Oh, curses! In complete exhaustion, I fall face to the ground and begin to weep. In my falling, I fail to notice that I have upset the flask and out of its mouth the water--my life, my deliverance, my respite from death--is oozing. I notice it only when there is no more than a half-cupful left; the rest has been absorbed by the dry, thirsty earth. It is simply agony to recall the stupor which seized me after this terrible accident. I lay motionless, with half-closed eyes. The wind kept changing, and now fanned me with pure, clear air and now sent the stench upon me anew. My neighbor has become unsightly beyond all description. Once I opened my eyes to glance at him, and I recoiled in horror. He no longer had any face. The flesh seemed to peel right off the bone. That horrible smile of bones, that eternal grin, seemed never so repulsive, never so awful, although it had been my lot to hold many a human skull in my hands before, in the medical classes. The skeleton in uniform with shining buttons caused me to shudder. “This is war,” I reflected, “and here is its symbol.” The sun is burning and scorching me as before. My hands and face have been smarting for some time. I drank up the remaining water. The thirst tortured me so intensely that in trying to take a single swallow I gulped down all. Fool that I was not to have called to the Cossacks when they were so near! Even if they had been Turks, it would have been better than this. They would have tortured me an hour or two; but now there’s no saying how long I am to lie here and suffer. My dear, dearest mother! If you only knew! You would tear your gray hair out, you would knock your head against the wall, you would curse the day of my birth, you would curse the world which invented war and its sorrows. It is well that you and Masha will not hear of my sufferings. Farewell, Mother; farewell, my sweetheart, my love! But how sad and bitter I feel! And there is something gnawing at the heart.... Again I am thinking of that little white dog! The porter did not pity it, but knocked its head against the wall and threw it into a garbage heap. And still it was alive; and suffered a whole day. I am more unfortunate, because I have suffered already three days. To-morrow will be the fourth day, then the fifth, the sixth.... Death, where art thou? Come, come! Take me! But death does not come. And I am lying in the blaze of this terrible sun; and there is not a drop of water to refreshen my inflamed throat; the corpse, too, is making me ill. Myriads of vermin are feeding in it. How they swarm! When he is eaten, and there is nothing left except the bones and the uniform, then it will be my turn. I too shall share the same fate. The day passes, and the night passes. No change. Again morning. No change. Another day will pass....