e
yard, the tent that had, that very morning, been full of wounded, was
gone. The lines of wagons, horses and tents that had filled the field
across the road were gone. No voices came from the house--somewhere a
door banged persistently--other sound there was none.

The sanitars then surrounded him, speaking all together, waving their
arms, their faces white under the moon, their eyes large and
frightened like the eyes of little children. He tried to push their
babel off from him. He could not understand.... Was this a
continuation of the nightmare of the afternoon? There was a roar just
behind their ears as it seemed. They saw a light flash upon the sky
and fade, flash again and fade. With their faces towards the horizon
they watched.

"What is it?" Trenchard said at last. There advanced towards him then
from out of the empty house an old man in a wide straw hat with a
broom.

"What is it?" Trenchard said again.

"It's the Austrians," said the old man in Polish, of which Trenchard
understood very little. "First it's the Russians.... Then it's the
Austrians.... Then it's the Russians.... Then it's the Austrians. And
always between each of them I have to clean things up"--and some more
which Trenchard did not understand. The old man then stood at his gate
watching them with a gaze serious, sad, reflective. Meanwhile the
sanitars had discovered one of our own soldiers: this man, who had
been sitting under a hedge and listening to the Austrian cannon with
very uncomfortable feelings, told them of the affair. At three o'clock
that afternoon our Otriad had been informed that it must retreat
"within half an hour." Not only our own Sixty-Fifth Division, but the
whole of the Ninth Army was retreating "within half an hour." Moreover
the Austrians were advancing "a verst a minute." By four o'clock the
whole of our Otriad had disappeared, leaving only this soldier to
inform us that we must move on at once to T---- or S----, twenty or
thirty versts distant.

"Retreating!" cried Trenchard. "But we were winning! We'd just won a
battle!"

"_Tak totchno!_" said the soldier gravely, "Twenty versts! the horses
won't do it, your Honour!"

"They've got to do it!" said Trenchard sharply, and the echo of the
Austrian cannon, again as it seemed quite close at hand, emphasised
his words. Except for this the silence of the world around them was
eerie; only far away they seemed to hear the persistent rumble of
carts on the road.

"T