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More than once I got down and ran on ahead, calling out with monotonous refrain to the drivers of civilian carts to keep well over to the right of the road, so as to let the guns pass. They all did their best to obey, poor brutes, and we gained some useful ground in that endless column. At nightfall we were still eight or nine kilometres from Latisana.
We had run nearly eight hundred kilometres during the sixty days we had spent in the canoes. Here we found and boarded Pyrineus's river steamer, which seemed in our eyes extremely comfortable. In the senhor's pleasant house we were greeted by the senhora, and they were both more than thoughtful and generous in their hospitality. Ahead of us lay merely thirty-six hours by steamer to Manaos.
The old Marquise and the other ladies of the party sat on the terrace with their needle-work, the cure or one of the visiting uncles read aloud the Journal des Debats and prognosticated dark things of the Republic, Paul scoured the park and despoiled the kitchen-garden with the other children of the family, the inhabitants of the adjacent chateaux drove over to call, and occasionally the ponderous pair were harnessed to a landau as lumbering as the brougham, and the ladies of Saint Desert measured the dusty kilometres between themselves and their neighbours.
I was impressed with the idea that the two armies had withdrawn in opposite directions, and that we were left behind, forgotten, at 100 kilometres distance from both of them. But we had to come to the point. At a sign from me Vercherin reached the first tree of a long row of poplars. The row started from the farm and bordered the road we were following up to about 100 yards from the outer wall.
Our machine was broken; but we could get no transport and had to walk thirty kilometres back to our base without food. "Another time we were chasing an Austrian, the Serbian batteries fired at us, monsieur, not at the enemy. Our officers had to send from the aerodrome to tell them to stop." As we were going to bed the Montenegrin doctor came in. "I am sent by the governor, monsieur," said he.
Many of the officers and men with whom we talked could not tell us where the allied forces were, nor where the enemy was in position, nor whether the heavy fighting during the last day and night had been to the advantage of the Allies or the Germans. They believed, but were not sure, that the enemy had been driven back many kilometres between Nieuport and Dixmude.
In the other villages the destruction was such as is permitted by the usages of war, such as the blowing up of bridges, the burning of the railroad station, and the cutting of telegraph-wires. Not until Bouneville, thirty kilometres beyond Meaux, did I catch up with the Allies. There I met some English Tommies who were trying to find their column.
It is very hard, monsieur, to be so near them they are only thirty kilometres away and not be able to see them or to hear from them, or even be able to learn whether they are well or whether they have enough to eat." It is a terrible thing, this prison wall within which the Germans have shut up the people of Belgium.
Most of the camaradas were downhearted, naturally enough, and occasionally asked one of us if we really believed that we should ever get out alive; and we had to cheer them up as best we could. There was no change in our work for the time being. We made but three kilometres that day.
There are some forty kilometres of roadway within the limits of the Bois de Vincennes, and a dozen kilometres or more of footpaths; but, since the military authorities have taken a portion for their own uses as a training ground, a shooting range and for the Batteries of La Faisanderie and Gravelle, it has been bereft of no small part of its former charm.
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