He tells of the festivities, the orgies, the expenditure, and there is almost a tone of pride in the poor creature's voice as he recalls so many pompous pageants all at once.
But the uproar outside silences us.

Our funk-hole trembles and cracks.
It is the barrage--the barrage which those whom we saw have gone to fight, hand to hand.

A thunderbolt falls just at the opening, it casts a bright light on all of us, and reveals the last emotion of all, the belief that all was ended! One man is grimacing like a malefactor caught in the act; another is opening strange, disappointed eyes; another is swinging his doleful head, enslaved by the love of sleep, and another, squatting with his head in his hands, makes a lurid entanglement.

We have seen each other--upright, sitting or crucified--in the second of broad daylight which came into the bowels of the earth to resurrect our darkness.
In a moment, when the guns chance to take breath, a voice at the door-hole calls us: "Forward!" "We shall be staying there, this time over!" growl the men.
They say this, but they do not know it.

We go out, into a chaos of crashing and flames.
"You'd better fix bayonets," says the sergeant; "come, get 'em on." We stop while we adjust weapon to weapon and then run to overtake the rest.
We go down; we go up; we mark time; we go forward--like the others.