d that
other troops had dropped, and some of them had tried and appreciated
cutlets from a dead mule; they needed food to restore their strength for
they had been working hard without sleep for two days and nights. It had
been forty-eight hours of continuous hauling on those heavy guns, which
were constantly getting edged off the road by other traffic, and which
had to be unhitched every time the tractor stopped because it was so
overloaded that it would not start with the full weight of its tow. So
the officer had sent him on ahead to scout for food, and he had just
found a _sosistenza_ where they had given him a sack of bread to take
back.

"You all right yourself?" asked my officer-companion.

"Quite all right, sir, thank you," he answered, and slinging the bulging
sack across his shoulders, the despatch-rider straddled his battered
bicycle and set off on a sinuous path through the wedged traffic, with
his bent front-wheel writhing like a tortured snake.

[Sidenote: Finding the way to reach Padua.]

[Sidenote: Walking single file through the mud.]

This news of the existence of a _sosistenza_ was good hearing. I myself
had not the least idea of how to get to Padua, the nearest place from
which I could hope to send a telegram, except by walking there; and
Padua was sixty miles along the railway-line. Two days' walking, two
brown loaves the gift of the Italian officer in charge of the
bread-depot, and a stick of chocolate; it was a prospect of no
allurement. I stepped into place in the long trail of refugees and
started, however. It needed no more than two hours of stumbling over
sleepers and crunching on the rough stone ballast of the track to make
of me as tired and dull-witted a hobo as the rest. We all walked in
single file, keeping as far as possible to a strip of soft mud at the
side of the line where the going was easier, and one's whole mind had
become before long entirely concentrated on nothing more than the
increasing soreness of two tired feet and the gradual development of a
blister on a big toe. From Portogruaro onward, however, my own personal
luck changed, and by getting one lift after another I reached Padua the
same night.

[Sidenote: British guns wait to cross.]

[Sidenote: An Italian colonel attempts to keep order on the bridge.]

[Sidenote: A panic is started.]

[Sidenote: Austrian aeroplanes are overhead.]

[Sidenote: Italian officers check panic.]

[Sidenote: Airplane opens fire on