with food, a blanket roll, and now he resolved to push on all night and
most of the following day, before passing the French lines.

Keeping a watchful eye he pursued his steady course across the hills.
The depth of the snow impeded speed, but action kept his heart strong.
The terrible waiting was over, he was at least trying to do something.
Fresh interests sprang up also. It was a strange, white, misty world
upon which he looked. He traveled through utter desolation, but to the
east, inclining to the north was a limitless double line, which now and
then broke into flashes of flame, while from points further back came
that mutter of the big guns like the groanings of huge, primeval
monsters.

It seemed to John barbarous and savage to the last degree. He knew that
he was in one of the most densely populated and highly cultivated
portions of the world, but the dragon's teeth were coming up more
thickly even than in the time of old Cadmus.

He walked until it was almost morning without seeing a human being, and
then, the snow having dragged on him so heavily, he felt that he must
take rest. Crawling into a hole in the snow that he scraped out under a
ledge, he folded himself between his blankets and went to steep.




CHAPTER VII

THE PURSUIT