Several times I called back to him,
"Courage, mon vieux! ... Comment allez vous?" But he made no
answer and there were times when I thought I had a dead man
behind me. A biting wind was blowing, and I leaned over his seat to
put a blanket over him. But it always blew off that dead-grey face and
blood-stained body. Once he groaned, and I was glad to hear the
sound and to know that he was still alive. Another man trudging along
the highway, using his rifle as a crutch, called out. He spoke the word
blesse, and I stopped to take him up and sped on again, glancing to
right and left at the villages on fire, at the quick flashes of Belgian and
German artillery signalling death to each other in the night. The
straight trees rushed by like tall, hurrying ghosts. For most of the way
we drove without our head-lights through tunnels of darkness.
"Queer, isn't it?" said my driver, and it was his only comment on this
adventure in the strangest drama of his life.
19
That night the wind came howling across the flat fields into Furnes
and a rain-storm broke in fierce gusts upon the convent walls. In this
old building with many corridors and innumerable windows, panes of
glass rattled and window-sashes creaked and doors banged like
thunderclaps.
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