ate and malign relations of their cords, it was impossible
to deal faithfully with them on this footing. When the contents had been
packed inside them, the field-tent asserted itself as against the
hold-all and refused to roll up. And I am sure that if the field-tent
had had to be set up in a field in a hurry, the hold-all and the
sleeping-bag would have arisen and insisted on their consubstantial
rights.

I unpacked the field-tent and packed it all over again exactly as I had
packed it before, but more carefully, swearing gently and continuously,
as I tugged with my arms and pushed with my knees, and pressed hard on
it with my waist to keep it still. I cursed the day when I had first
heard of it; I cursed myself for giving it to the Commandant; more than
all I cursed the combined ingenuity and levity of its creator, who had
indulged his fantasy at our expense, without a thought to the actual
conditions of the retreat of armies and of ambulances.

And in the middle of it all Janet came in, and curled herself up in a
corner, and forecast luridly and inconsolably the possible fate of her
friends, the nurses in the "Flandria." For the moment her coolness and
her wise impassivity had gone. Her behaviour was lacerating.

This was the very worst moment we had come to yet.[31]

And it seemed that Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Lambert had gone to bed,
regardless of the retreat from Ghent.

Somewhere in the small hours of the morning the Commandant came back
from Melle.[32]

* * * * *

It is nearly two o'clock. Downstairs, in the great silent hall two
British wounded are waiting for some ambulance to take them to the
Station. They are sitting bolt upright on chairs near the doorway, their
heads nodding with drowsiness. One or two Belgian Red Cross men wait
beside them. Opposite them, on three other chairs, the three doctors,
Dr. Haynes, Dr. Bird and Dr. ---- sit waiting for our own ambulance to
take them. They have been up all night and are utterly exhausted. They
sit, fast asleep, with their heads bowed on their breasts.

Outside, the darkness has mist and a raw cold sting in it.

A wretched ambulance wagon drawn by two horses is driven up to the door.
It had a hood once, but the hood has disappeared and only the naked
hoops remain. The British wounded from two [?] other hospitals are
packed in it in two rows. They sit bolt upright under the hoops, exposed
to mist and to the raw cold sting of