After that, darkness.
V
When the light again dawned upon Pierrot’s distressed brain he was conscious, first, of an intense sensation of pain and weakness. Then gradually he became aware of a weight upon his chest and a severe throbbing in his right hind leg. He lifted his head but found himself unable to move or to reach his wounded leg with his tongue. Across his body rested the heavy thigh of a dead soldier.
Pierrot sank back and waited till the dizziness passed and his head cleared a little. Then the universal instinct for self-preservation and the need to struggle for his life awoke within him. Little by little, with long, painful waits between his efforts, he managed to drag himself free from the weight upon him.
He stood for a moment, trembling with weakness, as though to reassure himself that he was alive. All was quiet about him, though the sounds of battle still raged not far away. He hardly noticed the forms of fallen men in the trench or heard their occasional moans. Then he dropped to his side again and made a feeble attempt to lick his aching leg. The foot was quite numb and the hair was matted and caked, but the bleeding had stopped.
As his small store of strength returned he discovered that he was cold as well as weak, and the need came upon him—the instinct of the hurt animal—to crawl away to some sheltered spot where he might either recuperate or die. It seemed to him that first of all he must get away from the horrible trench. Very slowly and painfully, with one leg dragging, he toiled up the bank and over the escarpment, and lay panting on the snowy ground. Then, after a little rest, he started on again unsteadily toward a little thicket of shrubbery that had been trampled nearly flat by the feet of the grenadiers.
It seemed a long way off, and he was obliged to stop often to rest. When at last he approached the thicket he was startled for a moment by a brown hare which scuttled out from beneath the tangled bushes and went bounding off across the snow. Pierrot felt no impulse to give chase nor any wonder that the hare should have escaped destruction. He burrowed under the broken branches and sniffed his way to where the hare had made a nest in the dry grass beneath. The spot was still warm, and Pierrot curled himself up in it gratefully and fell to nursing his wound.