Part 8

"You're not going in?" continued Barkleigh. "It is foolish to go into the town, when the troops are coming out of it."

"True enough," assented Hilda, "but it's a curious fact that the wounded can't retreat as fast as the other men, so I'm afraid we shall have to look them up. Of course, it would be a lot pleasanter if they could come to meet us half-way."

Smith let out his motor, and turned up his coat collar, a habit of his when he anticipated a breezy time. They pounded down the road, and into the choice old town.

They had chanced on the afternoon when the enemy's guns were reducing it from an inhabited place into a rubbish heap. They could not well have chosen a brisker hour for the promised visit. The shells were coming in three and four to the minute. There was a sound of falling masonry. The blur of red brick-dust in the air, and the fires from a half dozen blazing houses, filled the eyes with hot prickles. The street was a mess over which the motor veered and tossed like a careening boat in a heavy seawash. In the other car, their leader, brave, perky little Dr. McDonnell, sat with his blue eyes dreaming away at the ruin in front of him. The man was a mystic and burrowed down into his sub-consciousness when under fire. This made him calm, slow, and very absent-minded, during the moments when he passed in under the guns.

They steamed up to the big yellow Hôtel de Ville. This was the target of the concentrated artillery fire, for here troops had been sheltering. Here, too, in the cellar, was the dressing-station for the wounded. A small, spent, but accurately directed obus, came in a parabola from over behind the roofs, and floated by the ambulance and thudded against the yellow brick of the stately hall.

"Ah, it's got whiskers on it," shouted Hilda in glee. "I didn't know they got tired like that, and came so slow you could see them, did you, Mr. Barkleigh?"

"No, no, of course not," he muttered, "they don't. What's that?"

The clear, cold tinkle of breaking and spilling glass had seized his attention. The sound came out from the Hôtel de Ville.

"The window had a pane," said Hilda.

"The town is doomed," said Barkleigh.

"Can't we get out of this?" he insisted. "This is no place to be."

"No place for a woman, is it?" laughed Hilda.

"Don't let me keep you," she added politely, "if you feel you must go."

"Listen," said the war-correspondent. About a stone's throw to their left, a wall was crumpling up.

Dr. McDonnell had slowly crawled down from his perch on the ambulance. His legs were stiff from the long ride, so he carefully shook them one after the other, and spoke pleasantly to a dog that was wandering about the Grand Place in a forlorn panic. Then he remembered why he had come to the place. There were wounded downstairs in the Town-hall.

"Come on, boys," he said to Tom and Smith, "bring one stretcher, and we'll clear the place out. Hilda, you stay by the cars. We shan't be but a minute."

They disappeared inside the battered building. Barkleigh walked up and down the Grand Place, felt of the machinery of each of the two ambulances, lit a cigarette, threw it away and chewed at an unlighted cigar.

"It's hot," he said; "this is hot."

"And yet you are shaking as if you were chilly," observed Hilda.

"We should never have come," went on Barkleigh. "I said so, away back there on the road. You remember I said so."

"Yes, the first experience under fire is trying," assented Hilda. "I think the shells are the most annoying, don't you, Mr. Barkleigh? Now shrapnel seems more friendly--quite like a hail-storm in Iowa. I come from Iowa, you know. I don't believe you do know that I come from Iowa."

"They're slow," said Barkleigh, looking toward the Town-hall. "Why can't they hurry them out?"

"You see," explained Hilda, "there are only three of them actively at work, and it's quite a handful for them."

In a few moments Smith and Tom appeared, carrying a man with a bandaged leg on their stretcher. Dr. McDonnell was leading two others, who were able to walk with a little direction. One more trip in and out and the ambulances were loaded.

"Back to Pervyse," ordered Dr. McDonnell.

At Pervyse, Scotch and Mrs. Bracher were ready for them. So was an English Tommy, who singled out Ainslie-Barkleigh.

"Orders from Kitchener, sir," said the orderly. "You must return to Dunkirk at once. No correspondent is allowed at the front."

Barkleigh listened attentively, and assented with a nod of his head. He walked up to the three ladies.