Still shaken and dazed, Bourne tried to realize that some shattered fragments of poor Barton lay out neglected in the engulfing mud, and these men were talking of him with kindly regretful voices, praising him for the qualities which he had really possessed; and then the unreasoning anger of the regimental broke out again.

‘They might have given him a bloody chance.’

‘I suppose one man can’t expect to have no more chance than another,’ said Quartermaster-Sergeant Hales quietly.

‘I’m fed up with the bloody life,’ said the regimental; and Bourne knew by his voice that he was looking for trouble; but they all sat there for some time, drinking rum, and talking about dead men. They had not suffered very heavily in casualties. When Tozer got up to go, Bourne was glad to follow him, and then surprised to find himself walking a little unsteadily: that much of the stuff wouldn’t have gone to his head six months ago. He undressed partly, and rolled himself up in his blanket, feeling friendless and miserable. Then he fell into sudden sleep. He became aware of himself walking through a fog, only less thick than the mud underneath; it became almost impossible to breathe in it; and then he felt the mud sucking him down, he could not extricate his feet from it, and shells burst all round him with jagged red lightnings, and then terrible hands, terrible dead hands came out of that living mud and fastened on to him, dragging him down inexorably, and the mud seemed full of rusty cruel wire, and men with exultant bestial faces rushed at him, and he fought, fought desperately.

‘’ere,’ said Corporal Jakes, ‘what’s the bloody fuss about?’

Bourne woke to find himself trying to strangle the astonished man who slept next to him, and Jakes disengaging him from his victim.

‘It’s all right, kid; ’e’s on’y dreamin’.’

‘Dreamin’! What’s ’e want to go dreamin’ all over the fuckin’ ’ut for?’ asked Bourne’s exasperated victim.

Bourne muttered some unintelligible apologies, as he rolled himself up in his blanket.

‘If you don’t use any bad language when you’re awake, you make up for it in your sleep,’ observed Corporal Jakes, as he settled himself again to his disturbed slumbers.

In the morning, almost the first thing Bourne heard was that the regimental, after a quarrel with Reynolds, the orderly-room sergeant, had insisted on seeing the adjutant, in order to obtain an assurance of his own perfect sobriety. The adjutant had found the question too nice a one to be settled without medical advice; and the regimental was a prisoner awaiting a court-martial, as a result of the doctor’s quite unqualified decision against him. Bourne found him in a bell-tent behind the huts, with the sergeant-major of D Company, whose prisoner he was. He was unrepentant, and full of contempt for life, talking to Bourne only of licentious nights in Milharbour. One could not help admiring the way he declined to share his troubles with anyone.