"That may be," said the visitor, "I do believe that it says so there."
"Very well," said the officer, at least partially satisfied, and went up the ladder with the page; he inserted it with great care into the plotter and began what was clearly a major reorganisation of the wheelworks; it was a very laborious task, he also had to manipulate very small cogwheels, and sometimes the head of the officer disappeared completely inside the plotter to control the settings precisely enough.
The visitor followed this uninterrupted work from down below; his neck became stiff and his eyes were hurting from the sunlight streaming down from the sky. The soldier and the condemned man only bothered with one another. The shirt and the trousers of the condemned man, that had been lying in the pit, were li
