But Chouteau, without relaxing his speed, angrily replied:

"Go ahead, you booby, will you! Do you take me for a fool, to leave
him here and have them call us back!"

They pursued their course with the corpse until they came to the
little wood, threw it down at the foot of a tree, and went their way.
That was the last that was seen of them until nightfall.

The battery beside them had been strengthened by three additional
guns; the cannonade on either side went on with increased fury, and in
the hideous uproar terror--a wild, unreasoning terror--filled
Maurice's soul. It was his first experience of the sensation; he had
not until now felt that cold sweat trickling down his back, that
terrible sinking at the pit of the stomach, that unconquerable desire
to get on his feet and run, yelling and screaming, from the field. It
was nothing more than the strain from which his nervous, high-strung
temperament was suffering from reflex action; but Jean, who was
observing him narrowly, detected the incipient crisis in the
wandering, vacant eyes, and seizing him with his strong hand, held him
down firmly at his side. The corporal lectured him paternally in a
whisper, not mincing his words, but employing good, vigorous language
to restore him to a sense of self-respect, for he knew by experience
that a man in panic is not to be coaxed out of his cowardice. There
were others also who were showing the white feather, among them Pache,
who was whimpering involuntarily, in the low, soft voice of a little
baby, his eyes suffused with tears. Lapoulle's stomach betrayed him
and he was very ill; and there were many others who also found relief
in vomiting, amid their comrade's loud jeers and laughter, which