"You'll stay there," said he, "as long as the position is tenable. I rely on your instinct as an artilleryman."
Another man supported the first speaker.
"Yes, that's right. He said, 'Solente, I rely on your instinct as an artilleryman.' Why, I heard him myself."
We also heard that last Saturday's engagement would be known as the Battle of Ethe.
"No," said another. "It will be called the Battle of Virton."
"Ethe, Virton!... What the devil does it matter what it's called. Seeing that we've had to retreat!..."
"Oh, yes, but all the same," said the trumpeter, "we ought to know. Suppose you get back to your people and they ask you what engagements you've been in. You'll answer, 'I've been fighting in Belgium.' 'Yes,' they'll say, 'but Belgium is a big place—bigger than our commune! Were you at Liége, or Brussels, or Copenhagen?' You would look a silly fool!"
The other shrugged his shoulders.
With the help of a bayonet we opened a box of bully-beef for the four of us, and fell to. The only sound was that made by the hatchet of one of the men who was chopping down a small birch-tree which might conceivably interfere with the fire of his gun.
The silence was too intense, the immobility of the countryside too complete. The enemy was there. We neither heard him nor saw him, but that only rendered him the more sinister. The unwonted calm, when we had braced ourselves up for battle, was terrifying, and our nerves became overstrained.