The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [301]
He came out into an open stretch of pass again, moved up it for a few hundred yards, and then skirted a few small groves. He had lost the concentration he needed to scout properly and he blundered along, the fine surface of his observation gone. The floor of the pass was still ascending at a lower, less precipitous parallel to the slope of the mountain. It seemed never to end, and although he knew he had traveled only a few miles, it seemed much more.
He reached another clearing with a wood along the left side of it, and he knelt in the shadow once more and looked at it dully. Suddenly, he shivered. He had realized the error he had made in killing the guard. The man who was supposed to go next on guard might sleep through the night, but there was an even better chance he would awaken; Martinez could never sleep soundly until his turn of guard was over for the night. Once they discovered the man he had killed, they would all be awake for the rest of the night. He could never get out.
Martinez felt like weeping. The longer he remained here the more dangerous it would become. And besides, if he had made a mistake like that, how many others were there he might have made? He was close to hysteria again. He had to go back and yet. . . He was sergeant, United States sergeant.
Without this sense of loyalty he would have broken up months before. Martinez wiped his face and started forward. The weird idea of continuing until he had traversed the pass and the Japanese rear, scouted the defenses of Botoi Bay, came to him. For a moment his mind held a montage of glory; Martinez being decorated, Martinez standing before the General, Martinez's picture in the Mexican newspaper in San Antonio, but it slipped away, was rejected before the obvious impossibilities of it. He had no rations, no water, not even a knife any longer.
At that moment in the grove to his left he saw a long bar of moonlight behind a bush which projected from the grove. He dropped to one knee, examined it, and then heard the delicate sound of a man flooping some spittle to the ground. There was another Japanese bivouac.
He could get by it. The shadow along the cliff wall was very deep here, and if he was cautious they would never spy him. But this time his legs were too weak, his will too flaccid. He couldn't endure another few minutes like the ones next to the machine gunner.
But he should go on. Martinez rubbed his nose like a child before insuperable difficulties. All the fatigue of the past two days, the nervous strain of this night, were bothering him now. Goddam, how far he want me go? he thought resentfully. He turned around, edged back into the grove from which he had come, and began to descend the pass. He was conscious now of the time that had elapsed since he had stabbed the sentry, and it made him increasingly anxious. There was a chance, if the guard was discovered, that they would send patrols out, but it was not likely at night, and besides he was lost if the guard had been discovered. He made virtually no attempt at concealment in the stretches of the pass where he had found no Japanese before. The only important thing was to get back soon.
He came to the rear of the grove with the T trail, and paused outside it, listening. He could hear nothing for a few seconds, and, impatient, he entered and crept up along the stem. The dead man was lying undisturbed by the machine gun. Martinez looked past him, started to tiptoe around him, and noticed a wrist watch on his arm. He paused, stared at it for two full seconds while he debated whether to remove it. He turned to go and then moved back again