Then, almost simultaneously, the enemy and the regiment in the trenches opened fire.  He stopped short, and turned round to watch.  He could see nothing but thin red spurts of fire in the grey twilight.  He turned quickly on his heel, meaning to reach his own men before the attack should develop on their front, where, as yet, all was quiet.

He almost reached the end of his trenches....

* * * * *

There was a crisp crash, a blinding light flew up like a circular sunset around him, a dreadful twinge, as of hair and skin and skull being jerked from his head with the strength of a giant!  For the millionth part of a second he was at a loss to understand what had happened.  Then, with sickening horror, he realised that he had been shot in the head.

It is impossible to convey with what speed impressions rushed through his mind.

The flaring horizon tilted suddenly from horizontal nearly to perpendicular.  His head rushed through half a world of black, fury-space.  His toes and finger-tips were infinite miles behind.  A sound of rushing waters filled his ears, like deathly waterfalls stamping the life from his bursting head.  Black blurred figures, nebulous and meaningless, loomed up before his face.

“Hit in the head—­you’re done for.”

“Hit in the head—­you’re done for.”

The inadequate thought chased through his brain.

“What a pity, what a shame; you might have been so happy, later on.”

“What a pity, what a shame; you might have been so happy later on.”

He was conscious that it was a foolishly futile thought at a supreme moment.

His life seemed pouring out of his head, his vitality was running down as a motor engine, suddenly cut off.  He felt death descending upon him with appalling swiftness.  Where would the world go to?  And what next?

He was afraid.

Then, with a tremendous effort he turned his thoughts on God, and waited for death.

He was swimming in that black fury-sea that was neither wet nor clinging.  He was made of lead in a universe that weighed nothing.  He was sinking, sinking.  In vain he struggled.  The dark, dry waters closed over him....

* * * * *

Still the waterfalls pounded in his ears, and still the dry waves reeled before his eyes, and under his head a pool, sticky and warm.

What was that?  This time surely something tangible and real moving towards him.  With a supreme effort he tried to jerk his body into moving.  His left leg moved.  It moved wearily; but still it moved.  His left arm too.

What was this?

The right arm and leg were gone, gone.

The rest of him was flabbergasted at the horror of the discovery.

No, not gone!  They were there.  But they would not move.  He could not even try to move them.  He could not so much as feel them.