We broke off and made ourselves scarce. Returned to quarters we learned there was to be an inspection of cartridges and reserve rations by the captain. We had hardly time to eat. Majorat waxed wroth, and confided his indignation to Termite, who was a good audience, "It's all the fault of that unlucky captain—we're just slaves!"
He shook his fist as he spoke towards the Town Hall.
But Termite shrugged his shoulders, looked at him unkindly, and said, "Like a rotten egg, that's how you talk. That captain, and all the red tabs and brass hats, it's not them that invented the rules. They're just gilded machines—machines like you, but not so cheap. If you want to do away with discipline, do away with war, my fellow; that's a sight easier than to make it amusing for the private."
He left Majorat crestfallen, and the others as well. For my part I admired the peculiar skill with which the anti-militarist could give answers beside the mark and yet always seem to be in the right.
During those days they multiplied the route-marches and the exercises intended to let the officers get the men again in hand. These maneuvers tired us to death, and especially the sham attacks on wooded mounds, carried out in the evening among bogs and thorn-thickets. When we got back, most of the men fell heavily asleep just as they had fallen, beside their knapsacks, without having the heart to eat.
Right in the middle of the night and this paralyzed slumber, a cry echoed through the walls, "Alarm! Stand to arms!"
We were so weary that the brutal reveille seemed at first, to the blinking and rusted men, like the shock of a nightmare. Then, while the cold blew in through the open door and we heard the sentries running through the streets, while the corporals lighted the candles and shook us with their voices, we sat up askew, and crouched, and got our things ready, and stood up and fell in shivering, with flabby legs and minds befogged, in the black-hued street.
After the roll-call and some orders and counter-orders, we heard the command "Forward!" and we left the rest-camp as exhausted as when we entered it. And thus we set out, no one knew where.
At first it was the same exodus as always. It was on the same road that we disappeared: into the same great circles of blackness that we sank.
We came to the shattered glass works and then to the quarry, which daybreak was washing and fouling and making its desolation more complete. Fatigue was gathering darkly within us and abating our pace. Faces appeared stiff and wan, and as though they were seen through gratings. We were surrounded by cries of "Forward!" thrown from all directions between the twilight of the sky and the night of the earth. It took a greater effort every time to tear ourselves away from the halts.