Are prayers rising out of the shot-up breast to Heaven for the victory of his own? Will he then gladly die? Life appears as unimportant as death to him too. Why did he take the bloke with? Why didn't he leave him there on the field below, so that he died like an animal? Oh, yes - for Fritz's sake; that is something else. Otherwise... ugh, Reckensteiner, how hard and unfeeling you are become!
It was only a short rest; the bullets hail more heavily. Here a dull, there a stronger flash of fire. Like silver flares that explode in the air, then again like fountains that rise out of the black depths - one can hardly see anything; everything is smoke, dust, darkness; only the section where the stretch of track runs is dully lit by the last light of the sun, which sinks under a thick bank of clouds.
Now the restlessness grips the old man. The locomotive ought to have done its work a long time ago and been back. Could something have happened to it; could it even have fallen into the hands of the enemy? Then they would all be lost, whom he with greatest effort had sought to turn away even from death.
It holds him no more; he climbs up the ravine that leads upwards before him and has a look along the railway. But even here he can see little, although he is standing high up.
But there... no, he is not mistaken, a sound like that of quickly moving wheels, a puffing, and quiet chugging... there it turns around the bend
---170---
at the end of a long gorge; there it comes closer... victory! That's it, the eagerly awaited locomotive; his brave warriors, all of the wounded are saved! "Victory!" his lips stammer, cheer once again. And automatically, he folds his hands.
There - a whistling through the air, a single whirring, howling sound close above him, a harsh, piercing noise. Funnel-shaped, the ground bursts in front of him; the dark brown earth flies up several meters, sprays on all sides; the branches of a mighty fir tree splinter, whirl around... now he sees and hears nothing more; black flickers, swims before his eyes...
