| The bright light lanced like splinters into the tender flesh of their eyeballs, danced about the base of their brains in reddened choleric circlesThey lost all account of the distance they had covered; everything beneath them had blurred, and the individual torments of each kind of terrain were forgottenThey no longer cared if the next hundred yards was a barren rock slope or a patch of brush and forestEach had its own painful disadvantagesThey wavered like a file of drunks, plodded along with their heads bent down, their arms slapping spasmodically at their sidesAll their equipment had become leaden, and a variety of sores had farrowed on every bony knob of their bodiesTheir shoulders were blistered from the pack bands, their waists were bruised from the jouncing of their cartridge belts, and their rifles clanked abrasively against their sides, raising blisters on their hipsTheir shirts had long washed lines of white where the perspiration had dried
They moved numbly, straggling upward from rock to rock, panting and sobbing with exhaustionAgainst his will Croft was forced to give them a break every few minutes; they gucci bag black rested now for as long a period as they marched, lying dumbly on their backs, their arms and legs spread-eagledLike the litter-bearers, they had forgotten everything; they did not think of themselves as individual men any longerThey were merely envelopes of sufferingThey had forgotten about the patrol, about the war, their past, they had even forgotten the earth they had just climbedThe men around them were merely vague irritating obstacles into which they blunderedThe hot glaring sky and the burning rock were far more intimateTheir minds scurried about inside their bodies like rodents in a maze, concentrating fruitlessly on first the quivering of an overworked limb and then on the smarting of a sore, became buried for many minutes in the agony of drawing another breath
Only two things ever intruded on thisThey were afraid of Croft and this fear had become greater as they grew more exhausted; by now they waited for his voice, plunged themselves forward a few additional yards each time he flicked them with a commandA numb and stricken apprehension had settled over them, an unvoiced and almost bottomless terror of vintage fendi bag him
And in opposition to that, they wanted to quit; they wanted that more than anything they had ever hungered forEach step they advanced, each tremor of their muscles, each pang in their chests generated that desireThey moved forward with a dumb blistering hatred for the man who led them
Croft was almost as exhausted; by now he appreciated the breaks as much as they did, was almost as willing to allow each halt to drag out to double its intended lengthHe had forgotten the peak of the mountain, he wanted to quit too, and each time a break ended he fought a quick battle with himself, exposed himself to all the temptations of rest, and then continuedHe moved on because somewhere at the base of his mind was the directive that climbing this mountain was necessaryHis decision had been made in the valley, and it lay as an iron warp in his mindHe could have turned back no more easily than he could have killed himself
All through the afternoon they straggled forward, toiling up the gentler slopes, proceeding from rock to rock when the walls of the mountain became sheererThey traveled from one ridge to another, stumbled painfully chanel classic handbag along the slanting inclines of minor knolls, slipped and fell many times when they passed over swatches of moist clayThe mountain seemed eternally to rear above themThey glimpsed its upper slopes through the fog of their effort, followed one another up the unending serpentines, and plodded along gratefully whenever their route was level for a time
Minetta and Wyman and Roth were the most wretchedFor several hours they had been at the tail of the column, keeping up to the men ahead with the greatest difficulty, and there was a bond between the three of themMinetta and Wyman felt sorry for Roth, liked him because he was even more helpless than theyAnd Roth looked to them for support, knew in the knowledge of fatigue that they would not scorn him because they were only a little less prostrated than he
He was making the most intense effort of his lifeAll the weeks and months Roth had been in the platoon he had absorbed each insult, each reproof with more and more painInstead of becoming indifferent or erecting a protective shell, he had become more sensitiveThe patrol had keyed him to the point where he could not bear any gucci uk more abuse, and he drove himself onward now with the knowledge that if he halted for too long the wrath and ridicule of the platoon would come down upon him
But, even with this, he was breakingThere came a point where his legs would no longer functionEven when he stood still they were close to buckling under himToward the end of the afternoon he began to collapseIt was a slow process, dragging out through a series of pratfalls, a progression of stumbling and sliding and finally of dropping prostrateHe began to tumble every few hundred feet and the men in the platoon waited gratefully while he forced himself slowly to his feet, and staggered on againBut each fall came a little more quickly than the one that had preceded itRoth moved forward almost unconsciously, his legs buckling at every misstepAfter a half hour he could no longer get up without assistance, and each step he took was doubtful, uncertain, like an infant walking alone across a roomHe even fell like an infant, his feet folding under him while he sat blank on his thighs, a little bewildered that he was not still walking
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