She could see they didn’t want it.  This was the last tram.  The serious cases had been sent on first.  All these men could walk or hobble along somehow with help.  But they were the last in the retreat of the wounded; they were the men who had been nearest to the enemy, and they had known the extremity of fear.

“You can’t have it.  It’s wanted for a badly wounded man.”

“Where is he?”

“We don’t know.  We’re looking for him.”

“Ah, pah!  We can’t wait till you find him.  Do you think we’re going to stand here to be taken?—­For one man!”

They went on through the plantation, stumbling and growling, dragging the wounded out into the road.

“If,” Charlotte said, “we only knew where he was.”

John stood there silent; his head was turned towards the far end of the wood, the Lokeren end.  The terror of the wood held him.  He seemed to be listening; listening, but only half awake.

Here, where the line stopped, a narrow track led downwards out of the wood.  Charlotte started to go along it.  “Come on,” she said.  She saw him coming, quickly, but with drawn, sleep-walking feet.  The track led into a muddy alley at the back of the village.

There was a house there and a woman stood at the door, beckoning.  She ran up to them.  “He’s here,” she whispered, “he’s here.”

He lay on his side on the flagged floor of the kitchen.  His shirt was ripped open, and in his white back, below the shoulder blade, there was a deep red wound, like a pit, with a wide mouth, gaping.  He was ugly, a Flamand; he had a puffed face with pushed out lips and a scrub of red beard; but Charlotte loved him.

They carried him out through the wood on to the road.  He lay inert, humped up, heavy.  They had to go slowly, so slowly that they could see the wounded and the Red Cross men going on far before them, down the street.

The flagged road swayed and swung with the swinging bulge of the stretcher as they staggered.  The shafts kept on slipping and slipping; her grasp closed, tighter and tighter; her arms ached in their sockets; but her fingers and the palms of her hands were firm and dry; they could keep their hold.

They had only gone a few yards along the road when suddenly John stopped and sank his end of the stretcher, compelling Charlotte to lower hers too.

“What did you do that for?”

“We can’t, Charlotte.  He’s too damned heavy.”

“If I can, you can.”

He didn’t move.  He stood there, staring with his queer, hypnotised eyes, at the man lying in the middle of the road, at the red pit in the white back, at the wide, ragged lips of the wound, gaping.

“For goodness’ sake pick him up.  It isn’t the moment for resting.”

“Look here—­it isn’t good enough.  We can’t get him there in time.”

“You’re—­you’re not going to leave him!”

“We’ve got to leave him.  We can’t let the whole lot be taken just for one man.”