Already a thin heap of earth is winding along, and each man has the idea of reinforcing the incipient breastwork with his pouch and his rolled-up greatcoat, and he hoods himself behind the slender pile of shadow when a volley comes—­

While we work we sweat, and as soon as we stop working we are pierced through by the cold.  A spell seems to be cast on us, paralyzing our arms.  The rockets torment and pursue us, and allow us but little movement.  After every one of them that petrifles us with its light we have to struggle against a task still more stubborn.  The hole only deepens into the darkness with painful and despairing tardiness.

The ground gets softer; each shovelful drips and flows, and spreads from the blade with a flabby sound.  At last some one cries, “Water!” The repeated cry travels all along the row of diggers—­“Water—­that’s done it!”

“Melusson’s team’s dug deeper, and there’s water.  They’ve struck a swamp.”—­“No help for it.”

We stop in confusion.  In the bosom of the night we hear the sound of shovels and picks thrown down like empty weapons.  The non-coms. go gropingly after the officer to get instructions.  Here and there, with no desire for anything better, some men are going deliciously to sleep under the caress of the rain, under the radiant rockets.

* * * * * *

It was very nearly at this minute, as far as I can remember, that the bombardment began again.  The first shell fell with a terrible splitting of the air, which seemed to tear itself in two; and other whistles were already converging upon us when its explosion uplifted the ground at the head of the detachment in the heart of the magnitude of night and rain, revealing gesticulations upon a sudden screen of red.

No doubt they had seen us, thanks to the rockets, and had trained their fire on us.

The men hurled and rolled themselves towards the little flooded ditch that they had dug, wedging, burying, and immersing themselves in it, and placed the blades of the shovels over their heads.  To right, to left, in front and behind, shells burst so near that every one of them shook us in our bed of clay; and it became soon one continuous quaking that seized the wretched gutter, crowded with men and scaly with shovels, under the strata of smoke and the falling fire.  The splinters and debris crossed in all directions with a network of noise over the dazzling field.  No second passed but we all thought what some stammered with their faces in the earth, “We’re done, this time!”

A little in front of the place where I am. a shape has arisen and cried, “Let’s be off!” Prone bodies half rose out of the shroud of mud that dripped in tails and liquid rags from their limbs, and these deathful apparitions cried also, “Let’s go!” They were on their knees, on all-fours, crawling towards the way of retreat:  “Get on, allez, get on!”

But the long file stayed motionless, and the frenzied complaints were in vain.  They who were down there at the end would not budge, and their inactivity immobilized the rest.  Some wounded passed over the others, crawling over them as over debris, and sprinkling the whole company with their blood.