with a smile, and forgetful of the abuse he had been heaping on the other’s reputation, he stretches out a cordial hand towards one of the cans in the collection that swells the circumference of Pepere. after the manner of a life-belt.

“What is there to eat?”

“It’s there,” is the evasive reply of the second fatigue man, whom experience has taught that a proclamation of the menu always evokes the bitterness of disillusion.  So they set themselves to panting abuse of the length and the difficulties of the trip they have just accomplished:  “Some crowds about, everywhere!  It’s a tough job to get along—­got to disguise yourself as a cigarette paper, sometimes.”—­“And there are people who say they’re shirkers in the kitchens!” As for him, he would a hundred thousand times rather be with the company in the trenches, to mount guard and dig, than earn his keep by such a job, twice a day during the night!