ed times he came within
an ace of falling flat on the road under the crawling wheels of the
Renault. But for his young strong body pushing and shoving this way and
that Lieutenant Defoe would not have been able to move the car forward
an inch. As it was the car did not travel more than fifty yards in a
good half hour. By then Dave was drenched with his own sweat. His hat
was gone and his clothes were slowly but surely being torn from his
back.

Suddenly he saw Lieutenant Defoe at his shoulder and heard the
Frenchman's voice shouting in his ear.

"It is useless, _mon Capitaine_! It is madness. We will not get any
place with the car. The town of Beaumont is but a few _kilometres_
ahead. There is an army post there. I shall request a military car and
a driver. Ah me, I am desolate that this should happen. Here! Watch what
you are doing! You! Let go of me, my old one! _Attention!_"

At that moment the French officer had been caught in the river of
people. He struggled and he fought but he was relentlessly swept along
and away from Dave's clutching hands. In almost the same moment Dave,
himself, was caught up by the moving mass. It was either a case of
moving along with the stream or stumbling to his hands and knees and
being trampled under foot, or being run over by the heavy wheel of an ox
cart or wagon. It was absolutely impossible, and an act of sheer
suicide, to buck that packed throng.

And so Dave took the only course open to him. He moved along with the
stream of refugees and inch by inch worked his way to the edge of the
stream and into a clear space. There he paused for breath and strained
his eyes for a glimpse of Lieutenant Defoe, but the Frenchman was
nowhere to be seen. He had been virtually swallowed up by the stream of
humanity moving relentlessly and blindly forward. Dave thought of the
troops and the long lines of army cars he and Defoe had passed since
leaving Paris, and shuddered at the thought. When the army and the
populace met what would happen? Who would give way, or would anybody?
In his mind's eye he pictured other French officers like Defoe striving
to force the refugees to abandon their mad flight and return home. It
was not a pretty picture to imagine. It was not a nice situation to
contemplate. Troops with tanks and guns moving forward to meet the enemy
but instead meeting thousands and thousands of their own flesh and
blood.

"Please, God, put sense in the heads of these poor people!" Dav