surprise at my carelessness and turned to the shopman again.
"Non, je desire quelque chose pour bouillir les oeufs."

The poor man scratched his head for a minute, then an idea suddenly
struck him. "Ah, une casserole?" he questioned.

I nodded encouragingly, and, to my intense relief, he produced a huge
saucepan from under the counter, so that we trotted out of Bailleul with
our saddle bags full, and the saucepan dangling from a piece of string
round the Captain's neck.

Misfortunes never come singly. We were not more than a hundred yards
from the town when the Captain handed the saucepan to me. "You might
take it," he said, "while I shorten my stirrups."

The pack horse becomes accustomed to an enormous variety of loads, but
apparently the saucepan was something in the shape of a disagreeable
novelty to him. He began to trot, and that utensil rattled noisily
against the bottle of liqueur protruding from my saddle bag. The more
the saucepan rattled the faster went the horse, and the more precarious
became my seat. In a few seconds I was going across country at a furious
gallop.

If I let go my hold of the saucepan it rattled violently, and spurred
the pack horse on to even greater pace; if I held on to the saucepan I
could not pull up my horse and I stood but little chance of remaining
on its back at all, for I am a horseman of but very little skill.

Suddenly I saw a gate barring my way ahead. I let go the saucepan and
something cracked in my saddle bag. I seized the reins and dragged at
the horse's mouth. Then, just as I was wondering how one stuck on a
horse's back when it tried to jump, someone rode up from the other side
and opened the gate.

But it was only when I was right in the gateway that I saw what lay
ahead. Just before me was a major at the head of a squadron of cavalry.
The next second I was amongst them.

A fleeting glimpse of the Major's horse pawing the air with its
forelegs, a scattering of a hundred and fifty men before me, and I had
passed them all and was galloping up the steep slope of the hill.

When at last the Captain came up with me, I was standing at the top of
the Mont Noir, wiping Benedictine from my breeches and puttees. I made
an attempt at jocularity. "I shall have to speak to Parkes about this
engine," I said. "The controls don't work properly, and she accelerates
much too quickly."

But the Captain saw the ruin of the liqueur bottle lying by the
roadside, and was not in the