Night, impenetrable night continued. Under the sky which brooded over them, sinister and greedy, the fields stretched like a vast sea of Shadow. At long intervals, out of the dead whiteness, long curtains of fog were floating up above, grazing the invisible ground where clumps of trees here and there appeared still darker in the surrounding darkness. I never stirred from the place where I sat down, and the cold numbed my members and chapped my lips. With difficulty I raised myself and walked on the outskirt of the woods. The sound of my own steps on the ground frightened me, it always seemed to me that someone was walking behind me. I was walking carefully, on tiptoe, as if afraid to wake the sleeping earth, and listened, trying to penetrate the darkness, for in spite of everything, I had not yet given up the hope that some one would come to relieve me. Not a stir, not a breath, not a glimmer of light in this blind and mute night. Twice, however, I distinctly heard the sound of steps, and my heart thumped violently.... But the noise moved away, grew fainter by degrees, ceased altogether and silence set in again, more oppressive, more terrible, more disheartening than ever. A branch brushed against my face; I recoiled, seized with terror. Further away, a rise in the ground appeared to me like a man who with crooked back seemed to be crawling toward me; I loaded my rifle.... At the sight of an abandoned plough with its arms turned upward toward the sky, like the menacing horns of some monster, my breath left me and I almost fell on my back.... I was afraid of the shadow, of the silence, of the least object that extended beyond the line of the horizon and which my deranged imagination endowed with a soul of sinister life.... Despite the cold, perspiration in large drops was streaming upon my face.... I had a notion to quit my post, to return to camp, persuading myself by all sorts of ingenious and cowardly arguments that my comrades had forgotten all about me and that they would be glad to see me back with them. Obviously, since I had not been relieved by anyone from my company, and saw none of the officers make his round of inspection, they must have left.... But supposing I were mistaken about it, what excuse could I offer, and how would I be received at the camp?... To go back to the farm where my company was quartered this morning and ask for instructions?... I was thinking of doing it.... But in my plight I had lost all sense of direction, and if I attempted to do that I would surely get lost in this plain that was so endless and so black.