Sprawled half on and half off my _paillasse_, I looked suddenly up into a
juvenile pimply face with a red tassel bobbing in its eyes. A boy in a
Belgian uniform was stooping over me. In one hand a huge pail a third
full of liquid slime. I said fiercely: "_Au contraire, je veux bien._"
And collapsed on the mattress.

"_Pas de quart, vous?_" the face fired at me.

"_Comprends pas_," I replied, wondering what on earth the words meant.

"English?"

"American."

At this moment a tin cup appeared mysteriously out of the gloom and was
rapidly filled from the pail, after which operation the tassel remarked:
"Your friend here" and disappeared.


I decided I had gone completely crazy.

The cup had been deposited near me. Not daring to approach it, I boosted
my aching corpse on one of its futile elbows and gazed blankly around. My
eyes, wading laboriously through a dark atmosphere, a darkness gruesomely
tactile, perceived only here and there lively patches of vibrating
humanity. My ears recognised English, something which I took to be
low-German and which was Belgian, Dutch, Polish, and what I guessed to be
Russian.

Trembling with this chaos, my hand sought the cup. The cup was not warm;