But the corporal did not listen to Jo’s orders.  He belonged to a country which rates women and cattle together, and the carts moved relentlessly on.  With difficulty Jo found the ledge again on which Jan was sitting with the rugs, talking to the scenery in a manner which was not pretty.

Blease came up, and the three of us shouldered the things and stumbled off to find the vanished carriages, which were half a mile down the road.  Jan flung his baggage on to somebody and soundly boxed the corporal’s ears, calling him a “gloop.”  Instantly the corporal felt that “here was a man he could really understand,” and from that moment became a devoted adherent, studying our slightest whim, and at intervals humbly laying walnuts before us.

A man came up to Jan.

“I believe that man is drunk,” said he; “I said that your carts might stand.”

“Who are you?” said Jan.

“I was once the conductor of the Crown Prince’s orchestra,” he said; “now I am traffic superintendent.  It is difficult.  I had a horse, a jolly little brown horse, but he gave out and I had to leave him behind on the road.”  There were tears in the man’s voice.  “He was a good horse, but it was too hard for him.  Now I have to walk.”

“I shot your horse,” said Jan.  “They were driving over its body.”

“He was a nice horse,” said the man again, “a nice horse, and now I have to walk.  Well, good-bye, you can rest here.”

He splashed away in the mud.

Our new sleeping place was worse:  the mud was deeper, the road narrower.  Jo tried to escape the mud and made for the roadside, but the ground moved under her and some muttered curses arose.  She was walking not on grass but on crowds of sleeping boys, and very nearly trod on a face.  We settled down again on our mackintosh sheet but did not sleep.  Some soldiers were firing off guns and throwing bombs into the river all night.  Near us lay Owen, who coughed for a couple of hours, after which he gave up the spot as being too wet, and lay in a cart on Whatmough’s face.

It rained, Jo had the fidgets, and Jan expostulated.  The mackintosh was too small for us and we got gloriously wet.  It is a curious feeling—­the rain pattering on one’s face when trying to sleep.  By the time one becomes accustomed to the monotony of the tiny drops—­splash a big drop from a tree.  Water collects in folds of hat or rug, and suddenly cascades down one’s neck.

At four in the morning the corporal crept up submissively to ask if we might move on, as the horses were cold and hungry.  Only too glad, dark as it was, we rolled up our damp bundles and put them in the waggons with the sleeping people, who awoke, pink-eyed and puzzled at the sudden progress forward of their uncomfortable beds.  Whatmough, who was convinced that the bombs and gunshots of the night before were spent Austrian shells sailing over the hill, said—­

“That’s the first time I’ve ever liked a fellow sleeping on my face.”