d wheelbarrows.

At Pontoise there was another shock, for people whose nerves were
frayed by fright. Two batteries of artillery were stationed by the line,
and a regiment of infantry was hiding in the hollows of the grass
slopes. Out of a nightmare dream not more fantastic than my waking
hours so that there seemed no dividing line between illusion and
reality, I opened my eyes to see those faces in the grass, bronzed
bearded faces with anxious eyes, below a hedge of rifle barrels
slanted towards the north. The Philosopher had jerked out of slumber
into a wakefulness like mine. He rubbed his eyes and then sat bolt
upright, with a tense searching look, as though trying to pierce to the
truth of things by a violence of staring.

"It doesn't look good," he said. "Those chaps in the grass seem to
expect something--something nasty!"

The Strategist had a map on his knees, which overlapped his fellow
passenger's on either side.

"If the beggars cut the line here it closes the way of escape from
Paris. It would be good business from their point of view."

I was sorry my message to .the English people might never be read
by them. Perhaps after all they would get on very well without it, and
my paper would appoint another correspondent to succeed a man
swallowed up somewhere inside the German lines. It would be a
queer adventure. I conjured up an imaginary conversation in bad
German with an officer in a pointed casque. Undoubtedly he would
have the best of the argument. There would be a little white wall,
perhaps...

One of the enemy's aeroplanes flew above our heads, circled round
and then disappeared. It dropped no bombs and was satisfied with its
reconnaissance. The whistle of the train shrieked out, and there was
a cheer from the French gunners as we went away to safety, leaving
them behind at the post of peril.

After all my message went to Fleet Street and filled a number of
columns, read over the coffee cups by a number of English families,
who said perhaps: "I wonder if he really knows anything, or if it is all
made up. Those newspaper men..."

Those newspaper men did not get much rest in their quest for truth,
not caring much, if the truth may be told, for what the English public
chose to think or not to think, but eager to see more of the great
drama and to plunge again into its amazing vortex.

Almost before the fugitives who had come with us had found time to
smell the sea we were back again along the road