“Right you are, and I’ve two particular friends in that company—­I suppose they’ve rejoined it—­Wharton, an American, and Carstairs, an Englishman.  We went through a lot of dangers together before we reached the British army near Mons, and I’d like to see them again.”

“Maybe you will, but here comes an extraordinary procession.”

They heard many puffing sounds, uniting in one grand puffing chorus, and saw advancing down a white road toward them a long, ghostly train, as if a vast troop of extinct monsters had returned to earth and were marching this way.  But John knew very well that it was a train of automobiles and raising the glasses that he now always carried he saw that they were empty except for the chauffeurs.

General Vaugirard began to whistle his mellowest and most musical tune, stopping only at times to mutter a few words under his breath.  John surmised that he was expressing deep satisfaction, and that he had been waiting for the motor train.  War was now fought under new conditions.  The Germans had thousands and scores of thousands of motors, and perhaps the French were provided almost as well.

“I fancy,” said de Rougemont, who was also watching the arrival of the machines, “that we’ll leave our horses now and travel by motor.”

De Rougemont’s supposition was correct.  The line of automobiles began to mass in front, many rows deep, and all the chauffeurs, their great goggles shining through the darkness, were bent over their wheels ready to be off at once with their armed freight.  It filled John with elation, and he saw the same spirit shining in the eyes of the young French officers.

General Vaugirard began to puff like one of the machines.  He threw out his great chest, pursed up his mouth and emitted his breath in little gusts between his lips, “Very good!  Very good, my children!” he said, “Oil and electricity will carry us now, and we go forward, not backward!”

True to de Rougemont’s prediction, the horses were given to orderlies, and the staff and a great portion of the troops were taken into the cars.  General Vaugirard and several of the older officers occupied a huge machine, and just behind him came de Rougemont, John and a half-dozen young lieutenants and captains in another.  Before them stretched a great white road.  Far overhead hovered many aeroplanes.  John had no doubt that the Arrow was among them, or rather was the farthest one forward.  Lannes’ eager soul, wound or no wound, would keep him in front.

They now moved rapidly, and John’s spirits continued to rise.  There was something wonderful in this swift march on wheels in the moonlight.  As far back as he could see the machines came in a stream, and to the left and right he saw them proceeding on other roads also.  All the country was strange to John.  He could not remember having seen it from the aeroplane, and he was sure that the army, instead of going to Paris, was bound for some point where it would come in instant contact with the German forces.