With no distinct idea of what o'clock it was and no means of measuring the flight of time, he had long been watching the tardy declination of the fiery disk, which seemed to him to have ceased to move, hanging there in the heavens over the woods of the left bank. And this was not owing to any lack of courage on his part; it was simply the overmastering, ever increasing desire, amounting to an imperious necessity, to be relieved from the screaming and whistling of those projectiles, to run away somewhere and find a hole where he might hide his head and lose himself in oblivion. Were it not for the feeling of shame that is implanted in men's breasts and keeps them from showing the white feather before their comrades, every one of them would lose his head and run, in spite of himself, like the veriest poltroon.
Maurice and Jean, meanwhile, were becoming somewhat more accustomed to their surroundings, and even when their terror was at its highest there came to them a sort of exalted self-unconsciousness that had in it something of bravery. They finally reached a point when they did not even hasten their steps as they made their way through the accursed wood. The horror of the bombardment was even greater than it had been previously among that race of sylvan denizens, killed at their post, struck down on every hand, like gigantic, faithful sentries. In the delicious twilight that reigned, golden-green, beneath their umbrageous branches, among the mysterious recesses of romantic, moss-carpeted retreats, Death showed his ill-favored, grinning face. The solitary fountains were contaminated; men fell dead in distant nooks whose depths had hitherto been trod by none save wandering lovers. A bullet pierced a man's chest; he had time to utter the one word: "hit!" and fell forward on his face, stone dead. Upon the lips of another, who had both legs broken by a shell, the gay laugh remained; unconscious of his hurt, he supposed he had tripped over a root. Others, injured mortally, would run on for some yards, jesting and conversing, until suddenly they went down like a log in the supreme convulsion. The severest wounds were hardly felt at the moment they were received; it was only at a later period that the terrible suffering commenced, venting itself in shrieks and hot tears.
Ah, that accursed wood, that wood of slaughter and despair, where, amid the sobbing of the expiring trees, arose by degrees and swelled the agonized clamor of wounded men. Maurice and Jean saw a zouave, nearly disemboweled, propped against the trunk of an oak, who kept up a most terrific howling, without a moment's intermission. A little way beyond another man was actually being slowly roasted; his clothing had taken fire and the flames had run up and caught his beard, while he, paralyzed by a shot that had broken his back, was silently weeping scalding tears. Then there was a captain, who, one arm torn from its socket and his flank laid open to the thigh, was writhing on the ground in agony unspeakable, beseeching, in heartrending accents, the by-passers to end his suffering. There were others, and others, and others still, whose torments may not be described, strewing the grass-grown paths in such numbers that the utmost caution was required to avoid treading them under foot. But the dead and wounded had ceased to count; the comrade who fell by the way was abandoned to his fate, forgotten as if he had never been. No one turned to look behind. It was his destiny, poor devil! Next it would be someone else, themselves, perhaps.
They were approaching the edge of the wood when a cry of distress was heard behind them.
"Help! help!"
It was the subaltern standard-bearer, who had been shot through the left lung. He had fallen, the blood pouring in a stream from his mouth, and as no one heeded his appeal he collected his fast ebbing strength for another effort:
"To the colors!"
Rochas turned and in a single bound was at his side. He took the flag, the staff of which had been broken in the fall, while the young officer murmured in words that were choked by the bubbling tide of blood and froth:
"Never mind me; I am a goner. Save the flag!"
And they left him to himself in that charming woodland glade to writhe in protracted agony upon the ground, tearing up the grass with his stiffening fingers and praying for death, which would be hours yet ere it came to end his misery.
At last they had left the wood and its horrors behind them. Beside Maurice and Jean all that were left of the little band were Lieutenant Rochas, Lapoulle and Pache. Gaude, who had strayed away from his companions, presently came running from a thicket to rejoin them, his bugle hanging from his neck and thumping against his back with every step he took. It was a great comfort to them all to find themselves once again in the open country, where they could draw their breath; and then, too, there were no longer any whistling bullets and crashing shells to harass them; the firing had ceased on this side of the valley.
The first object they set eyes on was an officer who had reined in his smoking, steaming charger before a farm-yard gate and was venting his towering rage in a volley of Billingsgate. It was General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, the commander of their brigade, covered with dust and looking as if he was about to tumble from his horse with fatigue. The chagrin on his gross, high-colored, animal face told how deeply he took to heart the disaster that he regarded in the light of a personal misfortune. His command had seen nothing of him since morning. Doubtless he was somewhere on the battlefield, striving to rally the remnants of his brigade, for he was not the man to look closely to his own safety in his rage against those Prussian batteries that had at the same time destroyed the empire and the fortunes of a rising officer, the favorite of the Tuileries.
"Tonnerre de Dieu!" he shouted, "is there no one of whom one can ask a question in this d---d country?"
The farmer's people had apparently taken to the woods. At last a very old woman appeared at the door, some servant who had been forgotten, or whose feeble legs had compelled her to remain behind.
"Hallo, old lady, come here! Which way from here is Belgium?"
She looked at him stupidly, as one who failed to catch his meaning. Then he lost all control of himself and effervesced, forgetful that the woman was only a poor peasant, bellowing that he had no idea of going back to Sedan to be caught like a rat in a trap; not he! he was going to make tracks for foreign parts, he was, and d---d quick, too! Some soldiers had come up and stood listening.
"But you won't get through, General," spoke up a sergeant; "the Prussians are everywhere. This morning was the time for you to cut stick."
There were stories even then in circulation of companies that had become separated from their regiments and crossed the frontier without any intention of doing so, and of others that, later in the day, had succeeded in breaking through the enemy's lines before the armies had effected their final junction.
The general shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "What, with a few daring fellows of your stripe, do you mean to say we couldn't go where we please? I think I can find fifty daredevils to risk their skin in the attempt." Then, turning again to the old peasant: "Eh! you old mummy, answer, will you, in the devil's name! where is the frontier?"
She understood him this time. She extended her skinny arm in the direction of the forest.
"That way, that way!"
"Eh? What's that you say? Those houses that we see down there, at the end of the field?"
"Oh! farther, much farther. Down yonder, away down yonder!"
The general seemed as if his anger must suffocate him. "It is too disgusting, an infernal country like this! one can make neither top nor tail of it. There was Belgium, right under our nose; we were all afraid we should put our foot in it without knowing it; and now that one wants to go there it is somewhere else. No, no! it is too much; I've had enough of it; let them take me prisoner if they will, let them do what they choose with me; I am going to bed!" And clapping spurs to his horse, bobbing up and down on his saddle like an inflated wine skin, he galloped off toward Sedan.