"How sharp you are ... I say, give us some of the firewood here, and we'll light up and go to sleep."
"And how about him?" inquired "the student."
"The deuce take him! He may roast himself with us if he likes—what?"
"He might follow us!" and "the student" shook his sharp head.
We went to fetch the materials we had collected, threw them down where the carpenter had brought us to a standstill with his threatening cry, set light to them, and soon were sitting round a bonfire. It burnt quietly in the windless night and lighted up the tiny space occupied by us. We ached to go to sleep, though for all that we should have liked a little more supper first.
"My brothers!" the carpenter called to us. He was lying three yards off, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was whispering something.
"Well!" said the soldier.
"May I come to you—to the fire? I am about to die ... all my bones are broken Oh, Lord! it is plain to me that I shall never live to get home."
"Crawl along then,"—it was "the student" who decided.
Very gradually, as if fearing to lose hand or foot, the carpenter moved along the ground towards the fire. He was a tall and frightfully wasted man, every part of him seemed to be quivering, and his large dim eyes expressed the pain that was consuming him. His shrivelled face was very bony, and had in the light of the fire a yellowish earthy cadaverous colour. He was still tremulous, and excited our contemptuous pity. Stretching his long thin hands towards the fire, he rubbed his bony fingers, and kneaded their joints slowly and wearily. At last it went against us to look at him.