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The light went out of the sky over the sea at a quarter past four, and the Eye went blind.

Lucien felt it go. He lay behind the broken column at the corner of the white wall of the Casino with his rifle, the way he had lain since nine in the morning, and watched the grey go out of everything: out of the sand, and the gilt frames in it, and the white walls, and the beach below with the second battalion lying on it in its lines and the tide over the ones nearest the water; out of the sea, which went from grey to darker grey to nothing, a sound only, a long hiss and roar beyond the dunes; and out of the sky, last of all, very slowly, the way it went out of the sky over the lake on a winter evening when the boats were in and the lamps were lit on the galleries.

And the shells stopped coming onto the French wall.

Not all at once. One more, a long way inland, near the elbow. Then nothing. The Eye could not see. Its observers on the stump of the tower on the long low swell of ground four miles off had lost the wall in the dark, and the boards, and the beach, and the Casino, and them; and the guns behind it, that it told where to fire, did not know where to fire, and stopped.

“Now,” said Sergeant Cutter, against the white wall, with his eyes shut.

---

They carried him on a groundsheet.

Four of them, a corner each: Harlan and Lucien at the head and two men from the second section, whose names Lucien learned that night, Nolan and Dahl, at the feet. Sergeant Cutter lay on the groundsheet on his back with his hands pressed to his side and his face the colour of the sand, and did not say anything when they lifted him, and did not say anything when they carried him; except once, at the top of the slope, when the groundsheet tilted and his weight went against his side, he said Christ, very quietly, in his dry flat voice, as if he were noticing the weather.

Sol Weintraub walked, with his arm held against his chest in the other hand. Ed Haskell walked. He had not been hit. He walked behind the groundsheet at the end of the file with his rifle and his eyes open and did not say anything.

They left Gallagher. They had to. They left him at the top of the stairs by the sandbags they had built across the doorway, on his back in the sand with his arms out, without his hat; and Lucien thought of the cowboy at the window of the troop train in Ohio with his hat over his eyes, I’ve seen more trees today than in my whole life, and put it away, in the pocket, with the letters, and buttoned it.

They went down the slope of the dunes along the back of the French wall in the dark, onto the boards, and the boards went down over the water, and they went along them, six hundred yards, slowly, in file, with the groundsheet.

The French wall was not empty any more. It was not full. It was what the Eye had made of it all afternoon. The boards were broken, in places, and they went through water to the knee with the groundsheet held up; the shelters had come down; the traverses were heaps. They went past the shelter where the small black and white dog had sat in the doorway shivering, and the doorway was not there, and the dog was not there. They went past the second shelter, where the letter had been under its stone on a box that had been a table, and the shelter was not there either.

The soup can was there. By the brazier, which was on its side. Lucien saw it in the dark as they went past, the big tin can with the straps, standing on the broken boards where it had stood in the morning; and there was a hole through it, a clean one, in one side and out of the other, and the soup had run out of it onto the boards and into the water, and was gone.

---

They went out of the French wall over the sandbags at the place opposite the pump house, and down into the water, and onto the old cart track, forty yards, to the pump house; and from the pump house onto the drowned road.

It was dark. Black. No moon, no stars, the sky and the water one black thing; and he did not need them. He had gone along this road every night for five weeks on his belly in the dark and in the morning he had walked along it standing up, and it was in him now the way the bar off the mouth of the Bayou Saint-Jean was in his father, in his body, so that he did not look for it. He stood in the water to his knees in the dark at the foot of the pump house wall and knew where it went, the width of it, the bend round where the bridge over the drain had been, and where it dropped away on either side into the deep water and the wire and the drains.

“Single file,” he said. “On the road. Behind me. Don’t step off.”

He heard himself say it. It was what the Guardsman with the lantern had said to C Company at the end of the village on the first night, in the rain, on the duckboards, a lifetime ago, eight weeks: keep to the boards. Don’t step off.

They went along the road.

---

The bridge was where it had been.

He found it a hundred yards from the pump house. A duckboard on its four petrol tins, ten feet long, floating, turned a little on the water off the inland side of the road, against a stump of the old hedge, where it had come to rest after the two men carrying it had gone down in the morning and it had floated up off them and turned slowly round. It was still floating. The tins were still dry inside. It knocked against the stump of the hedge in the dark, very gently, the way the Marie-Ange knocked against the posts under the gallery at night.

He stopped.

“Sergeant,” he said. “There’s a bridge.”

Sergeant Cutter, on the groundsheet, opened his eyes.

“It floats,” said Lucien. “It’s floating. We can put you on it. On the water. And pull it.” He looked at the dark where the road went, three hundred yards, the bend and the gap in their wire and the wall. “Like a boat. I’ll pull it. On the road. It’s easier than carrying.”

Sergeant Cutter looked at him, in the dark, from the groundsheet, for a long time.

“Do it,” he said.

They got the bridge in to the road. Harlan went off the road for it, on the inland side, into the deep water, to his chest, with Lucien holding his belt from the road; and got his hands on the end of it and brought it back, floating, the tins bumping; and they lifted Sergeant Cutter off the groundsheet onto it, very slowly, the four of them, with the water to their knees, and he lay on the duckboard on its petrol tins on his back with his hands pressed to his side and the water an inch below the planks.

It held him. The tins went down a little, and held.

Lucien took the rope that the engineers had nailed to the front end of it, for carrying, and put it over his shoulder, and walked. On the road. In the dark. With the bridge coming behind him on the water, floating, with a sergeant from the Philippines on it, and Harlan walking beside it with one hand on the edge of it to steady it, and the file behind.

It was easy. It was the easiest thing he had done since Kansas. A thing that floats, on water, with a rope. He had done it every day of his life. The Marie-Ange in the bayou mouth on a still morning when there was no wind for the sail, towed out past the end of the last camp on a line from the skiff, with his father at the tiller.

He heard himself say something. Under his breath. In the dark, to the bridge, without deciding to.

“Allons,” he was saying. “Allons, asteur.”

Harlan, beside the bridge, did not say anything.

---

At the place where Kerrigan had gone off the road he stopped again.

He knew it. He had not looked at it in the morning, going past; he had looked at it now, coming back, because he had to. Twenty feet off the road, on the inland side, in the deep water, in the wire.

There was something there. A shape. Two shapes, together, standing up a little out of the black water, very still.

“Harlan,” he said.

Harlan let go of the bridge. He gave it to Nolan, and came up the road to Lucien, and looked where Lucien was looking; and then without a word he went off the road, on the inland side, into the deep water, to his chest, the way he had gone for the bridge, and Lucien gave the rope to Dahl and went after him, off the road, for the first time, into the deep water and the dark and the wire.

It was Kerrigan.

Standing. In the water to his chest. Held up by the wire, the way the waves had been held in the morning, in the grey; held up by it, so that he did not fall. With his face down, on his chest, and his red hair wet and dark. And with his arm still round the boy.

The boy was alive.

He was alive. He was standing in the wire in the water to his chest, with his arms down now, and Kerrigan’s arm round him, round his chest, from behind, holding him up; and his head was back against Kerrigan’s shoulder, and his eyes were open, and when Lucien came wading out to him through the black water and put his hand on his face, he turned his head, slowly, and looked at him.

“He came,” said the boy. In a whisper. In English, a Kansas voice, or a Missouri one, a boy’s. “He came and got me. He said hold on, son. And then he didn’t say anything else. All day. He didn’t let go.”

Lucien did not say anything.

“He didn’t let go,” said the boy. “All day. He held me up.”

Harlan had the wire cutters. Sergeant Cutter’s, from his belt; he had taken them off the sergeant on the groundsheet at the Casino without being told, the way he did things. He went down into the black water with them, all of him, under, the way a man goes under the lake to free a trawl that has fouled on a snag; and came up, and breathed, and went down again; and Lucien held the boy, and held Kerrigan, the two of them together, the way Kerrigan had held the boy, and felt the wire let go of them under the water, one strand and then another.

Kerrigan’s arm did not let go. They had to take it off the boy, Lucien and Harlan, together, in the dark, in the water to their chests, finger by finger.

They brought the boy back to the road between them. They could not bring Kerrigan. Lucien stood on the road in the dark with the boy held against him and looked back at the place in the wire where Kerrigan was, standing, with his face on his chest, alone now, held up; and he thought of the cookhouse at Smoky Hill on the first night, and you, Louisiana, and you, Frog, and Kerrigan stopping when Lucien looked at him across the table. And the joke on the fire step at six in the morning, about the corporal with the voice like a mule. And then I’m going to hit him. For the megaphone.

He did not cry. He put it in the pocket with the letters, which was full now, and could not be buttoned, and buttoned it.

---

Their own wall was full of French.

He heard it before he saw it. He came round the bend in the road where the bridge over the drain had been, in the dark, with the rope over his shoulder and the bridge on the water behind him with Sergeant Cutter on it, and the boy from the wire walking between Harlan and Dahl, and the file; and from the wall ahead of them, their own wall, a hundred yards off in the dark, from along the whole length of it, there were voices. Low, calling. Calling out over the water.

In French.

Not the French of the other wall. Not the Parigot’s, or Pépère’s, or Marius’s. His. The lake shore’s. The French of the parishes, of Lafayette and Thibodaux and Opelousas and the camps at the mouth of the Bayou Saint-Jean: viens, viens, par ici, donne-moi ta main, c’est bon, t’es là, t’es là, cher. Men’s voices, all along the wall, calling out into the dark over the drowned fields to the men in the water, low, steady, the way the women of the lake shore called to the boats coming in round the end of the last camp in a fog, so that they would know where the wharf was.

And in English, too, for the ones who had no French. Over here. This way. Keep coming. Keep coming, son.

The First Louisiane. In support. In their wall. On sera là quand vous revenez.

He walked towards the voices on the drowned road in the dark with the rope over his shoulder.

---

Achille was at the gap.

At the gap in the wire, at the foot of the wall, at the left end of the section’s forty yards, by the board over the hole full of water where the shelter had been. He was standing in the water to his knees at the foot of the wall with his rifle slung and his hands out, both of them, reaching, taking hold of men as they came in out of the dark off the drowned road and passing them up the wall to the hands at the top; and he was saying it, over and over, in his low rough voice, viens, viens, c’est bon, t’es là.

He saw the bridge come out of the dark on the water. He saw the rope. He saw who had it.

He stopped saying anything.

He came along the foot of the wall through the water, fast, the way he had come down the cellar steps, and took hold of the front of Lucien’s tunic in his fist, hard, over the pocket that was too full to button; and held it, in the dark, in the water, and did not say anything at all for a long time.

“T’es pas blessé,” he said, at last. You’re not hurt. It was not a question. He had looked. His black eyes had gone over Lucien in the dark the way the Guardsmen’s went along the top of the wall, all of him, in a moment, and they had stopped moving.

“Non.”

“Le petit à Octave,” said Achille. Very low. As if it were the answer to something.

He let go of the tunic. He looked at the bridge on its petrol tins on the water behind Lucien, and the sergeant lying on it with his hands pressed to his side, and the rope.

“T’as fait un bateau,” he said. You made a boat.

“Il flottait.” It was floating.

Achille’s mouth went in at the corner, in the dark, the place where a smile had been.

“Ben oui,” he said. “C’est ce que ça fait, un bateau.”

Well, yes. That’s what a boat does.

They lifted Sergeant Cutter off the bridge and up the wall, the First Louisiane and the third platoon together, a dozen hands, very slowly, and over the top, and down the other side onto the boards, where there were stretcher bearers waiting with lamps; and Sergeant Cutter, going up the wall in their hands, on his back, opened his eyes, and looked at Lucien at the foot of it, in the water, and said one thing.

“Prudhomme.”

Not go on. Not show us. His name, the way he had said it in the barn to stop him, and in the yard at the pump, and on the drowned road. Only that. And then he was over, and the stretcher bearers had him, and the lamps went away along the boards towards the village and the dressing station.

---

The First Louisiane went out into the water.

He watched them go. All along the wall, men going over the top and down the far side into the dark, in twos and threes, with stretchers and ropes and the bridges that the waves had dropped, out into the drowned fields where the waves had gone in the morning and been held in the wire and gone down; calling. Où t’es? Crie, cher! Crie, qu’on te trouve! Where are you? Shout, so we can find you. And from out of the dark, here and there, very thin, voices answering. English, mostly. Here. Over here. Help me. And the men of the First Louisiane going towards them through the black water, to the chest, in the wire, by the sound.

Nobody fired at them.

He waited for it. The gun at the elbow. The French wall. It was all a quarter of a mile off, across the water, in the dark; the French had come back into it, he knew they had, he could hear them, very faint, the boards, voices, the clink of things. They could hear the First Louisiane calling, the whole length of the drowned fields, in French. They could have fired at the sound.

They did not fire.

And then, from across the water, from the French wall, from the dark, a voice. A single voice, a man’s, shouting across the whole width of the drowned fields, very clear, the way voices carry over water at night; in French, the French of France, from the front of the mouth.

“Allez-y! Ramassez vos gosses!”

Go on! Pick up your kids!

All along their own wall, and out in the water, the First Louisiane stopped calling, for a moment, and was silent; and then went on.

Lucien stood in the water at the foot of the wall by the gap, by the board over the hole, and heard it. He did not know whose voice it was. It was not the Parigot’s; he did not think it was. It was not Pépère’s or Marius’s. It was a voice he had never heard. It was just a man, on the other wall, in the dark, who could hear them calling.

Laisse-le, a man on the other wall had shouted, in the dark, in January, about Gustave Tregre. C’est un gosse.

Beside him, Achille stood very still in the water with his hands at his sides and his face turned to the French wall across the dark. He did not say anything. Lucien did not look at him. He did not need to.

“Je les écoute plus,” Achille had said, in the gap of the dunes. I don’t listen to them any more.

He was listening now.

---

They counted at midnight, on the boards, by the brazier, under its sheet of iron, which someone had lit.

Fourteen. The third platoon of C Company of the Second Kansas. Fourteen, of the thirty in the barn at Hof Verhaeghe on the Tuesday night when the lieutenant came with his lantern, and looked at faces, and stopped at Lucien. Fourteen, with Sol Weintraub, who had gone back with his arm to the village, and Sergeant Cutter on his stretcher. Twelve on the boards by the brazier.

The rest of C Company was worse. Nobody said how much worse. Nobody knew yet. The First Louisiane was still bringing them in out of the water, along the whole of the battalion’s front, and would be all night, and the stretcher bearers were going along the boards towards the village with their lamps one after another, and a lot of what the First Louisiane brought in out of the water did not go on stretchers.

The second battalion was on the beach. Most of it. In its lines, with the tide over it.

Lucien sat on the fire step by the brazier with his back against the wall and his rifle between his knees and the pocket of his tunic too full to button, and Harlan beside him, and Achille on his other side; and Ed Haskell, at the end, by the board over the hole, where his brother had sat with his mess tin, with his eyes open.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

“Lucky,” said Harlan, at last.

“Yes.”

Harlan did not say anything else for a while. He sat on the fire step with his long legs out across the boards and his big hands, which had held Lucien’s wrists in the gas hut and his finger on the trigger at the corner of the white wall and gone down into the black water with the wire cutters, hanging between his knees; and looked at the brazier.

“So far,” he said, very quietly.

Achille, on Lucien’s other side, turned his head and looked at Harlan across him. For a long moment. Then he looked back at the brazier.

“Ouais,” he said. “So far.”