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All at once a twitching ran through the petrified row. Weixler sprang back, jostled against the captain, and cried out: "They are coming!" Then he stormed to the shaft and blew the alarm whistle. Marschner stared after him helplessly.
Good luck!" Humming a merry popular song he followed his men without looking back, without even observing that Marschner accompanied him a little on his way. Gaily, as though on a Sunday picnic, the men started on the way, which led over the terrible field of shards and ruins and the steep, shot-up hill. What hells they must have endured there, in that mole's gallery!
As Captain Marschner groped his way through the slippery trench in a daze, it became clearer and clearer to him that he must now hold on to his detested lieutenant like a treasure. Without him he would be lost. He saw the traces of puddles of blood at his feet, and trod upon tattered, blood-soaked pieces of uniforms, on empty shells, rattling preserve tins, fragments of cannon balls.
Marschner wanted to jump up and find out what had happened to Weixler he wanted to
Tent flaps had been spread over them, but had slipped down and revealed the grim, stony grey caricatures, the fallen jaws, the staring eyes. The arms of those in the top tier hung earthward like parts of a trellis, and grasped at the faces of those lying below, and were already sown with the livid splotches of corruption. Captain Marschner uttered a short, belching cry and reeled forward.
His wife, however, suddenly came into some money, and this windfall enabled him to devote all his energies to his work as composer of operas, without being obliged to fill any fixed post. During the wild days of my youth Marschner lived in Leipzig, where his operas Der Vampir and Templer und Judin saw their first appearance.
Probably he had long been secretly deriding his old captain's indecision and had cursed the last halt because it forced him to wait another half hour to achieve his first deed of heroism. Marschner mowed down the tall blades of grass with his riding whip and from time to time glanced at his company surreptitiously.
A couple of fellows there that don't please me at all. Especially Simmel, the red-haired dog. He's already pulling his head in when a shrapnel bursts over there." Marschner was silent. The red-haired dog Simmel?
All alone, with no one near to hear him, amid the fury of the bursting shrapnel, which fell up there as thick as rain in a thunderstorm, Captain Marschner gave himself up to his rage, his impotent rage against a world that had inflicted such a thing on him.
Then Marschner nodded his head almost imperceptibly, and said in a toneless voice: "You shall have it in writing." He swung on his heel and left. Colored spheres seemed to dance before his eyes, and he had to summon all his strength to keep his equilibrium. When at last he reached the dugout, he fell on the box of empty tins as if he had been beaten.
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