Page:The Shield (Knopf, 1917).djvu/231

Rh, and strewing the wet earth with crippled, writhing, moaning bodies.

Suddenly the shooting ceased just as unexpectedly as it had begun. There was no one upon the clearing except the wounded, and the dead. The reddish soldiers hid behind the stones and the grey behind the trees.

The fire ceased. The hearts of the men beat rapidly and painfully with a vicious inhuman terror, but no one fired a single shot. An hour passed and then another. The men lay silently behind the stones and the trees, each group eyeing the enemy sharply and closely watching their slightest movements.

"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