3
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I looked at the sprawled figure again. Even in the gloom I could see fair hair under the black cap with its check colours: sturdy legs: one hand clenched tightly over the back edge of the step on which my feet rested: head on one side and a clean-cut jaw.
A Scot of the best type. I hoped no one would come down the stairs and see either of us at that moment. I decided then that, since I too was incapable of moving, I could now decently address him.
"How are you doing, Jock?" I asked. He didn't answer. He didn't seem resentful of the intrusion, however, so I persisted, with a feeble attempt at humour:
"Toss you for who carries who up the rest of the stairs," I said and again he didn't answer.
I knew then what had happened; knew without looking. The Argyll was dead. Within a week of arriving in the gaol, the first man in our seven hundred had died not of wounds, not in battle, but from exhaustion and privation.
Weaker then ever, I leant back. This was something I could not easily understand. Death in war was an unpleasant event which must befall many not oneself, naturally, but many others, even one's friends. One regretted the fact, but one did not bewail it.
But this this death due to lack of food and drugs, both of which were plentiful, this was something against which one could not steel oneself. A week, I thought, and one dead already. A young, sturdy Scot. There must be lots of weeks to go yet before we would be out. A year probably, I thought. That was if they didn't shoot us as they'd said they would. Then, more honestly, I added to myself, "four years, more likely." It didn't bear thinking about.
2 INSANITY IN THE FAMILY?
I looked at the Argyll. He was about my age, perhaps a little younger, perhaps twenty. I reflected that only recently I had taken the activity and the fleetness of foot and the exuberance of youth entirely for granted. I reflected that only a fortnight ago I should never have considered mounting these stairs any other way