"A. E. Merritt - Three Lines of Old French" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

destroyed again, and once more the dreary routine had to be gone through; for the orders were to hold
this sector at all costs.

All that was left of Laveller's consciousness was concentrated in his eyes; only his seeing faculty lived.
And sight, obeying the rigid, inexorable will commanding every reserve of vitality to concentrate on the
duty at hand, was blind to everything except the strip before it that Laveller must watch until relieved. His
body was numb; he could not feel the ground with his feet, and sometimes he seemed to be floating in air
like--like the two Scots upon the wire!
Why couldn't they be still? What right had men whose blood had drained away into a black stain beneath
them to dance and pirouette to the rhythm of the flares? Damn them--why couldn't a shell drop down and
bury them?

There was a chateau half a mile up there to the right--at least it had been a chateau. Under it were deep
cellars into which one could creep and sleep. He knew that, because ages ago, when first he had come
into this part of the line, he had slept a night there.

It would be like reentering paradise to crawl again into those cellars, out of the pitiless rain; sleep once
more with a roof over his head.

"I will sleep and sleep and sleep--and sleep and sleep and sleep," he told himself; then stiffened as at the
slumber-compelling repetition of the word darkness began to gather before him.

The star-shells flared and died, flared and died; the staccato of a machine gun reached him. He thought
that it was his teeth chattering until his groping consciousness made him realize what it. really was--some
nervous German riddling the interminable movement of the dead.

There was a squidging of feet through the chalky mud. No need to look; they were friends, or they could
not have passed the sentries at the angle of the traverse. Nevertheless, involuntarily, his eyes swept
toward the sounds, took note of three cloaked figures regarding him.

There were half a dozen of the lights floating overhead now, and by the gleams they cast into the trench
he recognized the party.

One of them was that famous surgeon who had come over from the base hospital at Bethune to see
made the wounds he healed; the others were his major and his captain--all of them bound for those
cellars, no doubt. Well, some had all the luck! Back went his eyes to the slit.

"What's wrong?" It was the voice of the major addressing the visitor.

"What's wrong--what's wrong--what's wrong?" The words repeated themselves swiftly, insistently, within
his brain, over and over again, striving to waken it.

Well, what was wrong? Nothing was wrong! Wasn't he, Laveller, there and watching? The tormented
brain writhed angrily. Nothing was wrong--why didn't they go away and let him watch in peace?

"Nothing." It was the surgeon--and again the words kept babbling in Laveller's ears, small, whispering,
rapidly repeating themselves over and over; "Nothing--nothing--nothing--nothing."

But what was this the surgeon was saying? Fragmentarily, only half understood, the phrases registered: