The broken-down poilu replies with a great oath of annoyance, and provokes the harsh rejoinder of Barque:  “Come now, you might be polite, filthy-face, old muck-mill!”

Turning right round in fury, the old one defies his tormentor.

“Hullo!” cries Barque, laughing, “He’s showing fight; the ruin!  He’s warlike, look you, and he might be mischievous if only he were sixty years younger!”

“And if he wasn’t alone,” wantonly adds Pepin, whose eye is in quest of other targets among the flow of new arrivals.

The hollow chest of the last straggler appears, and then his distorted back disappears.

The march past of the worn-out and trench-foul veterans comes to an end among the ironical and almost malevolent faces of these sinister troglodytes, whom their caverns of mud but half reveal.

Meanwhile, the hours slip away, and evening begins to veil the sky and darken the things of earth.  It comes to blend itself at once with the blind fate and the ignorant dark minds of the multitude there enshrouded.

Through the twilight comes the rolling hum of tramping men, and another throng. rubs its way through.

“Africans!”

They march past with faces red-brown, yellow or chestnut, their beards scanty and fine or thick and frizzled, their greatcoats yellowish-green, and their muddy helmets sporting the crescent in place of our grenade.  Their eyes are like balls of ivory or onyx, that shine from faces like new pennies, flattened or angular.  Now and again comes swaying along above the line the coal-black mask of a Senegalese sharpshooter.  Behind the company goes a red flag with a green hand in the center.

We watch them in silence.  These are asked no questions.  They command respect, and even a little fear.

All the same, these Africans seem jolly and in high spirits.  They are going, of course, to the first line.  That is their place, and their passing is the sign of an imminent attack.  They are made for the offensive.

“Those and the 75 gun we can take our hats off to.  They’re everywhere sent ahead at big moments, the Moroccan Division.”

“They can’t quite fit in with us.  They go too fast—­and there’s no way of stopping them.”

Some of these diabolical images in yellow wood or bronze or ebony are serious of mien, uneasy, and taciturn.  Their faces have the disquieting and secret look of the snare suddenly discovered.  The others laugh with a laugh that jangles like fantastic foreign instruments of music, a laugh that bares the teeth.

We talk over the characteristics of these Africans; their ferocity in attack, their devouring passion to be in with the bayonet, their predilection for “no quarter.”  We recall those tales that they themselves willingly tell, all in much the same words and with the same gestures.  They raise their arms over their heads—­“Kam’rad, Kam’rad!” “Non, pas Kam’rad!” And in pantomime they drive a bayonet forward, at belly-height, drawing it back then with the help of a foot.