"Carry on! Carry on!" I murmured.
They disappeared from my field of vision. I saw another line of men pass in skirmishing order, then another. Was my brain affected? Why did I think I was back in camp at Mailly and once more taking part in the parade before the Bey of Tunis?
By some strange instinct, I dreaded being helped. I preferred to die in peace. For I thought my hour had come, and abandoned myself unregretfully.
Meanwhile, some time passed. Instead of agonising, I recovered my wits.
It was my right leg that had been hit—the bone to a certainty! For the moment, the pain was not so intolerable. I felt as if my leg had been substituted by a mass of lead.
Ah! The sun! Already high in the heavens!
I now began to wish for help, but the plateau was abandoned. Quite near me there was a dead body—poor Prunelle—fallen in the posture of an oriental suppliant. Farther on Gaufrèteau was drawing his last breath.
A tree stood a few yards off; a minute rise in the ground blocked out all the horizon.
I was thinking, longing to find out what really had happened. I struggled obstinately to turn over onto one side. At last I succeeded. By raising myself up on my elbow, I was able to examine my leg. It made a hideous angle under the trouser. The foot turned back towards the knee. There would have been reason enough to shudder, if that inert mass had not literally seemed a thing quite apart from me.