The poor fellows were lying on a sheepskin, propped up one against another, and covered with the cloak and coat of a dead man. They seemed in a terrible condition.
'I am afraid,' Béloque said, 'that we shall not have the trouble of taking them away.'
We heard them murmur and breathe from time to time, but these were the last efforts of dying men.
While the fearful death-rattle was going on near us, the aerial music began again, but this time much nearer. I called Béloque's attention to it, and told him of the strange things which had happened to me when I heard the sounds before. And then he said that at intervals he had heard the music too, and could not make it out. Sometimes it made an infernal racket, and if men were amusing themselves in that way, they must have the devil inside them. Then, coming closer to me, he said in a low voice:
'My friend, these sounds are very like death-music. Death is all round us; and I have a presentiment that in a few days I shall be dead too.' Then he added, 'May God's will be done! But the suffering seems too great. Look at those poor wretches!'—pointing to two men lying in the snow.
I said nothing, for I thought just as he did.
He stopped speaking, and we listened attentively in a silence only broken by the heavy breathing of a dying man. Suddenly my companion said:
'To my mind, the sounds seem to come from above.'
As he said so, the sounds did certainly seem to come from just over our heads. All at once the noise ceased, and an awful silence followed, broken only by a mournful cry—the last breath of one of our men.