"Yes, Kat."
I stir myself.
In the middle of the room shines the brown goose.
We take out our collapsible forks and our pocket-knives and each cuts off a leg.
With it we have army bread dipped in gravy.
We eat slowly and with gusto.
"How does it taste, Kat?"
"Good!
And yours?"
"Good, Kat."
We are brothers and press on one another the choicest pieces.
Afterwards I smoke a cigarette and Kat a cigar.
There is still a lot left.
"How would it be, Kat if we took a bit to Kropp and Tjaden?"
"Sure," says he.
We carve off a portion and wrap it up carefully in newspaper.
The rest we thought of taking over to the hut. Kat laughs, and simply says:
"Tjaden."
I agree, we will have to take it all.
So we go off to the fowl-house to waken them.
But first we pack away the feathers.
Kropp and Tjaden take us for magicians.
Then they get busy with their teeth.
Tjaden holds a wing in his mouth with both hands like a mouth-organ, and gnaws.
He drinks the gravy from the pot and smacks his lips:
"May I never forget you!"
We go to our hut.
Again there is the lofty sky with the stars and the oncoming dawn, and I pass beneath it, a soldier with big boots and a full belly, a little soldier in the early morning—but by my side, stooping and angular, goes Kat, my comrade.
The outlines of the huts are upon us in the dawn like a dark, deep sleep.
SIX
There are rumours of an offensive.
We go up to the front two days earlier than usual.
On the way we pass a shelled school-house.
Stacked up against its longer side is a high double wall of yellow, unpolished, brand-new coffins.
They still smell of resin, and pine, and the forest.
There are at least a hundred.
"That's a good preparation for the offensive," says Muller astonished.
"They're for us," growls Detering.
"Don't talk rot," says Kat to him angrily.
"You be thankful if you get so much as a coffin," grins Tjaden, "they'll slip you a waterproof sheet for your old Aunt Sally of a carcase."
The others jest too, unpleasant jests, but what else can a man do?— The coffins are really for us.
The organization surpasses itself in that kind of thing.
Ahead of us everything is shimmering.
The first night we try to get our bearings.
When it is fairly quiet we can hear the transports behind the enemy lines rolling ceaselessly until dawn.
Kat says that they do not go back but are bringing up troops — troops, munitions, and guns.
The English artillery has been strengthened, that we can detect at once.
There are at least four more batteries of nine-inch guns to the right of the farm, and behind the poplars they have put in trench-mortars.
Besides these they have brought up a number of those little French beasts with instantaneous fuses.
We are now in low spirits.