Page:The Best continental short stories of and the yearbook of the continental short story 1924-25.pdf/78

 tain, a panting charge of the hostile trenches, a grim endurance of the sweat, the rain and the lice, and a painful effort to keep our ears pricked up at certain sounds which make the air swell as goose-flesh thickens human skin.

In spite of it all, we were still men. But what sort of men! Worn down almost to the bone—no! having nothing but bones, and creaking and shivering at every joint. Somewhere in the middle part of us there was a dilapidated stomach which painted for itself in lively colors the fine mouthfuls swallowed long ago, in the calm quiet of the days when there was peace. While the frozen void which we felt within us made us yawn, and while this yawn was the only expression of our distress, something brighter than the shadows came to us from the kitchen to form a warm, dry corner in the midst of the glacial rain. We beheld a vapor all made of golden beads, a cloud in which a gentle smile hid itself away as in a beard, and we could approach, with our tin plates and cups in our hands. We knew that we were not wholly forgotten, and we received our portion of the food that saved us. We were no longer obliged to content ourselves with yawns, we could at last speak, and our voices were like the voices of men to whom some good fortune has happened. We were now really men again, men who had just arisen, and knew how to salute gayly the oncoming day.

“Hi, boys, warming up must be in it today, that crazy mess of a cook has stuck in the wrong ladle!”

And then the smiling eyes and smiling chins plunge, as if intoxicated, into the vapor rising from the tin plates, and a noise is heard like that made when the fire is stirred beneath a boiler and the pistons begin to move. It seems as if a solid and vigorous squeeze, as of a hearty handgrip, enters our very beings, and we feel the warming up at work inside us, as a mason works busily from below to brace a tottering wall. Every bit of this good feeling comes from our stomachs, and our hearts hasten to share in it. When we again plunge out into the rain, we work our jaws, thinking that now we can hold our own. Some one is calling Pancrace. “Hey, old fellow, you always have to