them's wounded! It's Volpatte!"

We run up to the specters, our feet making the sounds of sinking in
sponge and of sticky withdrawal, and our shaken cartridges rattle in
their pouches. They stand still and wait for us. When we are close
up, "It's about time!" cries Volpatte.

"You're wounded, old chap?"--"What?" he says; the manifold bandages
all round his head make him deaf, and we must shout to get through
them. So we go close and shout. Then he replies, "That's nothing;
we're coming from the hole where the 5th Battalion put us on
Thursday."

"You've stayed there--ever since?" yells Farfadet, whose shrill and
almost feminine voice goes easily through the quilting that protects
Volpatte's ears.

"Of course we stayed there, you blithering idiot!" says Fouillade.
"You don't suppose we'd got wings to fly away with, and still less
that we should have legged it without orders?"

Both of them let themselves drop to a sitting position on the
ground. Volpatte's head--enveloped in rags with a big knot on the
top and the same dark yellowish stains as his face--looks like a
bundle of dirty linen.

"They forgot you, then, poor devils?"

"Rather!" cries Fouillade, "I should say they did. Four days and
four nights in a shell-hole, with bullets raining down, a hole that