With one bound the lust to live flares up again and everything that has filled my thoughts goes down before it. Now, merely to avert any ill-luck, I babble mechanically: “I will fulfil everything, fulfil everything I have promised you———” but already I know that I shall not do so.
Suddenly it occurs to me that my own comrades may fire on me as I creep up; they do not know I am coming. I will call out as soon as I can so that they will recognize me. I will stay lying in front of the trench until they answer me.
The first star. The front remains quiet. I breathe deeply and talk to myself in my excitement: “No foolishness now, Paul—quiet, Paul, quiet—then you will be saved, Paul.” When I use my Christian name, it works as though someone else spoke to me, it has more power.
The darkness grows. My excitement subsides, I wait cautiously until the first rocket goes up. Then I crawl out of the shell-hole. I have forgotten the dead man. Before me lies the on-coming night and the pale gleaming field. I fix my eye on a shell-hole; the moment the light dies I scurry over into it, grope farther, spring into the next, duck down, scramble onward.
I come nearer. There, by the light of a rocket I
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