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I seed same fule's trick done wance thirty year ago; an' when the animals weer cut awpen, theer 'bibles' was hell-hot wi' the awfulest inflammation ever you heard tell of." "How many's down? 'Twas all he had to count upon." "Awnly eight standin' when he left. I could have cried 'bout it when he tawld me. He 'm clay in the Potter's hand for sartain.
Leading stoker Grant, said to be a bigamist, an ox-eyed man smothered in hair, took me to the stokehold and planted me between a searing white furnace and some hell-hot iron plate for fifteen minutes, while I listened to the drone of fans and the worry of the sea without, striving to wrench all that palpitating firepot wide open.
No words can convey the heart-rending cries of those whose bodies cringe and writhe from the hell-hot agony of searing shrapnel. There is an unmistakable appeal for pity that stirs the depth of feeling until a wild frenzy to right matters sends Berserk passion to the brain. Oh, you German gunners in your serene safety, if ever my chance comes...!
Suppose a cove comes along on a blazin' hot day in the drought an' you ought to know how hell-hot it can be out here an' he dumps his swag in the corner of the bar; an' he turns round an' he ses ter me, "Look here boss, I ain't got a lonely steever on me, an' God knows when I'll git one. I've tramped ten mile this mornin', an' I'll have ter tramp another ten afore to-night.
Added to the hell-hot, baking stuffiness that radiated from the walls, there came the squeaking of a punka rope pulled out of time the piece of piping in the mud-brick wall through which the rope passed had become clogged and rusted, and the villager pressed into service had forgotten how to pull; he jerked at the cord between nods as the heat of the veranda and the unaccustomed night duty combined to make him sleepy.
Again, already, none knew who might not glimpse the dawn; again the hell-hot shrapnel and the writhing human flesh. To-morrow that arm may be a shattered, jagged hanging "thing" ... how firm, fine, and white it looks: smooth, strong.... You look curiously along the line of adjacent faces. Can ALL come through impossible. Who will go under first ... will it be YOU? Wonder what it is like to die?
Still, there lies a dozen or more who will not again pour into the quivering flesh shrapnel's hell-hot agony. A glance along the Norman ranks during the late afternoon showed appreciably by the many gaps separating man from man how many casualties had already obtained.
Through the stillness and the blackness of the night came every now and then the high-pitched undulating wails of women, that no one answered-for, under that Tophet-lid of blackness, punctured by the low-hung, steel-white stars, men neither knew nor cared whose child had died. Life and hell-hot torture and indifference all three were one.
For the next few hours, until the guard was changed, the only signs or sounds of life were the glowing of Brown's pipe, the steady footfalls of the sentries and occasional creakings from the hell-hot guard-room, where sleepless soldiers tossed in prickly discomfort. Bill Brown, with his twelve, had not been set to watch a lonely crossroad for the fun of it.
Join your commands, gentlemen, and explain the details carefully to your men let's have no misunderstandings." The dawn rose gold and beautiful upon a sleepless camp that reeked and steamed with hell-hot suffering. It showed the rebels stationary, still in swarming lines, but scouts reported several thousand of them moving in a body from the flank toward the British rear.
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