Some time passed and no bayonet came thrusting into my body and no bomb that would rend me and my muddy blankets into a ghastly mess, had fallen. The pain suddenly quieted and a tremendous languor seized me.
Immediately I was possessed of a deadly fear of falling asleep. I feared in the first place the peril and horror of the man-eating rat. I feared as well that I would sink so deeply into the mud-hole that I would suffocate as I slept. Yet I realized that it could not be of so very great depth or I must have long ago gone beneath the surface as in a quicksand. I remembered the general aspect of the gap as torn by the shell. It had been a small shell. The gap was not large. And was probably shallow. Besides, the ground beneath me below the mud had a reassuring firmness.
But had the mud in the hole been of a depth for me to drown in, it would have made no difference then. A weariness too intense to permit consideration of life and death gripped me. For all I knew it was death itself. What I did know was that I could not fight it. I simply passed out.
For my eventual survival from the predicament I now found myself in, I can only give credit to the good physical condition I was in when my injuries befell me, the injuries that were to put me out of the big game for good, send me to “Blighty” and to get me honors from King and country reverently to be prized and which in my greatest imaginings I had not dreamed of winning. A practical, regular soldier doesn’t frequently dream of such things. It is your amateur soldier who is most filled with such aspirations. Not that he hasn’t a right to entertain them, coddle them and try to act on them for they have led many new-made soldiers into great and brave accomplishments. I don’t mean such dreams and aspirations are bad for a man. They are distinctly good. I only mean that with regulars like myself soldiering is his cold, hard business and he isn’t given to enhancing it with romantic imaginings.
But now I was to take a turn at imaginings myself--the wildest! I suppose I fought again at least a hundred times my duel with the two Germans who grew to giant-size in some of my dreams and always their countenances were a thing of horror--pale eyes shining through grime, stubbled chins and lips, cracked lips apart with blackened, fang-like teeth showing. Sometimes they beat me. They would have me down and be kneeling on my chest. And one of them would have a knife out with which to slash my throat. And I’d come out of such a horror, writhing and screaming.