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His arms were wrenched from jerking on the bridle, but he did not mind that much, and bent over the handle-bars to make up for lost time. Our hero was within a short distance of his house and was coasting easily along when, just ahead of him, he saw a cloud of dust, very similar to the one that had, some time before, concealed the inexperienced motor-cyclist.
The brigades moved that night; headquarters remained at Gueschart until dawn, when the general started off in his car with two of us attendant. Now before the war a motor-cyclist would consider himself ill-used if he were forced to take a car's dust for a mile or so.
The men seemed to take a perverted delight in wandering aimlessly and deafly across the road, and in leaving anything on the road which could conceivably obstruct or annoy a motor-cyclist. Then came two and a half miles of winding country lanes. They were covered with grease. Every corner was blind.
They tore along, dodging in and out between trucks and automobiles, ambulances and artillery caissons, horse-wagons and mule-wagons, achieving again and again those hair's-breadth escapes which are the joy in life of every normal motor-cyclist. Now and then, when things were too slow, they would try a crawl in the ditches, or push their machines over the ploughed fields.
The thirty pieces of silver in the pocket of his army jacket burned each a separate hole. Like the Judas of old, he wanted to hang himself, and he took a quick method of doing it. Next to him at the table sat a motor-cyclist who had been a union plumber before the war, and had agreed with Jimmie that working-men were going to get their jobs back or would make the politicians sweat for it.
On this hill he smashed some regimental transport to firewood and killed a dozen horses, and during one of his sudden shellings of the village blew a house to pieces just as a despatch rider, who had been told the village that morning was healthy, rode by. You must not think that we were for ever scudding along, like the typical "motor-cyclist scout" in the advertisements, surrounded with shells.
We, close up against the wall, had been quite moderately safe. The shelling slackened off, so we thought we had better do a bunk. With pride of race the motor-cyclist left last. The 14th Brigade had disappeared. I went back down the track and found the General and his staff, fuming, half-way up the hill. The German guns could not be found, and the German guns were holding up the whole Division.
On my left was a racing motor-cyclist. We waited for hours. Frightened-looking men were sworn in and one phenomenally grave small boy. Later I should have said that a really fine stamp of man was enlisting. Then they seemed to me a shabby crew. At last we were sent downstairs, and told to strip and array ourselves in moderately dirty blue dressing-gowns.
They were supposed to be important, were marked "priority" in the corner, and taken at once in a hurry. Ordinary despatches went by the morning and evening posts. During the winter a regular system of motor-cyclist posts was organised right through the British Area. A message could be sent from Neuve Eglise to Chartres in about two days. Our posts formed the first or last stage of the journey.
It seemed as though no bicyclist, or motor-cyclist would have chosen this road to travel after dark. Yet there was a narrow path at the side just wide enough for Ruth and Doctor Davison to walk abreast, and Reno to trot by the girl's side which seemed pretty smooth. "We don't want to go by the spot, Doctor," said one of the men walking ahead with the lights.
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