There is no sound in the poste de secours. A faint greenish light
filters down from the quiet woods outside. Martin is kneeling beside a
stretcher where lies a mass of torn blue uniform crossed in several
places by strips of white bandages clotted with dark blood. The massive
face, grimed with mud, is very waxy and grey. The light hair hangs in
clots about the forehead. The nose is sharp, but there is a faint smile
about the lips made thin by pain.
"Is there anything I can get you?" asks Martin softly.
"Nothing." Slowly the blue eyelids uncover hazel eyes that burn
feverishly.
"But you haven't told me yet, how's Merrier?"
"A shell ... dead ... poor chap."
"And the anarchist, Lully?"
"Dead."
"And Dubois?"
"Why ask?" came the faint rustling voice peevishly. "Everybody's dead.
You're dead, aren't you?"
"No, I'm alive, and you. A little courage.... We must be cheerful."
"It's not for long. To-morrow, the next day...." The blue eyelids slip
back over the crazy burning eyes and the face takes on again the waxen
look of death.
THE END
PRINTED BY THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD., TIPTREE, ESSEX, ENGLAND
End of Project Gutenberg's One Man's Initiation--1917, by John Dos Passos