'Curse it!' said Maurice, 'we shall never get out of it.'
He was livid, shuddering again; and even Jean, the brave fellow, who in the morning had inspirited him, was now paling and feeling icy cold. It was fear—horrible, contagious, irresistible fear. Again did they feel an ardent thirst burning them, an unbearable dryness of the mouth and a contraction of the throat, of painful, strangulating violence. They experienced, too, a most uncomfortable sensation, with nausea in the pit of the stomach, whilst innumerable pins seemed to be pricking their legs. And amid these purely physical symptoms of fear, with the grasp of fright pressing tightly on their brows, they saw thousands of black specks flit past them, as though they were indeed able to distinguish the flying cloud of bullets.
'Ah! what cursed luck!' stammered Jean. 'It's horribly vexing to be here, getting our skulls cracked for others, when they are somewhere else, quietly smoking their pipes.'
'Yes, why should it be I rather than another?' added Maurice, distracted and haggard. This was the rebellion of self, the egotistical rage of the individual unwilling to sacrifice himself and die for the sake of the species.
'And besides,' resumed Jean, 'if one only knew the reason of it, if it were at all likely to be of any use.' And then raising his eyes and looking at the sky, he added: 'That horrid sun, too, won't make up its mind to skedaddle! When it has set and night comes there will perhaps be an end of the fighting.'
Unable to tell what o'clock it was, having in fact lost all consciousness of time, he had for a long while already been watching the slow decline of the orb, whose course seemed almost to have been stayed, for it was still and ever hanging over yonder, above the woods on the left bank. And this longing for the sunset was not cowardice, but rather an imperious, growing needment to cease hearing the shells and the bullets, to go off elsewhere, bury oneself in the ground, and plunge into oblivion. Were it not for fear of the world, for the vain glory of distinguishing oneself in presence of one's comrades, a man would ofttimes lose his head, and despite himself hurry away at a gallop.
However, Maurice and Jean were now again growing accustomed to their peril; and amidst their utter distraction there came to them a kind of unconsciousness and intoxication which was bravery. They ended by no longer trying to hasten through that accursed wood. Horrors had yet increased among that people of bombarded trees, now falling upon all sides like giant sentries killed at their posts. In the delicious, subdued, greeny light under the foliage, in the depths of all the mysterious shelter-places carpeted with moss, the brutal blast of death was ever blowing. The lonely springs were violated; the dying moaned even in the hidden nooks where only lovers hitherto had strayed. One man, whose chest was perforated by a bullet, had just time enough to cry 'Hit!' as he fell dying, face downward, on the sward. Another, both of whose legs had been broken by a shell, continued laughing, unconscious of his wound, thinking, in fact, that he had merely stumbled against a tree root. Others, with their limbs pitted, mortally stricken, continued speaking and running for several yards before they fell to the ground in a sudden convulsion. At the first moment the deepest wounds were scarcely felt, and it was only afterwards that the frightful sufferings began, bursting forth with lamentation and tears.
Ah! the traitorous wood, the massacred forest, which, amid all the sobbing of the dying trees, filled, little by little, with the howling anguish of the wounded. At the foot of an oak tree, Maurice and Jean perceived a Zouave, who, with his intestines escaping from a ghastly wound, was raising a continuous roar, like a dying wild beast. Farther on, there was another one—on fire; his blue sash was burning, the flame was rising and singeing his beard, whilst he shed big tears, unable to move because his spine was broken. Then there was a captain whose left arm was torn off, and whose right side was laid open to the thigh, and who, stretched on his stomach, dragged himself along upon an elbow, begging all those who passed, in a shrill, horribly supplicating voice, to have the compassion to despatch him. And there were others and others still, all suffering abominably, strewing the grassy paths in such numbers that it was necessary to be careful lest one should tread upon them in passing. The dead, the wounded, no longer counted, however. The comrade who fell was abandoned, forgotten. Not a glance even was given behind. 'Twas fate. Another's turn next; perhaps, indeed, one's own!
All at once, as they were at last reaching the verge of the wood, a call resounded: 'Help!' The sub-lieutenant carrying the colours had just been struck by a bullet in the left lung. He had fallen, spitting forth the blood that had gushed into his mouth; and seeing that nobody stopped, he found strength to call 'Help!' again, and to add, 'The colours!'
Rochas, darting back, seized hold of the flag, the shaft of which was broken, and bounded away with it; whilst the sub-lieutenant, his speech thickened by the bloody froth filling his mouth, muttered: 'I'm done for, but no matter—save the colours!'