1 His comrade balanced his ebony coffee-cup on his knee.
2 And there was a great uncertainty about his knee joints.
3 He faltered, and then became motionless, save for his quivering knees.
4 He seated himself gloomily on the ground with his flag between his knees.
5 Farther up the line a man, standing behind a tree, had had his knee joint splintered by a ball.
6 Lurching suddenly forward and dropping to his knees, he fired an angry shot at the persistent woods.
7 At last, with a twisting movement, he got upon his hands and knees, and from thence, like a babe trying to walk, to his feet.
8 It appeared that two light-footed soldiers had been teasing a huge, bearded man, causing him to spill coffee upon his blue knees.
9 Looking down an aisle of the grove, the youth and his companion saw a jangling general and his staff almost ride upon a wounded man, who was crawling on his hands and knees.
10 The youth, in his leapings, saw, as through a mist, a picture of four or five men stretched upon the ground or writhing upon their knees with bowed heads as if they had been stricken by bolts from the sky.
11 Swift pictures of himself, apart, yet in himself, came to him--a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges with one knee forward and a broken blade high--a blue, determined figure standing before a crimson and steel assault, getting calmly killed on a high place before the eyes of all.