"Uncle" alone, his back leaning on a trunk of a tree, was moaning plaintively and softly like a fly caught in a spider's web. And on the other side a young soldier was making severe attempts to lift up his body out of the mud puddle, while the eyes of his pale youthful face were already covered with the film of death. But no one paid the slightest attention to either of them. Each one felt upon himself the keen, merciless eye of the enemy and dared not budge or even stretch out a benumbed foot. A grey soldier attempted once to change his place, whereupon three shots thundered from the other side, and the man only turned over and remained still. Later two men were killed, one on each side, and again everything grew still. The clatter of the rain alone was heard, as though, invisible to the eye, some one wept bitterly in the forest. The hours were passing, and the nervous tension grew intolerable, assuming the intensity of agony. It was quite apparent that things could not go on in this way much longer, and every one knew that whoever would lift his head would be killed on the spot. Lord only knows the odd and horrible thoughts that were passing in these terror-stricken, muddled minds. Hershel Mak felt very keenly that he was eager to live; that like the rest of these men, he had a father and mother and also his own little desires, remote from this place and sacred to him alone. He was also sorry for "uncle" and for that dying German, who lay in the puddle, and who had been killed, perhaps by a bullet from "uncle's" rifle. The hours were passing and the unbearable nervous horror grew, and the inner tension, terrible and so taut that it seemed to be ready to snap every second, was beginning to turn into a sort of nightmare, which makes one shiver all over, which dims one's eyes with red mist, which banishes all fear of death and suffering and turns all that is human into an elemental, savage fury. At the very moment, when the tension reached its highest point and the nightmare was about to pass in a ruthless engagement, Hershel Mak, unable to control his strained nerves any longer began to pray plaintively in the tongue of his forefathers. "_Shma Isroel! Shma Isroel!_" ... His comrades did not understand him and glanced at him in terror, as at a madman, but from the opposite side another frightened and plaintive voice answered him in Jewish: "A Jew!... A Jew!..." Hershel Mak's heart fell within him. The mad joy that took hold of him is indescribable. It was undefiled human joy that filled him to the brim, when from the place whence he expected only death and hatred there came familiar human words. Forgetting the deathly peril, he sprang to his knees, threw up his arms and cried out, as if responding to a voice heard in the desert. "I!... I!..."