But Saux leaned against the partition, searching for the door with his haggard eyes. He dashed outside seized by nausea. The noise woke up Burette, and he too got up with difficulty. “Say, what have you two been up to?” “Oh, _mon pauvre vieux_, I don’t know, but I’m sick.” “The fact is there is considerable of an odor here; you might have found a better....” The horses are troubled by it, too. Kiki jumps about and paws furiously. Burette’s and Saux’s horses are sleeping heavily and their breathing is difficult and oppressive. There’s something wrong somewhere, although the enemy hasn’t sent over any gas. With the aid of a light we poke about in the dark. I see a pile of canvas in the corner of the room which is oozing with dampness. I raise the bottom of the canvas with my stick and a swarm of great flies comes buzzing out around us. There are the bodies of German soldiers abandoned for no one knows how long. Weeks, perhaps; since the attack on Fries without doubt. The blue swollen flesh is spotted by bites made by the teeth of rats. They are rotting and filling the soil with purulent matter. With their monstrous faces, sunken eyes, cheeks fallen in, and their mouths convulsed by their last struggles, they seem still to shout with the fright of their last hours. Burette and Saux have slept beside this charnel-house. We lead out the horses in a hurry and saddle them in the open air. We gain the hard towpath, the only practicable way, and go on at a lively pace. The first light of dawn appears. At the bridge at Éclusier we stop a minute before climbing into the saddle. The Territorials there offer us a cup of coffee. It warms us, for the morning fog on the Somme is always cold. “To horse!” I decide to go at a good pace as far as the bridge at Froissy and take the lead. We must get along before the towpath is encumbered by all the loafers of the companies which are resting in the huts along the length of the canal. A battery of “75’s” in position near the military cemetery at Cappy is firing shells. We pass very close to some guns as they are starting off. Coquet is frightened, jumps, and dashes into the fields, heading straight toward the hedges of some vegetable gardens. “Attention! Burette, pull on the bits.” “Don’t be afraid. He knows me.” He knows him so well that Burette had scarcely spoken than Coquet stopped short before the fence. Burette went over alone, head first, and landed in the vegetables. Fortunately, the ground is soft, but in hurdling the obstacle he bumped into some bushes, and gets an eye bruised and a cheek scratched. “That’s nothing. That’s all right,” he says. He remounts his horse, laughing and singing: _Ah! les p’tits pois, les p’tits pois,_ _C’est un légume très tendre._ He can appreciate them this time. * * * * *