esently I
discovered a small house, standing back off the road and showing a thin
slit of light above the shutters of a downstairs window. I tapped on the
glass. A sound as of someone hurriedly trying to hide a pile of
coverless umbrellas in a cupboard was followed by the opening of the
window, and a bristling head was silhouetted against the light.

I squeezed out the same old sentence:

"Pour Bleville, Monsieur?"

A fearful cataract of unintelligible words burst from the head, but left
me almost as much in the dark as ever, though with a faint glimmering
that I was "warmer." I felt that if I went back about a mile and turned
to the left, all would be well.

I thanked the gollywog in the window, who, somehow or other, I think
must have been a printer working late, and started off once more.

After another hour's route march I came to some scattered houses, and
finally to a village. I was indignantly staring at a house when
suddenly, joy!--I realized that what I was looking at was an unfamiliar
view of the cafe where I had breakfasted earlier in the day.

Another ten minutes and I reached the Camp. Time now 2.30 a.m. I thought
I would just take a look in at the Orderly Room tent to see if there
were any orders in for me. It was lucky I did. Inside I found an orderly
asleep in a blanket, and woke him.

"Anything in for me?" I asked. "Bairnsfather's my name."

"Yes, sir, there is," came through the blanket, and getting up he went
to the table at the other end of the tent. He sleepily handed me the
wire: "Lieutenant Bairnsfather to proceed to join his battalion as
machine-gun officer...."

"What time do I have to push off?" I inquired.

"By the eight o'clock from Havre to-morrow, sir."

Time now 3 a.m. To-morrow--THE FRONT! And then I crept into my tent and
tried to sleep.

CHAPTER II

TORTUOUS TRAVELLING--CLIPPERS AND
TABLETS--DUMPED AT A SIDING--I JOIN
MY BATTALION

Not much sleep that night, a sort of feverish coma instead: wild dreams
in which I and the gendarme were attacking a German trench, the officer
in charge of which we found to be the Base Camp Adjutant after all.

However, I got up early--packed my few belongings in my valise, which
had mysteriously turned up from the docks, and went off on the tram down
to Havre. That hundred men I had brought over had nothing to do with me
now. I was entirely on my own, and was off to the Front to join my
battalion. Down at Havre the officials at