With a howl of triumph the sick man cut him short and snapped in an unnaturally high voice:
"You don't know what happened to Dill, you don't? We were standing just the way we are now, and he was just going to show me the new photograph that his wife had sent him—his brave wife, he-he, his restrained wife. Oh yes, restrained! That's what they all were—all prepared for anything. And while we were standing there, he about to show me the picture, a twenty-eighter struck quite a distance away from us, a good two-hundred yards. We didn't even look that way. Then all of a sudden I saw something black come flying through the air—and Dill fell over with his dashing wife's picture in his hand and a boot, a leg, a boot with the leg of a baggage soldier sticking in his head—a soldier that the twenty-eighter had blown to pieces far away from where we stood."
He stopped for an instant and stared at the captain triumphantly. Then he went on with a note of spiteful pride in his voice, though every now and then interrupted by a peculiar gurgling groan.
"Poor Dill never said another word—Dill with the spur sticking in his skull, a regular cavalry spur, as big as a five-crown piece. He only turned up the whites of his eyes a little and looked sadly at his wife's picture, that she should have permitted such a thing as that. Such a thing as that! Such a thing! It took four of us to pull the boot out—four of us. We had to turn it and twist it, until a piece of his brain came along—like roots pulled up—like a jellyfish—a dead one—sticking to the spur."
"Shut up!" the captain yelled furiously, and tore himself away and walked into the house cursing.
The other two looked after him longingly, but they could not let the unfortunate man stay there by himself. When the captain had withdrawn his arm, he had fallen down on the bench again and sat whimpering like a whipped child, with his head leaning on the back. The Philosopher touched his shoulder gently, and was about to speak to him kindly and induce him to go into the house when he started up again and broke out into an ugly, snarling laugh.
"But we tore her out of him, his dashing wife. Four of us had to tug and pull until she came out. I got him rid of her. Out with her! She's gone. All of them are gone. Mine is gone, too. Mine is torn out, too. All are being torn out. There's no wife any more! No wife any more, no—"
His head bobbed and fell forward. Tears slowly rolled down his sad, sad face.
The captain reappeared followed by the little assistant physician, who was on night duty.
"You must go to bed now, Lieutenant," the physician said with affected severity.