"Battery. _Eyes--right."_

The marvellous ceremonial slipped rearwards. George was aware of tears
in his eyes. He was aware of the sentiment of worship. He felt that he
would have done anything, accomplished any deed, died, at the bidding of
the motionless figure on the charger. It was most curious.

There was a terrific crash of wood far behind. Resmith chuckled.

"One of those G.S. wagons has knocked down the Automobile Club
'Cross-Roads' sign," he said. "Good thing it wasn't a lamp-post! You
see, with their eyes right, they can't look where they're going, and the
whip touches up the horses, and before you can say knife they're into
something. Jolly glad it's only the Am. Col. Jones will hear of this."
He chuckled again. Jones was the Captain commanding the Ammunition
Column.

The order ran down the line:

"Eyes--_front_."

Soon afterwards they came to some policemen, and two girls in very gay
frocks with bicycles, and the cross-roads. The Battery swung into the
great high road whose sign-post said, 'To Ewell and Epsom.' Another unit
had been halted to let the Artillery pass into its definitive place in
the vast trek. It was about this time that George began to notice the
dust. Rain had fallen before dawn and made the roads perfect; but now
either all the moisture had evaporated in the blazing sun, or the
Battery had reached a zone where rain had not fallen. At first the dust
rose only in a shallow sea to the height of fetlocks; but gradually it
ascended and made clouds, and deposited a layer on the face and on the
tongue and in the throat. And the surface itself of the road,
exasperated by innumerable hoofs and wheels, seemed to be in a kind of
crawling fermentation. The smell of humanity and horses was strong. The
men were less inclined to sing.

"Left!" yelled a voice.

And another:

"_Left_!"

And still another, very close on the second one:

"LEFT!"

"Keep your distances there!" Resmith shouted violently.

A horn sounded, and the next moment a motor-car, apparently full of
red-hats, rushed past the Battery, overtaking it, in a blinding storm of
dust. It was gone, like a ghost.

"That's the Almighty himself," Resmith explained, with unconscious awe
and devotion in his powerful voice. "Gramstone, Major-General."

George, profoundly impressed (he knew not why), noticed in his brain a
tiny embryo of a thought that it might be agreeable to ride in a car.

A hand went up, and the Battery stopped