They could hear, very far away, the noise of cannon. The sanitars were
inclined to grumble. "Nice sort of business, looking for dead men
here, your Honour.... We must leave the carts here and go on foot.
What's it wet for? It hasn't been raining."
Why was it wet, indeed? A heavy brooding inertia, Trenchard has told
me, seemed to seize them all. "They were not pleasant trees, you
know," I remember his afterwards telling me, "all dirty and tangled,
and we all looked dirty too. There was an unpleasant smell in the air.
But that afternoon I simply didn't care about anything, nothing
mattered." I don't think that the sanitars at that time respected
Trenchard very greatly. He wasn't, in any case, a man of authority and
his broken stammering Russian wouldn't help him. Then there is nothing
stranger than the fashion in which the Russian language will (if you
are a timid foreigner), of a sudden wilfully desert you. Be bold with
it and it may, somewhat haughtily, perhaps, consent to your use of
it .
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