"Yes," said Lean. The two privates stood waiting, bent over their implements. "I suppose," said Lean, "it would be better if we laid him in ourselves." "Yes," said the adjutant. Then apparently remembering that he had made Lean search the body, he stooped with great fortitude and took hold of the dead officer's clothing. Lean joined him. Both were particular that their fingers should not feel the corpse. They tugged away; the corpse lifted, heaved, toppled, flopped into the grave, and the two officers, straightening, looked again at each other--they were always looking at each other. They sighed with relief. The adjutant said, "I suppose we should--we should say something. Do you know the service, Tim?" "They don't read the service until the grave is filled in," said Lean, pressing his lips to an academic expression. "Don't they?" said the adjutant, shocked that he had made the mistake. "Oh, well," he cried, suddenly, "let us--let us say something--while he can hear us." "All right," said Lean. "Do you know the service?" "I can't remember a line of it," said the adjutant. Lean was extremely dubious. "I can repeat two lines, but--" "Well, do it," said the adjutant. "Go as far as you can. That's better than nothing. And the beasts have got our range exactly." Lean looked at his two men. "Attention," he barked. The privates came to attention with a click, looking much aggrieved. The adjutant lowered his helmet to his knee. Lean, bareheaded, stood over the grave. The Rostina sharpshooters fired briskly. "Oh Father, our friend has sunk in the deep waters of death, but his spirit has leaped toward Thee as the bubble arises from the lips of the drowning. Perceive, we beseech, Oh Father, the little flying bubble, and--" Lean, although husky and ashamed, had suffered no hesitation up to this point, but he stopped with a hopeless feeling and looked at the corpse. The adjutant moved uneasily. "And from Thy superb heights--" he began, and then he too came to an end. "And from Thy superb heights," said Lean. The adjutant suddenly remembered a phrase in the back part of the Spitzbergen burial service, and he exploited it with the triumphant manner of a man who has recalled everything, and can go on. "Oh God, have mercy--" "Oh God, have mercy--" said Lean. "Mercy," repeated the adjutant, in quick failure. "Mercy," said Lean. And then he was moved by some violence of feeling, for he turned suddenly upon his two men and tigerishly said, "Throw the dirt in." The fire of the Rostina sharpshooters was accurate and continuous. * * * * * One of the aggrieved privates came forward with his shovel. He lifted his first shovel-load of earth, and for a moment of inexplicable hesitation it was held poised above this corpse, which from its chalk-blue face looked keenly out from the grave. Then the soldier emptied his shovel on--on the feet.