"I am sorry you should have come all the way up to relieve me," says the Adjutant. "It was careless of me not to explain to you the marks and signs to keep you on the proper road when you were here earlier. But I was in such a rotten condition, I did not think of it. Moreover, you know, I was no longer expecting you."
While addressing me, he is shivering with fever and the cold. All the time he talks his teeth chatter audibly.
"Just get your men ready," I reply. "I am going to fetch mine up immediately. With the best will in the world, however, I can't place them in five minutes."
"Listen!" he says, in the same shaky voice. "I would much prefer you to wait for daybreak. The night is drawing on; I have made all dispositions, and, after all, one place is about as good as another. I would rather remain here a few hours longer than go through the muddle and upset which it will be impossible to avoid if we arrange the relief now. And I am sure my men are one with me in this."
"I agree most willingly. But it is your turn to pass into reserve, you know!"
"Bah! Everything is quiet. The Boches won't come out of their holes. Pristi! What a night! Darker than the throat of a wolf.... Until the morning then, Lieutenant?"
"I shall be back shortly before daybreak, Roux."
Before the dawn this morning, the whole battalion was relieved. We retired to the second line a mile to the rear. We are still close to the Boches, however, so close in fact that this cannot be regarded as a real rest; in case of attack we must sustain the shock together with the first line. Although, however, it cannot justly be described as more than a half-rest, it is, none the less, not to be despised. Hidden deep in the forest, we are invisible even to reconnoitring aeroplanes; we can come and go freely, lounge outside the trench, return to it only in case of an alarm.
Whistling, my hands in my pockets, I stroll as far as a neighbouring cross-road. I find the Captain there, smoking his eternal cigarettes rolled in extraordinarily long cigarette-papers. He points out to me a dead German stretched out lower down the slope. Someone has covered the man's face with a handkerchief, neatly folded his great-coat and placed it beside him. The man's unbuttoned waistcoat reveals a bloodstained shirt. His hands, very white now, still seem to be supple and living: they have but just relaxed after the final death struggle; they are not the stiff and rigid hands of those who have been dead many hours and are already turning to dust.