Between pitch games in which thousands of francs were apparently lost and won, we visited, on summons, the City Hall five or six times. Every time there was the same heavy barrage of français.
Entered, finally, an English-speaking gent who said we might leave the city provided we went straight back to Paris.
“We’d much prefer,” said Joe, “to go on to where we were going.”
“You have the choice,” was the reply, “of returning to Paris or remaining here, in jail.”
Paris sounded the more attractive. They gave us back our car and away we went. It was after twenty o’clock, and it was pitch dark, and it was cold, and it was raining. And the man who had made the machine had forgotten to equip it with headlights.
A little before midnight, on the downhill main street of a village, we saw ahead of us a wagon. It was two feet ahead of us. There being nothing else to do we banged into it. Then we stopped. The driver of the wagon sat suddenly down in the middle of the street and apologized. We all got out to see whether any damage had been done to the car. The only wounds discernible in the darkness were a smashed radiator and a bent axle.
“It’s lucky this happened in a town,” said I. “We can probably find a hotel.”
“We’re not going to look for one,” said Joe. “We’re going to drive to Paris.”
We got back in and, to our amazement, the darn thing started. There was plenty of headlight now, for the whole hood was ablaze. All lit up like a church, we went on our mad career until our conveyance dropped dead, overcome by the heat. This was four miles from a town that will be famous in the histories of this war.
“I guess we’re through,” said Joe. “One of us will have to stay with the car and see that nothing is stolen. The other two can go back to town and find a bed.”
By a vote of two to one, Howard was elected to stay with the car. He was the youngest.
Joe and I hiked our four miles in silence. The town was as brilliantly lighted as a cemetery and apparently void of inmates. We groped for an hour in a vain search for a hostelry. At length we gave up and resolved to sleep on the huge cathedral’s front porch. We were ascending the steps when a door opened and a human being stood before us.
“Arrested again,” thought I.
But the human being turned out to be not a copper, but a priest.
“Bonsoir, monsieur,” said Joe. “Voulez-vous show us où we can find a hotel?”
He led us across the street to a place we had doped out as the high school. He rapped on the door with his foot. In a few moments an aged lady, dressed for the night, appeared. There was a rapid exchange of français, after which we thanked the priest and were taken through a courtyard and upstairs to our room. We said a prayer for Howard and went to sleep, and I had a nightmare. I dreamed of a porterhouse steak.
This morning we decided it wouldn’t be clubby to have breakfast before we had rescued Howard and the car. We went to a garage which was equipped with a beautiful lady, but no automobiles nor towropes. We found a livery stable that had everything but a horse. We commandeered a young man’s delivery cart from in front of a grocery store and drove out to the scene of our car’s demise. Howard and the corpse were still there. Howard thought it would be a good idea to go to the nearest farmhouse and rent a horse and a rope from the proprietor. The proprietor was very ignorant. He couldn’t understand our French. But in his employ was a German prisoner who could talk his own language and ours and the funny one that is prevalent round here. He explained our wants to the farmer and there ensued a few moments of haggling over price. We finally rented two horses and a rope for fifty francs and dragged the car back to town. From the looks of it, in daylight, I would say the economical course would have been to leave it out there in the road and keep the fifty francs.
The garage man says, in English, that he can make the necessary “reparations” in three weeks. So far as I’m concerned, he can devote three years to the job. Hereafter I’ll do my cross-country flitting about on a train.
It’s on one now, Paris bound, that I’m writing. There is nothing to do but write, for Howard is getting the sleep he missed last night and Joe is too angry to talk. He has spoken one sentence since we got up this morning.
“This is a queer war,” he said.
IV
Finally I Get to the American Camp; What I Find There
Thursday, August 30. At an American Camp.
Me and a regular American correspondent, Mr. Bazin, who has been here since before the war, but is still good-natured, took the train from Paris this morning and reached our destination shortly after lunch time. This is one of a string of villages in which the main body of the Expeditionary Forces are billeted.
We were met at the train by one of the correspondents’ cars, a regular he-man of a car from home, with eight cylinders and everything. Each correspondent rents a seat in one of the machines at a cost of sixty dollars a week. For this trifling sum he may be driven anywhere
