"Got to search him first!"
They lift him and turn him over, and set the soft, damp and warm body up again. Suddenly he coughs.
"He isn't dead!"—"Yes, he is dead; that's the air."
They shake him by the pockets; with hasty breathing the four black men stoop over their task. "The helmet's mine," says Pepin. "It was me that knifed him, I want the helmet."
They tear from the body its pocket-book of still warm papers, its field-glass, purse, and leggings.
"Matches!" shouts Blaire, shaking a box, "he's got some!"
"Ah, the fool that you are!" hisses Volpatte.
"Now let's be off like hell." They pile the body in a corner and break into a run, prey to a sort of panic, and regardless of the row their disordered flight makes.
"It's this way!—This way!—Hurry, lads—for all you're worth!"
Without speaking they dash across the maze of the strangely empty trench that seems to have no end.