‘Which one is it?’ And the stars were now clearer. Slowly they edged towards the rim. How had he managed to break away from the white lime?
They listened like doctors to a heartbeat.
‘Are you there, Fred?’ Harris whispered fiercely, as if he were in church. ‘Are you there?’ Lights illuminated their faces. There was no sound.
‘Are you sure this is the right one?’ Robert asked fiercely.
‘I thought it was. I don’t know.’
‘Oh, Christ,’ said Sergeant Smith.
‘We’d better get back then,’ said Robert.
‘Are you going to leave him, sir?’ said Harris.
‘We can’t do anything till morning. He may be in one of the shallower ones.’ His cry of ‘Morrison, are you there?’ was drowned by the shriek of a shell.
‘Back to the trench again,’ he said, and again they squirmed along. But at that moment as they approached the parapet he seemed to hear it, a cry coming from deep in the earth around him, or within him, a cry of such despair as he had never heard in his life before. And it seemed to come from everywhere at once, from all the craters, their slimy green rings, from one direction, then from another. The other two had stopped as well to listen.
Once more he heard it. It sounded like someone crying ‘Help’.
He stopped. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’re going for him. Come on.’
And he stood up. There was no reason for crawling any more. The night was clear. And they would have to hurry. And the other two stood up as well when they saw him doing so. He couldn’t leave a man to die in the pit of green slime. ‘We’ll run,’ he said. And they ran to the first one and listened. They cried fiercely, ‘Are you there?’ But there was no answer. Then they seemed to hear it from the next one and they were at that one soon too, peering down into the green slime, illuminated by moonlight. But there was no answer. There was one left and they made for that one. They screamed again, in the sound of the shells, and they seemed to hear an answer. They heard what seemed to be a bubbling. ‘Are you there?’ said Robert, bending down and listening. ‘Can you get over here?’ They could hear splashing and deep below them breathing, frantic breathing as if someone was frightened to death. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘if you come over here, I’ll send my rifle down. You two hang on to me,’ he said to the others. He was terrified. That depth, that green depth. Was it Morrison down there, after all? He hadn’t spoken. The splashings came closer. The voice was like an animal’s repeating endlessly a mixture of curses and prayers. Robert hung over the edge of the crater. ‘For Christ’s sake don’t let me go,’ he said to the other two. It wasn’t right that a man should die in green slime. He hung over the rim holding his rifle down. He felt it being caught, as if there was a great fish at the end of a line. He felt it moving. And the others hung at his heels, like a chain. The moon shone suddenly out between two clouds and in that moment he saw it, a body covered with greenish slime, an obscene mermaid, hanging on to his rifle while the two eyes, white in the green face, shone upward and the mouth, gritted, tried not to let the blood through. It was a monster of the deep, it was a sight so terrible that he nearly fell. He was about to say, ‘It’s no good, he’s dying,’ but something prevented him from saying it, if he said it then he would never forget it. He knew that. The hands clung to the rifle below in the slime. The others pulled behind him. ‘For Christ’s sake hang on to the rifle,’ he said to the monster below. ‘Don’t let go.’ And it seemed to be emerging from the deep, setting its feet against the side of the crater, all green, all mottled, like a disease. It climbed as if up a mountainside in the stench. It hung there against the wall. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘Hold on.’ His whole body was concentrated. This man must not fall down again into that lake. The death would be too terrible. The face was coming over the side of the crater, the teeth gritted, blood at the mouth. It hung there for a long moment and then the three of them had got him over the side. He felt like cheering, standing up in the light of No Man’s Land and cheering. Sergeant Smith was kneeling down beside the body, his ear to the heart. It was like a body which might have come from space, green and illuminated and slimy. And over it poured the merciless moonlight.
‘Come on,’ he said to the other two. And at that moment Sergeant Smith said, ‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ There was a long pause. ‘Well, take him in anyway. We’re not leaving him here. We’ll take him in. At least he didn’t die in that bloody lake.’ They lifted him up between them and they walked to the trench. ‘I’m bloody well not crawling,’ said Robert. ‘We’ll walk. And to hell with the lot of them.’ He couldn’t prevent himself swearing and at the same time despising himself for swearing. What would Sergeant Smith think of him? It was like bringing a huge green fish back to the lines. ‘To hell with them,’ he shouted. ‘This time we’ll bloody well walk. I don’t care how light it is.’ And they did so and managed to get him back into the dugout. They laid him down on the floor and glared around them at the silent men.
‘Just like Piccadilly it was,’ said Harris, who couldn’t stop talking. ‘As bright as day.’
‘Shut up, you lot,’ said Sergeant Smith, ‘and get some
