The trench is blocked by a recent landslide, and we plunge unto it.  We have to tear our feet out of the soft and clinging earth, lifting them high at each step.  Then, when this crossing is laboriously accomplished, we topple down again into the slippery stream, in the bottom of which are two narrow ruts, boot-worn, which hold one’s foot like a vice, and there are pools into which it goes with a great splash.  In one place we must stoop very low to pass under a heavy and glutinous bridge that crosses the trench, and we only get through with difficulty.  It obliges us to kneel in the mud, to flatten ourselves on the ground, and to crawl on all fours for a few paces.  A little farther there are evolutions to perform as we grasp a post that the sinking of the ground has set aslope across the middle of the fairway.

We come to a trench-crossing.  “Allons, forward!  Look out for yourselves, boys!” says the adjutant, who has flattened himself in a corner to let us pass and to speak to us.  “This is a bad spot.”

“We’re done up,” shouts a voice so hoarse that I cannot identify the speaker.

“Damn!  I’ve enough of it, I’m stopping here,” groans another, at the end of his wind and his muscle.

“What do you want me to do?” replies the adjutant, “No fault of mine. eh?  Allons, get a move on, it’s a bad spot—­it was shelled at the last relief!”

We go on through the tempest of wind and water.  We seem to be going ever down and down, as in a pit.  We slip and tumble, butt into the wall of the trench, into which we drive our elbows hard, so as to throw ourselves upright again.  Our going is a sort of long slide, on which we keep up just how and where we can.  What matters is to stumble only forward, and as straight as possible.

Where are we?  I lift my head, in spite of the billows of rain, out of this gulf where we are struggling.  Against the hardly discernible background of the buried sky, I can make out the rim of the trench; and there, rising before my eyes all at once and towering over that rim, is something like a sinister doorway, made of two black posts that lean one upon the other, with something hanging from the middle like a torn-off scalp.  It is the doorway.

“Forward!  Forward!”

I lower my head and see no more; but again I hear the feet that sink in the mud and come out again, the rattle of the bayonets, the heavy exclamations, and the rapid breathing.

Once more there is a violent back-eddy.  We pull up sharply, and again I am thrown upon Poterloo and lean on his back, his strong back and solid, like the trunk of a tree, like healthfulness and like hope.  He cries to me, “Cheer up, old man, we’re there!”

We are standing still.  It is necessary to go hack a little—­Nom de Dieu!—­no, we are moving on again!

Suddenly a fearful explosion falls on us.  I tremble to my skull; a metallic reverberation fills my head; a scorching and suffocating smell of sulphur pierces my nostrils.  The earth has opened in front of me.  I feel myself lifted and hurled aside—­doubled up, choked, and half blinded by this lightning and thunder.  But still my recollection is clear; and in that moment when I looked wildly and desperately for my comrade-in-arms, I saw his body go up, erect and black, both his arms outstretched to their limit, and a flame in the place of his head!