“He went off in a jeep a couple of hours ago,” O’Leary said, “said something about checking on the column of march.” “What?” Mannix said. Again, he seemed unaware of the words, as if they--like the sight of this slow streaming exodus toward the truck--were making no sudden imprint on his mind, but were filtering into his consciousness through piles and layers of wool. A dozen more men arose and began a lame procession toward the truck. Mannix watched them, blinking. “What?” he repeated. “To check the column, sir,” O’Leary repeated. “That’s what he said.” “He _did_?” Mannix turned with an angry, questioning look. “Who’s pacing the march, then?” “Major Lawrence is.” “He _is_?” Mannix rose to his feet, precariously, stiffly and in pain balancing himself not on the heel, but the toe only, of his wounded foot. He blinked in the dawn, gazing at the rear of the truck and the cluster of marines there, feebly lifting themselves into the interior. He said nothing and Culver, watching him from below, could only think of the baffled fury of some great bear cornered, bloody and torn by a foe whose tactics were no braver than his own, but simply more cunning. He bit his lips--out of pain perhaps, but as likely out of impotent rage and frustration, and he seemed close to tears when he said, in a tone almost like grief: “_He_ crapped out! _He_ crapped out!” He came alive like a somnambulist abruptly shocked out of sleep, and he lunged forward onto the road with a wild and tormented bellow. “Hey, you people, get off that goddam truck!” He sprang into the dust with a skip and a jump, toiling down the road with hobbled leg and furious flailing arms. By his deep swinging gait, his terrible limp, he looked no more capable of locomotion than a wheel-chair invalid, and it would have been funny had it not seemed at the same time so full of threat and disaster. He pressed on. “Off that truck, goddammit, I say! Off that truck. Saddle up. Saddle up now, I say! On your feet!” he yelled. “Get off that goddam truck before I start kicking you people in the ass!” His words flayed and cowed them; a long concerted groan arose in the air, seemed to take possession of the very dawn; yet they debarked from the truck in terrified flight, scuttling down like mice from a sinking raft. “Move the hell out of here!” he shouted at the truck driver, a skinny corporal, eyes bulging, who popped back into the cab in fright. “Get that heap out of here!” The truck leaped off with a roar, enveloping the scene in blue smoke and a tornado of dust. Mannix, with windmilling arms, stood propped on his toe in the center of the road, urged the men wildly on. “Saddle up now! Let somebody else crap out O.K., but not you people, hear me! Do you hear me! Goddammit, I mean it! Shea, get those people moving out up there! You people better face it, you got eighteen more miles to go....” Culver tried to stop him, but they had already begun to run.