"Reserve—or the Line! Ah, well, I fear bullets take no heed of such distinctions!"
He stares at me long and fixedly, as if engaged in weighing my invisible merit in the scales, and then explains clearly and rapidly exactly what he expects of me.
"All my orderlies are busy on some mission or the other. I wish you to find, without loss of an instant, Colonel G——, commanding the brigade, and ask him, in my name, to send to me here as many men as he can possibly spare of the —th. Tell him we are in contact with enormous effectives, that our losses up to the present have been very heavy, so heavy, in fact, that I am afraid my regiment is no longer capable of holding on.
"He must be near Hill 281, a mile to the north of Marats-la-Petite. Do everything in your power to find him, not losing a second, and impress upon him how urgent is my necessity for immediate reinforcements."
"Very well, mon Colonel!"
With the bullets humming in my ears, I set out at a speed which sends the mud splashing all over me, from head to foot. The old sense of elation is upon me, impelling me forward, forgetful of the night's happenings, impervious to fatigue—I must find the commander of the brigade and obtain the assistance so desperately needed, from him. There is no room for other thought than that in my brain. Happily, I do not dwell on the weight of the responsibility thrust upon me in this unlooked-for fashion; my burning desire is to succeed in my mission, nothing more.
I have already started away at a run when the Colonel receives a bullet in the forearm. With his other arm, he imperatively motions to me to keep on my way.
Skirting the base of a steep slope, I pass through a fire zone where the bullets in hundreds, whining and shrilling, tear up the soil all about me. Then I encounter a group of men, standing at the foot of a tree. There is a dying officer in the centre, supported against the tree-bole. A glimpse I have of a dark blue tunic wide opened, of a shirt stained with bright blood. The wounded man's head sags heavily down to his shoulder, and in the whitened, tortured face, moist from fearful agony, I recognize my own major.
But I must not stay!
My heart is thundering within me; there is a sharp pain between my shoulders; there is a rending pain at the small of my back. And my legs! Every other minute violent cramp paralyses thighs or calves, sending me sprawling to the earth, where I lie gasping and panting for what seem eternities, striving to fight it back. My sodden clothes become almost fantastically heavy, and the weight is for ever increasing. To the very tips of my fingers I feel the irregular, violent pulsing of my arteries; my cloth-covered sword scabbard pricks my hand.