We lost all interest in everything but this narrow strip of ground swept by our fire. I put down my rifle which had burnt my fingers. The mechanism had got jammed in several places and I mended it as if in a dream.
We did not fire incessantly. There were moments of inaction when I tried to analyse my feelings in accordance with my old intellectualism. I came to grief over it. My ideas got blocked, and I gripped the trail of my Lebel, my one object in existence. One thought alone subsisted in the void of my brain, and I clung to it. Those men must not be allowed to take another step in our direction.
All notion of time was lost again. I remember that I looked for the sun in the sky. It was shining a long way from the point at which I had expected to find it. My wrist watch had stopped, the glass was broken.
From time to time Guillaumin came to look me up and make some remark such as "Hot work, what!"
This time he leant towards me and said something which I could not quite catch. I got him to repeat it.
"What?"
Ah. Now I understood. How many rounds had my men got left?
"Mine have about fifteen," he said.
"About the same here, too."