"'Yes,' he answered.
"There was something impersonal in his tone, and he looked eery there in the moonlight, I can tell you, leaning on one arm and bleeding. Awfully good-looking chap. Built like a giant. He reminded me of a statue called the Dying Gaul, or something."
"Oh, yes; I know that statue!"
"Well, he looked like that—with all the fight going out of him. Suddenly he smiled at me.
"'Did you think you were playing your football when you came down on top of me that way, eh?'
"I say, I was a bit surprised. Football doesn't seem a very congenial subject for a dying man; but do you know, we sat there and talked for an hour at least about all kinds of sports and athletics. You should have seen the way he kept tossing the hair out of his eyes and saying, 'Fine, fine!' And then he'd boast, and tell me all about the things he'd done. I never saw a fellow built as he was. It seems that he was a champion in most everything. But after a while he seemed to get on to the fact that he was losing an awful lot of blood, and then he said again, 'Schade.' That was all. After two or three foolish tries I got up on my feet. The last I saw of him he was supporting himself on his arm, looking for all the world like that statue.
"They'd cleared off all the wounded, and only the dead were left. It was terribly still, and I could hear him choking, a long way off, as I came back across the lines. The next day I happened to stumble across him. It was bright sunshine, and he was like marble, and the ground all about was sticky. He was staring up in the sun with his head thrown back and his eyes open, and the strangest look! Well, anyway, it made me think of a chap I saw once make a rippingly clever catch at ball, with the sun shining straight in his eyes, while the crowds went wild, and he didn't know what had happened for a minute.—His helmet was still there beside him, keeping guard, sort of like a dog, and I took it back with me. I don't know why."
Leonard paused; then he said, suddenly, averting his eyes like a child caught in a wrong act, "That talk we had was so queer—I mean it was as if—don't you know?—as if we were—well, sort of the same at heart. I mean, of course, if he hadn't been German. War is queer," he continued, lamely, raising his cropped head and looking off at the horizon. "Awfully queer," he murmured, watching a dark cloud steal across the water, tarnishing all its bright surface.
Presently he spoke again.
"So many men have been killed—Englishmen I mean; almost all the men I went to school with." He started to count as if by rote: "Don and Robert, and Fred Sands, and Steve, and Philip and Sandy." His voice was muffled in the sand. "Benjamin Robb and Cyril and Eustis, Rupert and Ted and Fat—good old Fat!"