Our two friends had come back.  They had gone to the entry of Dixmude, but could get no further owing to the flames and shells.  They, too, had waited for an hour, but had not found de Broqueville.  It seemed certain that he was dead, and very sorrowfully, as there was nothing to be done, we drove back to Furnes.

At the gate of the convent were some Belgian ambulances which had come from another part of the front with their wounded.  I helped to carry one of them in, and strained my shoulders with the weight of the stretcher.  Another wounded man put his arm round my neck, and then, with a dreadful cry, collapsed, so that I had to hold him in a strong grip.  A third man, horribly smashed about the head, walked almost unaided into the operating-room.  Gleeson and I led him, with just a touch on his arm.  Next morning he lay dead on a little pile of straw in a quiet corner of the courtyard.

I sat down to a supper which I had not expected to eat.  There was a strange excitement in my body, which trembled a little after the day’s adventures.  It seemed very strange to be sitting down to table with cheerful faces about me.  But some of the faces were not cheerful.  Those of us who knew of the disappearance of de Broqueville sat silently over our soup.

Then suddenly there was a sharp exclamation of surprise—­of sheer amazement—­and Lieutenant de Broqueville came walking briskly forward, alive and well. ...  It seemed a miracle.

It was hardly less than that.  For several hours after our departure from Dixmude he had remained in that inferno.  He had missed us when he went down into the cellars to haul out another wounded man, forgetting that he had given us the order to start.  There he had remained with the buildings crashing all around him until the enemy’s fire had died down a little.  He succeeded in rescuing his wounded, for whom he found room in a Belgian ambulance outside the town, and walked back along the road to Furnes.  So we gripped his hands and were thankful for his escape.

10

Early next morning I went into Dixmude again with some of the men belonging to the “flying column.”  It was more than probable that there were still a number of wounded men there, if any of them were left alive after that night of horror when they lay in cellars or under the poor shelter of broken walls.  Perhaps also there were men but lately wounded, for before the dawn had come some of the Belgian infantry had been sent into the outlying streets with mitrailleuses, and on the opposite side German infantry were in possession of other streets or of other ruins, so that bullets were ripping across the mangled town.  The artillery was fairly quiet.  Only a few shells were bursting over the Belgian lines—­enough to keep the air rumbling with irregular thunderclaps.  But as we approached the corner where we had waited for news of de Broqueville one of these shells burst very close to us and ploughed up a big hole in a field