He saw that the ground in the deep shadows was cluttered with men, sprawling in every conceivable posture.

Glancing narrowly into the more distant darkness, he caught occasional glimpses of visages that loomed pallid and ghostly, lit with a phosphorescent glow.
These faces expressed in their lines the deep stupor of the tired soldiers.

They made them appear like men drunk with wine.

This bit of forest might have appeared to an ethereal wanderer as a scene of the result of some frightful debauch.
On the other side of the fire the youth observed an officer asleep, seated bolt upright, with his back against a tree.

There was something perilous in his position.