"And YOU?" he cried. "For God's sake, Audemard--tell me--"
"I, m'sieu? Why, I am only St. Pierre Audemard, his brother."
And with that his head dropped heavily, and he was like a dead man
in David's arms.
How at last David came to the edge of the stream again, with the
weight of St. Pierre Audemard on his shoulders, was a torturing
nightmare which would never be quite clear in his brain. The
details were obliterated in the vast agony of the thing. He knew
that he fought as he had never fought before; that he stumbled
again and again in the fire-muck; that he was burned, and blinded,
and his brain was sick. But he held to St. Pierre, with his
twisted, broken leg, knowing that he would die if he dropped him
into the flesh-devouring heat of the smoldering debris under his
feet. Toward the end he was conscious of St. Pierre's moaning, and
then of his voice speaking to him. After that he came to the water
and fell down in the edge of it with St. Pierre, and inside his
head everything went as black as the world over which the fire had
swept.
He did not know how terribly he was hurt. He did not feel pain
after the darkness came. Yet he sensed certain things.
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