gladness, there was a
little sense of disappointment, unaccountable, unpardonable, and not
quite sane.

One of the men showed us a burst shrapnel shell. We examined it with
great interest as the kind of thing that would be most likely to hit us
on our way from Baerlaere to Zele.

We had been barely half an hour hanging about Baerlaere, but it seemed
as if we had wasted a whole afternoon there. At last we started. We were
told to drive fast, as the fire might open on us at any minute. We drove
very fast. Our road lay through open country flat to the river, with no
sort of cover anywhere from the German fire, if it chose to come. About
half a mile ahead of us was a small hamlet that had been shelled. Mr. L.
told us to duck when we heard the guns. I remember thinking that I
particularly didn't want to be wounded in my right arm, and that as I
sat with my right arm resting on the ledge of the car it was somewhat
exposed to the German batteries, so I wriggled low down in my seat and
tucked my arm well under cover for quite five minutes. But you couldn't
see anything that way, so I popped up again and presently forgot all
about my valuable arm in the sheer excitement of the rush through the
danger zone. Our car was low on the ground; still, it was high enough
and big enough to serve as a mark for the German guns and it fairly gave
them the range of the road.

But though the guns had been pounding away before we started, they
ceased firing as we went through.

That, however, was sheer luck. And presently it was brought home to me
that we were not the only persons involved in the risk of this joyous
adventure. Just outside the bombarded hamlet ahead of us we were stopped
by some Belgian [? French] soldiers hidden in the cover of a ditch by
the roadside, which if it was not a trench might very easily have been
one. They were talking in whispers for fear of being overheard by the
Germans, who must have been at least a mile off, across the fields on
the other side of the river. A mile seemed a pretty safe distance; but
Mr. L. said it wouldn't help us much, considering that the range of
their guns was twenty-four miles. The soldiers told us we couldn't
possibly get through to Zele. That was true. The road was blocked--by
the ruins of the hamlet--not twenty yards from where we were pulled up.
We got out of the car; and while Mr. L. and the Belgian lady conversed
with the soldiers, Mr. M. and I walked on to investigate the road.