After the fever had left his veins, the youth thought that at
last he was going to suffocate. He became aware of the foul
atmosphere in which he had been struggling. He was grimy and
dripping like a laborer in a foundry. He grasped his canteen
and took a long swallow of the warmed water.

A sentence with variations went up and down the line. "Well, we
've helt 'em back. We 've helt 'em back; derned if we haven't."
The men said it blissfully, leering at each other with dirty smiles.

The youth turned to look behind him and off to the right and off
to the left. He experienced the joy of a man who at last finds
leisure in which to look about him.

Under foot there were a few ghastly forms motionless. They lay
twisted in fantastic contortions. Arms were bent and heads were
turned in incredible ways. It seemed that the dead men must have
fallen from some great height to get into such positions. They
looked to be dumped out upon the ground from the sky.

From a position in the rear of the grove a battery was throwing
shells over it. The flash of the guns startled the youth at first.
He thought they were aimed directly at him. Through the trees he
watched the black figures of the gunners as they worked swiftly
and intently. Their labor seemed a complicated thing. He wondered
how they could remember its formula in the midst of confusion.

The guns squatted in a row like savage chiefs. They argued with
abrupt violence. It was a grim pow-wow. Their busy servants ran