Sharp comes a whisper of swift absolute authority: "Zero is Two." I catch three words: "The Zero Hour." They call me back to myself: I know now that I am one of a great army - an army baffled and broken, but yet in being. But among us the sudden stirring warns me that not all were sleeping that there were watchers like myself, men more intent than I. The captain cries: "Behold, the Star in the West!" Instant on that comes silence. Truth, Victory, in each trumpet tone: Listen! None can mistake - I am assured - that ringing call. It is a soldier's voice, the accent of command, the valour of manhood. Do I feel it by instinct - the form of a vast pyramidal hill of stark black rock? I am too weary to turn my head to look.Īll of a sudden, far behind me, far beyond that crest, if it be one, rings out a voice, clear, firm, courageous, confident. There is but a dim shape as of some disaster long, oh! very long ago - the dusty memory of some leader who failed, some plan that broke its spine - I am sure of this: that all discipline is done, all courage quashed, all purpose perished.īehind me - strange! - the gloom is less obscure than in the East to which the eyes yearn feebly. But of what captain, in what war? I cannot guess. Vaguely I say within my dull heart: I must not sleep because I am a soldier. No light responds.Īlas for me who am too much alive with the horrible and hopeless ache for sleep of one half-drugged! Dazed, stupified - I know not who I am - I know not whence I came - I know not whither I go. A few of us are half awake, gaze dumbly on the East. The plain is vast beyond eye to mark it's bounds, even were not all dark with blight of fog and thick with marish damp. All, or nigh all, seem fallen into heaviness, not from exhaustion of labour, but from lethargy.