CHAPTER V
EVENING enfolds the camp in its gloomy mantle, and like a heavy tapestry dulls the sounds and renders uncertain the movements of human beings.
It is scarcely five o’clock, but the night has almost come. The camp is invisible in the darkness, the silence becomes absolute. In certain parts nothing reveals the existence there of an enclosure containing thousands of men.
A dim murmur, however, rises from the regions of the kitchen, where the lamps give scarcely any light. No one makes a noise, but the silence of every person, an individual muteness imposed by the sadness of the monotonous day just drawing to its close, the sound of steps which the sand deadens, all is transformed into a dull hum, like the murmur of a distant ocean.
In the almost total darkness the men, one by one, in their companies file past the kitchen doors, to take the basins of soup allotted to them. They are narrowly watched by their non-commissioned officers, who try to prevent one man coming twice to the disadvantage of his comrades, for no basin is given beyond the number of men in the company. The soup, alas! is quickly swallowed; what takes the longest time is to form the lines in front of the kitchens. There you flounder about in deep mud, sometimes for an hour, and when your turn comes to be served the pot is perhaps empty and you are obliged to go and join another company in front of another door. Once in possession of their rations, the men, basins in hand, go a little way beyond the waiting lines and, standing, drink their soup, for there is no other place where they can go. Indeed, the sentinels, whose bayonets from time to time gleam, watch that no one goes to his tent taking a basin with him, for the number of these utensils is very limited. Some men, in order to receive a supplementary ration, pass their evening in picking up from under the feet of their comrades the basins thrown negligently down, when once they are emptied. These, collected together near the boilers, are again used after being summarily washed.
This evening meal is lugubrious. The men in the semi-darkness have the feeling that they are swallowing their pittance like beasts of burden. They experience cruelly the full force of their misery. There they are, eating from a basin of rough metal, with greasy, rusted brim, food which the dogs at home would turn from in disgust. Like animals, they must lap up their soup, for they have neither spoon nor fork. Light also is refused them; and as there are no benches, it is not possible for the prisoners to sit down to the meal.
Poor fellows, they even envy the pig, who may without shame gobble up a mixture less objectionable than what is offered to them, the soldier-prisoners.