was going.

Suddenly Viola sat up very straight.

"Furny, is that guns I hear, or thunder?"

I said it was guns. A deep and solemn booming came from before and behind
us and on either side, east and west. We had rushed bang between the
French and German batteries.

The big cloud turned out to be smoke from a factory that the Belgians had
set fire to themselves, and in following it we had gone miles from Zele.
Now we followed the guns.

We turned east and struck off south and found ourselves in the village of
Baerlere. The lines of fire seemed suddenly to narrow in on us here.

There was a clean path down the centre of the street, for men and horses
stood back close under the housewalls on each side. The place was full of
soldiers. One of them told us that we could get to Zele by going east
through the village, but as the road was being shelled, he didn't advise
us to try.

We went down that clean middle of the street. We were safe enough as long
as we ran between the houses; but the village very soon came to an end,
and then, in the open road, we were in for it.

The fields dropped away from us on each side, leaving us as naked to the
German batteries as if we were running on a raised causeway. At the
bottom of the fields to our right there was a line of willows, beyond the
willows there was the river, and behind the river bank, on the further
side, were the German lines.

The grey smoke of their fire was still tangled in the willow-tops.

Colville drew up under the lee of the last house in the village. He
didn't like the look of that open road. Neither did I.

"Go on," said Viola. "What are you stopping for?"

The guns ceased firing for a moment and we rushed it.

"I do wish," said Viola, "you'd tuck your arm in, Furny. It's your right
arm and you're on the wrong side of the car."

I asked her what made her think of my right arm just then.

"Because it's the only part of himself that Jimmy ever thinks of," she
said.

There was about three-quarters of a mile of causeway and it ended in a
little hamlet. And the hamlet--it had been knocked to bits before we got
into it--the hamlet ended in a hillock of bricks and mortar.

The road to Zele was completely blocked.

"Well--" said Colville, "I _am_ blowed."

"You've got to take it," said Viola.

"Sorry, m'm. It can't be done. You want a motor traction with caterpillar
wheels for this business."

He was backing the car when a shell burst and buried it