Thieves in the Night by Arthur Koestler

of the barbed wire emerged like a vision of a delicate etching, and vanished again; then he realised that Reuben was throwing hand grenades at the barbed wire, his long dark arm swinging forward and back like a flail. Judging by the frequency of the explosions, Bauman and somebody on the other side were also throwing grenades. “Give, give!” he yelled at Reuben, but Reuben bent over him across the crouching Naphtali and said quite calmly: “No need. It was only to make sure they haven’t crept up to the barbed wire.”
    Joseph took that to mean that they hadn’t, and felt relieved, though he did not understand how Reuben could tell. But his intellectual curiosity had left him entirely, and his onlydesire was to be an automaton and obey. The shooting calmed down a little, and then Joseph saw a vicious gun-flash directly in the line of his aim, and almost simultaneously he fired. He could not say why, but this time the act of pulling the trigger and the report seemed to be different from all the previous occasions and the wild idea crossed his brain that, just as some women were supposed to know by instinct the moment when they conceived, so a man might know the moment when he has killed. In fact, he was convinced of having hit; he had the almost physical sensation of his bullet having been stopped by, and buried in, some dully and elastically resisting matter. A moment later the searchlight was on again.
    A wild cheer went up from the trench and Joseph felt the conviction sweep through his whole body that from now on they were safe. It was a sensation like drinking something hot and sugary when very tired; its sweet warmth seemed to penetrate into all his tissues. Only now did he realise that his feet were all a-tremble and his knees on the point of giving way. He pulled a drenched cigarette out of his pocket but it disintegrated between his fingers.
    The return of the light seemed to have a demoralising effect on the raiders. Their fire became rather desultory and more distant. Doubtless they were retreating behind the farther slope of their hillock. That white, dazzling eye staring at them from its height like a watchful giant’s, and its majestic, slow movement must be an uncanny sensation for them.
    Joseph badly wanted a cigarette and asked Naphtali whether he had a dry one, but the youngster gave no answer. He crouched in a curiously huddled-up position against the back of the parapet, and Joseph thought he had perhaps fainted. He went down on his knees by Naphtali’s side, reproaching himself for not having looked after him better, and groped for his face. Instead of a face his fingers found a soft, dripping mess and his forefinger went straight into some slushy cavity. He withdrew his hand with a cry and began shaking it wildly through the air as if he had burnt it. Reuben flashed his torchon the youngster and Joseph saw what he had touched, but only for a second. He turned to the other side and vomited.
    The youngster by the name of Naphtali had kept some hold on himself until the light went out. From that moment he had been a shaking, teeth-chattering bundle of horror. His brain, paralysed by toxic fear, held only one idea: that the killers had got into the hollow and would in the next second burst through the barbed wire. When Reuben started throwing his hand grenades, Naphtali finally went off his head. He jumped up and down on one spot, gurgling inarticulate sounds and biting his clenched fists. His neighbours were too busy to pay any attention to him. He went on leaping into the air like a joyful child, gurgling and whimpering, until something hit him massively in the eye. He thought it was Reuben, angry because he had not kept his head down; and that Reuben did not have to hit him so hard. He saw great coloured circles spinning and crossing each other like flaming hoops that jugglers throw into the air, and everything became rather quiet; only one last fiery wheel kept turning and