“I, Captain? I realise nothing except that the champagne is good. Men must die, it is true, but will they die less well because I am thirsty? Nom d’un chien, let us wait until our time comes, and then remember that it is for France.”
He lifted the glass to his lips, but set it down again quickly. One of the lancers, who had been leading a troop horse, turned suddenly with a sharp cry on his lips and came quickly toward them. A curious pallor, tinged with green, spread over his face. He pressed his hand to his head, and a crimson stain dyed his fingers.
“Monsieur,” he said very quietly, “they have killed me.”
There were three men at his side in a moment, but, even as they stooped over him, a shell hurtled through the trees and pitched in the very centre of the bivouac. For an instant Lefort beheld a leaping flame of crimson fire. He saw horses rearing upon their haunches; heard cries of agony; was conscious of a ringing sensation in his ears as though someone were beating a drum there. Then an acrid taste of gunpowder filled his mouth; he could not see for the blinding smoke; he pressed his hands to his eyes, which pained him intolerably. When Giraud spoke to him the voice came as from afar.
“You are all right, Captain?”
“Yes; and you?”
“I don’t know—I seem to have only one hand. Where is the ambulance? You are going to fall back, of course? How those devils fire! And we are silent. What folly!”
He babbled incessantly, while the loom of smoke lifted and showed them the death it had cloaked. Three of the troopers lay prone at their feet. A horse, pawing the ground in agony, turned to them pitiful eyes. One of the sergeants of Lefort’s company ran up and down with blood upon his tunic. Others of the horses were galloping, blind with terror, up and down the glade. Lieutenant Giraud hugged his left arm—there were tears of rage and pain in his eyes. They had shot away his hand.
“What pain! what pain!” he cried, as a child that is hurt. “I am maimed for life, Captain. At the beginning, too. Oh, my God, where is the ambulance?”
He ran to and fro as one distracted, and fell anon in a dead faint. Lefort, stupefied for a moment, began to remember his duty. This was battle, then—these agonising cries, this maiming of youth and courage, these eyes looking to his so pitifully. And he must face these things that his country might be saved. In that moment he awoke to the spirit of combat. He forgot even the child-wife waiting on the distant hills for him who had taught her the meaning of love.