Come, let us forgive ere too late!
Come, lend me your hand for a space, friend!
The hours and the minutes race by!
But we’ve time to lie back
On the side of the track,
Till these channels of blood have run dry.
CHAPTER XVII
THE MARCH OF MONOTONY
The weeks marched by, one upon the heels of the next; and summer came down upon that cruel land. All day long the suns stared at the baked ground, and the flies multiplied beyond imagination. The enemy, sitting in the opposite trenches, was less terrible than this pitiless season. There was no savour in the food; the water ration could not quench the thirst; there was no new scene on which to feed the eye; there was no change of duty. We were no step nearer the end of affairs. And typhus and dysentery began to stalk abroad. A man had but to keep his mouth shut to prove his heroism.