"Pooh!" The others snorted with contempt. "Mangiennes!" Did we think that counted! Some gunners, black with powder, who were squatting in a cart, shook their fists at the foot-sloggers. The latter, absolutely broken down, and drunk with rage, returned their invectives. They were just on the point of pulling out their bayonets. Our company commander, who had witnessed the scene, seized the most rabid by the collar. His tone and rank over-awed them. An old sergeant, with touches of grey on his temples, followed, holding his cap in his hand, and repeating in a singsong voice: "Stick to your packs, lads!" It was broad daylight now. All our _poilus_ were up, taking in every detail of the show. Will you believe that in the end not one of us was seriously demoralised. Warnings and narratives left us rather sceptical. We even felt an uncharitable tendency to rag survivors of the furnace. Their hasty gait, their burlesque accoutrements! Above all each tragic assurance: "I'm the only one left of the X----," raised storms of laughter. We had seen dozens and hundreds of bearers of that device march past! Judsi exclaimed: "Don't cry about it, old chap! Your chums are waiting for you in Paris!" I believe that at the bottom of our hearts each one of us felt naïvely convinced that our arrival would put everything right.... The realisation that we were witnessing a rout did however penetrate my consciousness at last, though still only in a vague way. Vaguely too I dreaded lest our energy should suffer by it. I was delighted when we got orders, about six o'clock, to leave the high road. We went across country for not more than four or five hundred yards. Some trenches dug there appeared before us, as if by chance. A French dirigible, the Fleurus, passed high above our heads, and seemed, I do not quite know why, a happy omen. CHAPTER XIX SPINCOURT Heaven knows whether we expected to have to charge from the beginning to the end of that interminable day. The captain and the subaltern had warned us. The cannonade raged in front of us and all round us. The German fire was concentrated against a village below us, on our right. If we were occupying it, what losses it would mean to us! To begin with we could see each explosion and the resultant crumbling of the buildings. Towards midday a thick pall of smoke rose and shrouded everything. The fusillade and the machine-guns joined in the concert. Who would guess what they reminded me of? The mock symphony with which Miquel had amused at the Globe Café. It will be seen that I was far from feeling the same enervation as I had the other week. I had become a fatalist.... We knew all about being under fire. We had already been through it. I should certainly have been badly bored without Guillaumin's precious and almost continual society. We began by discussing the situation at length. He maintained that it was not serious. He passed on some of his serenity to me. His eyes shone when he said: