Peter was already asleep and dreaming. The great blood spots had returned and increased, but now they were getting black, they were black, huge black blotches; they blotted out the world!
Peter, Peter as we have known him, discontinued existence....
It was an automaton, aided by good luck, that dropped his machine half a mile behind the French trenches....
§ 15
Peter had no memory of coming to again from his faint. For a long time he must have continued to be purely automatic. His flaming wrist was the centre of his being. Then for a time consciousness resumed, as abruptly as the thread of a story one finds upon the torn page of a novel.
He found himself in the midst of a friendly group of pale blue uniforms; he was standing up and being very lively in spite of the strong taste of blood in his mouth and a feeling that his wrist was burning as a match burns, and that the left upper half of his body had been changed into a lump of raw and bleeding meat. He was talking a sort of French. “C’est sacré bon stuff, cet eau-de-vie Française,” he was saying gaily and rather loudly.
“Haf some more,” said a friendly voice.
“Not half, old chap,” said Peter, and felt at the time that this was not really good French.
He tried to slap the man on the shoulder, but he couldn’t.
“Bon!” he said, “as we say in England,” and felt that that remark also failed.