It was rather odd about the ambulance. It did not keep the road very
well. Sometimes it was on one side and sometimes on the other. It slid
as though the road were greased. And after a time Henri made an amazing
discovery. He was not alone in the car.
He looked back, without stopping, and the machine went off in a wide arc.
He brought it back again, grinning.
"Thought you had me, didn't you?" he observed to the car in general, and
the engine in particular. "Now no tricks!"
There was a wounded man in the car. He had had morphia and he was very
comfortable. He was not badly hurt, and he considered that he was being
taken to Calais. He was too tired to talk, and the swinging of the car
rather interested him. He would doze and waken and doze again. But at
last he heard something that made him rise on his elbow.
It was the hammering of the big guns.
He called Henri's attention to this, but Henri said: "Lie down, Jean, and don't talk. We'll make it yet."
The wounded man intended to make a protest, but he went to sleep instead.
They had reached the village now where was the little house of mercy.
The ambulance rolled and leaped down the street, with both lights full
on, which was forbidden, and came to a stop at the door. The man inside
was grunting then, and Henri, whose head had never been so clear, got
out and went round to the rear of the car.
"Now, out with you, comrade!" he said. "I have made an error, but it is
immaterial. Can you walk?"
He lighted a cigarette, and the man inside saw his burning eyes and
shaking hands. Even through the apathy of the morphia he felt a thrill
of terror. He could walk. He got out while Henri pounded at the door.
"Attention!" he called. "Attention!"
Then he hummed an air of the camps: Trou la la, ca ne va guere;
Trou la la, ca ne va pas.
When he heard steps inside Henri went back to the ambulance. He got in
and drove it, lights and all, down the street.
Trou la la, ca ne va guere;
Trou la la, ca ne va pas.
Somewhere down the road beyond the poplar trees he abandoned the ambulance.
They found it there the next morning, or rather what was left of it.
Evidently its two unwinking eyes had got on the Germans' nerves.
* * * * * Early the next morning a Saxon regiment, standing on the firing step
ready for what the dawn might bring forth, watched the mist rise from
the water in front of them. It shone on a body in a Belgian uniform,
lying across their wire, and very close indeed.