He felt the subtle battle brotherhood more potent even than the cause for which they were fighting.

It was a mysterious fraternity born of the smoke and danger of death.
He was at a task.

He was like a carpenter who has made many boxes, making still another box, only there was furious haste in his movements.

He, in his thought, was careering off in other places, even as the carpenter who as he works whistles and thinks of his friend or his enemy, his home or a saloon.

And these jolted dreams were never perfect to him afterward, but remained a mass of blurred shapes.
Presently he began to feel the effects of the war atmosphere--a blistering sweat, a sensation that his eyeballs were about to crack like hot stones.