For the moment a heavy recoil presses us back and then a murmur runs along:  “We’ve lost ourselves.”  The truth dawns on the confusion of the wandering horde.  We have taken the wrong turn at some fork, and it will be the deuce of a job to find the right way again.

Then, too, a rumor passes from mouth to mouth that a fighting company on its way to the lines is coming up behind us.  The way by which we have come is stopped up with men.  It is the block absolute.

At all costs we must try to regain the lost trench—­which is alleged to be on our left—­by trickling through some sap or other.  Utterly wearied and unnerved, the men break into gesticulations and violent reproaches.  They trudge awhile, then drop their tools and halt.  Here and there are compact groups—­you can glimpse them by the light of the star-shells—­who have let themselves fall to the ground.  Scattered afar from south to north, the troop waits in the merciless rain.

The lieutenant who is in charge and has led us astray, wriggles his way along the men in quest of some lateral exit.  A little trench appears, shallow and narrow.

“We most go that way, no doubt about it,” the officer hastens to say.  “Come, forward, boys.”

Each man sulkily picks up his burden.  But a chorus of oaths and curses rises from the first who enter the little sap:  “It’s a latrine!”

A disgusting smell escapes from the trench, and those inside halt butt into each other, and refuse to advance.  We are all jammed against each other and block up the threshold.

“I’d rather climb out and go in the open!” cries a man.  But there are flashes rending the sky above the embankments on all sides, and the sight is so fearsome of these jets of resounding flame that overhang our pit and its swarming shadows that no one responds to the madman’s saying.

Willing or unwilling, since we cannot go back, we must even take that way.  “Forward into the filth!” cries the leader of the troop.  We plunge in, tense with repulsion.  Bullets are whistling over.  “Lower your heads!” The trench has little depth; one must stoop very low to avoid being hit, and the stench becomes intolerable.  At last we emerge into the communication trench that we left in error.  We begin again to march.  Though we march without end we arrive nowhere.

While we wander on, dumb and vacant, in the dizzy stupefaction of fatigue, the stream which is running in the bottom of the trench cleanses our befouled feet.

The roars of the artillery succeed each other faster and faster, till they make but a single roar upon all the earth.  From all sides the gunfire and the bursting shells hurl their swift shafts of light and stripe confusedly the black sky over our heads.  The bombardment then becomes so intense that its illumination has no break.  In the continuous chain of thunderbolts we can see each other clearly—­our helmets streaming like the bodies of fishes, our sodden leathers, the shovel-blades black and glistening; we can even see the pale drops of the unending rain.  Never have I seen the like of it; in very truth it is moonlight made by gunfire.