and stones poured up into the sky. It was as if he heard no sound. The
earth and stones and fragments of bush fell to earth again, and there was
the same unchanging peace. The Germans had got the aim.

Would they move now? Would they retire? Yes. The officer was giving the
last lightning-rapid orders to fire before withdrawing. A shell passed
unnoticed in the rapidity of action. And then, into the silence, into the
suspense where the soul brooded, finally crashed a noise and a darkness
and a moment's flaming agony and horror. Ah, he had seen the dark bird
flying towards him, flying home this time. In one instant life and
eternity went up in a conflagration of agony, then there was a weight of
darkness.

When faintly something began to struggle in the darkness, a consciousness
of himself, he was aware of a great load and a clanging sound. To have
known the moment of death! And to be forced, before dying, to review it.
So, fate, even in death.

There was a resounding of pain. It seemed to sound from the outside of
his consciousness: like a loud bell clanging very near. Yet he knew it
was himself. He must associate himself with it. After a lapse and a new
effort, he identified a pain in his head, a large pain that clanged and
resounded. So far he could identify himself with himself. Then there was
a lapse.

After a time he seemed to wake up again, and waking, to know that he was
at the front, and that he was killed. He did not open his eyes. Light was
not yet his. The clanging pain in his head rang out the rest of his
consciousness. So he lapsed away from consciousness, in unutterable sick
abandon of life.